In Beijing: Misguided

In Beijing: Misguided

Two things travelers to a foreign city need to depend on are a good guidebook and a good map. There are neither on Beijing.

Here are some things on which the guidebooks provided misguidence:

Cigarette smoking is widespread and noxious: Wrong. It's just not a big problem.

Gross, loud, and frequent spitting, often right in the middle of a conversation, is widespread: It is gross and loud but not widespread. We have spent most of two weeks out walking the city and the working class hutongs. The spitting occurs several times in the course of a long day. It has never happened in the course of a conversation.

Beijingers routinely cut in front of you in line and elbow you out of the way in crowds: Wrong on the elbows, infrequent on the line-cutting.

The taxis are dirty: Wrong. There are at least three classes of taxi. We've ridden in all three. Every one has been clean inside and out.

Taxi drivers drive like maniacs: True but it's not dangerous. I know that doesn't make sense. They don't drive fast or recklessly. They do drive with an apparent disregard for the presence of other vehicles or pedestrians but they don't get into accidents. There seems to be a sixth Chinese sense that allows them to stop just in time. That's why it's not dangerous. Once you see it happen a few times you just learn to relax, confident that noone is going to get run over.

Beijing is a modern capital city, there is no significant language barrier: Wrong. Even in the foreigner catering hotels and shops it's a problem. Recourse to sign language is necessary in almost every communication. Even when a Chinese is reasonably fluent in English and has gotten the nuances of syntax down the accent is so strong that the English word is often misunderstood by its auditor.

Maps: On the five or six block walk from the Grand Hyatt hotel to Tiananmen Square there is a massive building of some sort impressively set off from the street. Obviously an important edifice of some kind. A government building? A museum? Dunno. It doesn't appear on any map. Not mislabeled or unidentified. IT DOES NOT APPEAR ON THE MAP AT ALL. This is not an infrequent occurrence. You'll be walking the city tracing your way on your map and where the map has a street you want to make a left turn on there's no street.

There are two exquisite little parks somewhere in the vicinity of The Forbidden City. In The Forbidden City? Dunno. Outside The Forbidden City? Dunno that either. The maps (plural) were unclear. This is Public Occurrences.