Nathaniel and Sheree back in Australia

Before today we hadn’t seen blue sky. The pollution is really bad and the smog only clears up when there is a strong wind to blow it away. The only problem with a blue sky is that the sun is really hot when it’s not behind clouds. We decided that today was the day to buy bikes. We were really sick of walking around and wanted the extra mobility. We ended up buying to foldup bikes for $50 AUD each. If you want to see some pictures of them check out the gallary. With our new found mobility we checked out a couple of the stores that had been to far away before. The Decathlon is a sports store that sold almost anythng you could think of that related to sport and next to it was a B&Q that made bunnings look small. At B&Q we found our an air filters but I decided to do some more research before I bought one. By the time we got home most of the day was gone so we organised to have lunch with all the new teachers at a restaurant which was nice.

Today we went to church at Beijing International Christian Fellowship which was different. BICF is an international church which means that local people aren’t allowed to attend only foreigners. To get into the church you have to show a foreign passport. The service was in Mandarin and English with various other languages added occasionally. It was interesting looking around and seeing the racial break up. About one third of the congregation was Caucasian, half was Asian and the remained were form all over the place. The best part of the service was when we sang amazing grace in Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, Korean and English. After the service I was trying to get directions to one of the markets and I saw a couple standing in the foyer. The wife talking to someone while the husband waited. I figured that the husband would be waiting for a while so I introduced myself and asked for directions. We ended up chatting for a while and then his wife joined in when she finished her conversation. To cut a long story short they invited us to there place at the Australian embassy for lunch. I assumed he just work in administration but after we arrived I found out that I’d actually approached the guys just under the Australia Ambassador. His wife lent Sheree Gilmore Girls season 3 and showed us where everything was on our map. It was really cool being able to ring up my parents when we got home and say that we had had lunch in Australia because the embassy is technically part of Australia.

After lunch we went to a shoping center that was supposed to be good but I found it boring and expensive. After that we went next door to BuyNow which is a four story computer mega store. It’s not just one store but hundreds of mini stores. I soft my screen in Australia to save weight and until I needed a new screen to get it up and running again. After looking around I picker a 20 inch wide screen LCD from ViewSonic with a three year pick up warrenty in Beijing for $459. I’m loving it. After buying the screen I had to carry it around the russian markets (a small price to pay) while Sheree look for cloths. In the end there wasn’t really anything she like so we came home and I finally go to setup my computer. For dinner we decided to check out a new resruant with Garith (one of the other new teachers) that had English menus which was a nice change. It was slightly more expensive and the servings were smaller but the food was good. We ended up buying a Oxford Chinese < -> English dictionary for $3 so Sheree could carry around a dictionary as well.

Overall it was a fantasitic day.

The last few days have been a blur. We caught the buss to the city every day. At 7am on Thursday we caught the bus with Melanie (another teacher) into the city and then got Taxi to take us to the smaller Friendship Store. The Friendship store is a government run import store in the embassy area. They have groceries, English books and virtually anything else that the ambassadors might want to make them feel at home. We bought a map of Beijing that is in English and Mandarin which means we can now find out where things are in Beijing. The map even shows the area were we live which isn’t on the online maps or the older maps because it is past the 5th ring road. We live in Yizhuang (pronounced E-Jwan) which is a rather large economic and technological development area. They opened it about five years ago to try move companies out of Beijing city and into these various development areas.

We then walked around the block because Melanie told us there was a private import store on the other side called Jenny Lou. Jenny Lou is actually a bit cheaper than the Friendship which is nice. The range is also slightly different (more brands of lollies and alcohol) which means we have even more choice. I never thought I’d end up having more choice in China than we did back in Australia. They have food from all over the world at the import stores which is really nice. Sheree was really happy because she can get Dr Pepper over here which she couldn’t get in Australia. The western goods also have Western prices which is a lot more than local prices but once you convert it into Australian dollars it was about the same price you’d pay at a service station.

Now that we had a map we were ready to explore. We diced to walk to the larger friendship store which was suppose to be really good. We looked on the map and it was only about six blocks away. There wasn’t a scale on the map which made me slightly concerned but how big could the blocks be? The answer is massive. It took us about 2.5 hours to walk from the small friendship store to the larger one. It wasn’t all bad because we got to see a lot of Beijing that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise and we had time to spare. While we were walking between the stores we kept our eyes open for foreigners and we saw about 50 foreigners most of which were either Russian or European. It felt really weird because in Australia you can assume that Caucasians speak English but most of the Caucasians we met in Beijing didn’t speak English or only spoke broken English. The larger Friendship store is near the CBD and as we got closer to the CBD we encountered beggars and street hawkers selling socks, watches and pirate DVDs. I had expected most of this but the thing that really surprised me was that it was often within meters of the police who really didn’t seem to care most of the time.

We had planned to stay at home on Friday but an expat that I had previous contacted called me back to come and have look at the stuff that he had for sale. Some of his stuff was really nice but it wasn’t really our style so we only end up buying a clock. The trip was a bit of an adventure because our Taxi driver didn’t speak English and the address was written in Mandarin which we couldn’t read. This was also the first time we saw what traffic was like off the main roads. It’s scary. I don’t ever plan on driving over here. All of the road rules seem to be option. It’s normal to have cars run red lights, drive on the shoulder of the road, push in front of other cars that have right-of-way, have four lanes of cars on a three lane road, cars driving in the bike lane and Sheree’s pet hate back in Australia mering and turning without indicating. So with all this chaos how do people cross the road? Well there are two options. Dodge the cars which people often do on the smaller roads and power of numbers. Basically people stop at the side of the road as time goes on there are more and more people that slowly inch onto the road. After a while there are more people than cars and the cars stop or slow down and the mass of people cross. Once the people start thinning out again the cars push through and the people wait on the side of the road till there’s enough of them to cross again. Feels really safe if your in the middle but a bit scary if your at the front or the rear.

