Beijing
I've been in Beijing since the weekend, thanks to SIPit, the biannual interoperability event where a bunch of developers of audio/video conferencing get together and try to test against as many of each others products as possible to ensure we all play nicely together. I's previously given me the opportunity to visit New Hampshire and Antwerp, and since it rotates America-Europe-Asia this time it's in China. The idea was somehow a bit intimidating (you need four different forms not including your passport on arrival), but also very cool, as it's not somewhere I've ever been before.
As far as the theory 'everyone will speak english' goes, that turned out to be decidedly untrue. Getting a taxi at the airport, despite the fact we came prepared with preprinted directions in chinese to show the driver, a map of Beijing showing the hotel and even GPS coordinates, proved impossible until we resorted to phoning someone who spoke Mandarin. And going to a restaurant in the evening quickly degenerated into a flurry of smiling, nodding and pointing at the menu; one of the waiters did speak two words of english - 'beef' (which turned out to be chicken) and 'chicken' (which turned out to be fish), but otherwise mime was very much the order of the day. The food was still excellent, but somewhat random, and we didn't figure out a way to order rice, since it was too mundane to warrant a photo in the menu.
The food, and indeed everything else, has however proven to be embarrasingly cheap - a heavy meal for five with beer, tea and some sort of lethal alcohol served in eggcups came out at just over £20, while the hotel rooms are about £15 a night. We haven't done anything particually touristy yet, but I'm staying on until Monday, and there are schemes afoot to hit the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall and maybe one of the big temple complexes Friday-Sunday, which apparently present ample opportunities to spend money. The one downside I anticipate from sight-seeing is the smog. If you look at the photo above, you can just about make out the grey haze, which is omnipresent, no matter the time of day or night (when the beams from car headlights are made visible much like spotlights in a club when they turn the smoke on). Though apparently they're clamping down a bit, particually for the Olympics - Patrick told me that ten years ago it was considerably worse.
One other negative that stands out somewhat is the way in which they censor the web - even from just casual browsing I've run into the Great Firewall a number of times. For instance, BBC News Online is banned, as is Wikipedia, and even Livejournal (I'm posting this thanks to the magic of an encrypted VPN to my work computer in the UK), as well as some seemingly innocuous minor sites, which pretty handily knocks the most useful sites I browse to. They even stop you using Google's cache, so when I search for something I get a few teasing lines for the wikipedia article on the search page itself, but can't read it in full.
Still, I'm very much enjoying it, all told, and am looking forward to getting out and seeing more of the city itself over the weekend.
As far as the theory 'everyone will speak english' goes, that turned out to be decidedly untrue. Getting a taxi at the airport, despite the fact we came prepared with preprinted directions in chinese to show the driver, a map of Beijing showing the hotel and even GPS coordinates, proved impossible until we resorted to phoning someone who spoke Mandarin. And going to a restaurant in the evening quickly degenerated into a flurry of smiling, nodding and pointing at the menu; one of the waiters did speak two words of english - 'beef' (which turned out to be chicken) and 'chicken' (which turned out to be fish), but otherwise mime was very much the order of the day. The food was still excellent, but somewhat random, and we didn't figure out a way to order rice, since it was too mundane to warrant a photo in the menu.
The food, and indeed everything else, has however proven to be embarrasingly cheap - a heavy meal for five with beer, tea and some sort of lethal alcohol served in eggcups came out at just over £20, while the hotel rooms are about £15 a night. We haven't done anything particually touristy yet, but I'm staying on until Monday, and there are schemes afoot to hit the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Great Wall and maybe one of the big temple complexes Friday-Sunday, which apparently present ample opportunities to spend money. The one downside I anticipate from sight-seeing is the smog. If you look at the photo above, you can just about make out the grey haze, which is omnipresent, no matter the time of day or night (when the beams from car headlights are made visible much like spotlights in a club when they turn the smoke on). Though apparently they're clamping down a bit, particually for the Olympics - Patrick told me that ten years ago it was considerably worse.
One other negative that stands out somewhat is the way in which they censor the web - even from just casual browsing I've run into the Great Firewall a number of times. For instance, BBC News Online is banned, as is Wikipedia, and even Livejournal (I'm posting this thanks to the magic of an encrypted VPN to my work computer in the UK), as well as some seemingly innocuous minor sites, which pretty handily knocks the most useful sites I browse to. They even stop you using Google's cache, so when I search for something I get a few teasing lines for the wikipedia article on the search page itself, but can't read it in full.
Still, I'm very much enjoying it, all told, and am looking forward to getting out and seeing more of the city itself over the weekend.