Beijing Monster between cities, Beijing offers to the eyes a giant show of urbanism and colors. One thing that visitors- who want to know something about Beijing- should see is the view from the plane; when you travel by plane you can really see how big this city is. And this can offer you an image about where you are really going. From a plane you can see how the urbanization is shaped in Beijing: areas covered just by flats which have mostly the same shape but different colors. You can also see areas covered only by houses which are- how I could later discover- mostly in poor condition and pressed together in such a manner that those neighbors know everything about each other. But you can also find combination of huge flats with poor small houses, mixture which has not so many features common with some urbanization. Another modern symbol is the new center which is created by skyscrapers and other buildings signed by the modern architecture. Skyscrapers are not so big like in Shanghai and Hong Kong but the city is growing up very fast and with it also is the number of new buildings.
Air pollution in the city during our stay in Beijing wasn’t that big as expected but still from plane was possible to see cloud which I can connect with fog but the difference is (as I know from Czech Republic or Norway that fog is white) but in Beijing it was always yellow.
Let’s move inside the city. After our arrival at the airport we took the bus to the city. When the bus arrived people were pushing each other as they wanted to get inside of the bus. During the way to the center of the city I had to sit on the floor of the bus. When we arrived to a bus station near central railway station in front of the bus there were waiting few persons who offered travelers accommodation as close as possible. In first night we took some cheap hostel but next few days we had accommodation with one Chinese guy in his flat (guy that I met on Couch Surfing). When we arrived to his house I was a little bit surprised that he lives alone and his home is so big when many bigger families have to live in small flats; but we were happy for this because it meant more space for us. If you want to have a picture about how big is Beijing, imagine that if we wanted to get from our accommodation only to Central Railway Station which is near to the center of the city it took around 40 min. by metro; and if we wanted to get on the other side of the city it could have taken more than 2h by metro. When I’m talking about metro you have to know that this is the right place where you can feel the overpopulation in the city. When the metro arrives in the station it is hard to get inside metro but also out of the metro. Inside the metro you can feel like tuna in the can. Living style in Beijing for me seemed quiet strange: flats everywhere; from plane how I said We could see many flats, but when you get in the city you think that there must be maybe 30 times more flats than you could see from the plane. Some people even if they live in the huge flats they have in front of them small cages with chickens or some other home-bred animals. As well, drying clothes on the streets is a normal thing which We have never seen in Europe. Just imagine that you are driving a car on a big road with many lines and next to the road there are trees which are connected with ropes and on this ropes people dry clothes. So now you know that Chinese use every space in the city. I can say that actually Beijing is not such a modern city comparing to others. For me Beijing is a city created from Chinese villages where houses are pressed on each other with the only difference that they have access to hot water and sanitation but this doesn’t change the fact that inside their homes you can find a total mess. Yes, Chinese people don’t have such a big sense of clean household as western countries. Our sense of organization of our own things doesn’t say anything to them. You can find it maybe in educated families which are numerous in China but if we will think about how many people live in China the proportion is not in favor of this number. Security in Chinese big cities is high and I can say that many times also annoying and this is the security that checks places like metro, train stations or some other areas where can be a lot of people together. Only when we wanted to get near the Forbidden City we had to pass through a small area we had four security checks which were as usually busy so we have spent also a long time waiting. When we talked to some people they told us that they don’t understand why the security checks are such a big deal and what exactly the security guards are doing. Because many times when we went to the metro we just put our luggage inside the roentgen and person who was responsible to check the screen didn’t care about it. So it seems like that government is wasting money for some security which is not effective. But on the other side, the Government manages in this way many working places for people. A city of 20 million inhabitants cannot provide jobs for all of them using just the help from investors, it needs to create also its own work places. Also you can see in the city many workers who have to clean the streets sometimes you can even see that they are working in Chinese highways, work that has to be really dangerous. Nice thing is that you cannot find so many homeless because most of the people have job even those jobs which from outside seem a waste of money. But I don’t want to say that there are no homeless. Comparing with Prague there are not so many or at least is hard to find them.
1 Comment
21/3/2017 05:09:08 am
The China travelling group's really dedicated to making our cities a greater, a cleaner place. I know that it's a severe requirement in our urban areas, especially areas like Beijing or Shanghai.
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