When we lived in Brisbane I never realized how clean the air was. The pollution in Beijing is really bad. The sky is gray and you can look directly at the son. When we arrived we just through it was a cloudy day but now we know better. Even now and then there is a windy day that blows away all the pollution but by the next morning it’s already starting to build up again. The air is so filthy that I have to clean a layer of grim off my glasses when I get back from the city. The same grim covers our floors at home which is why the need to be mopped every three days. If labor wasn’t so cheap Beijing would be a really dirty city. At the moment it looks really nice because there are thousands of people cleaning the city every day. When the pollution gets really bad you have to have the lights on during the day and you can’t see buildings more than 100 meters away. The thing that really scares me is that we are breathing this stuff in. I’m looking forward to visiting the country just to breath fresh air.

We went to the market on Saturday which was a lot of fun. We started off haggling really poorly but about halfway through work figured out a really good haggling technique. The basic idea was to split up and find something you liked. You could even tell the sales person that you liked it. Once you found the item you liked you leave and find your partner. Now the key is to pretend that the partner is the one who has the final say. The partners jobs is to hate the item you want to buy and try to convince the you that there something else you might like back where he/she was. This whole time the sales people will be trying to convince him/her to buy it for you. All they have to do is basically ignore them and maintain that they hate the time that you like. In the end you convince your partner to let you have it for some prearranged value. Not because he/she likes the item but because they are giving into your requests. You can ask the sales people if you can have the item for that price. If they don’t accept that price then let yourself be dragged away by your partner. The whole reason for this show is to establish a price, sideline the sales people and to put sales people in a situation that they don’t know how to deal with. They can’t haggle with you because they know you don’t have the final say and they can’t haggle with your partner because they don’t want the item at all. As long as you keep up the act after you leave you can repeat the show again and again.

Here are some of the things we ended up buying: For Sheree

• A Gucci handbag with wallet included for $15.
• A Stripy handbag for $3.
• 2 stuffed Eeyore (very fake) a large and a small for $10.

For Nat

• A Oakley backpack for $15.
• A pair of cotton casual shorts for $10.
• 2 T-shirts (a billabong and a ripcurl) for $13 each.
• Sonic headphones with bendy microphone.

When we got home we realized that we were low on groceries so we deiced to go to the larger supermarket about two blocks away. The supermarket was a lot bigger. It also had another Chinese surprise in it. Mini stores within stores. The electrical aisle wasn’t actually part of the supermarket. That single aisle was actually sublet to someone else who had two employees at either end of the aisle that took the items off you as you tried to leave the aisles and gave you three receipts. One give to the store checkout. The second to return stamped for your goods and the third to show on the way out. If it was only the electrical aisle then it wouldn’t be a big issue but there were a number of other aisles that were the same. It get really annoying if you have to go back to the checkout four or five times. We were talking about the double and triple handling all the way home but over here labor is cheap so they don’t really care and that’s the way they’ve always done it.

Over the last couple of days while we were in the city we went out of our way to checkout all the different fast food franchises that we recognized so we could compare them to Australia. Here is what we though.

• McDonalds is popular in China but since labor is cheap a lot of the workforce is between 30 and 50 instead of 15 to 25 which seemed really weird. The menu is similar to Australia but about %40 cheaper. A Big Mac is about $2, and a cheese burger are about 90c. Unlike Australia the McDonalds ice cream cones over here are relatively expensive. The cones are 2.6 Yuan (~40c) but Drumsticks and Vienna on a stick are 2 Yuan each (~30c) and Magnums are 3 Yuan (~50c). McDonalds also has 3 different types of pies – apple, taro and pineapple all of which are fairly good.
• KFC is almost the same as Australia but had a fairly small menu. It is also slightly cheaper than McDonalds and sells fish burgers.
• Subway had smaller slices of cheese and the meatballs were in soup instead of sauce. It was ok but it wasn’t anywhere as good as Australian subway.
• Pizzahut still has the salad bar over here but you pay per visit instead of all you can eat. They also had a lot of additional options on the menu which was cool. The Pizzas were also expensive compared to all the other fast food. About 80 Yuan (~$13).
• Dominos is similar to Pizza hut, expensive pizzas but cheap side dishes. You can also buy meals with a single slice of pizza for 20 Yuan (~$3.3).
• I was surprised to find Sizzler in Beijing but there was one over here. I haven’t been inside yet but it looked fairly different to the Sizzlers in Australia. From the menu it looks as though the drink refills and desserts don’t come with the all you can eat salad bar-but then again the salad bar is only 42 Yuan (~$7) .
• Chinese food is very cheap and the main form of fast food over here. All the street food I’ve seen so far is under 50c. I’ve seen small Dona kebabs, egg pancake things, lots of food on sticks and baked sweet potatoes.

That’s it for this update. I hope you’re all going well and aren’t missing us too much.