Now drink some. Like most visitors to China we preferred to stick to bottled water. This led to a rather funny incident at one of the security checks. My bottle was still sealed so they allowed me through. However the others were told very sternly on extracting their water bottles from their bag to "now drink". Most thought they had to drink the whole thing. Another was told to "drink a little" but it sounded like "drink a litre". I guess the idea was you had to prove your bottle did not contain anything untoward if you drank from it. Like most of the security, it was rather arbitary. It is easy to buy bottle caps that seal - the street vendors do it all the time selling "bottled water". I am not sure what I would do with 500ml of dangerous fluid at the race venue, but if I wanted to get some in it would not have been hard. They never checked the fluid in the bike drink bottles. And I could have just walked through the forest to get to the venue as well.
The driving in China is very different to what I am used to. Mostly they drive on the right side of the road, and mostly they pass on the left. But not always. The most noticable thing is the use of the hooter. Mostly its to say "I'm coming through", or "I am here", which is a beep-beep kind of toot. If you mean business however you simply lean on the horn for a good ten seconds. I'm used to drivers letting each other into the lane by slowing down and making a gap. Not in China. You move to the other side of your lane but hold, or even increase your speed. Once you are both in the same lane, slightly overlapping the adjoining lanes or edge of the road, you then sort it out. There were times I thought I was inside a video game.
Pedestrian crossings are often the only place you can cross as barriers prevent you walking on the road elsewhere. However, just because you have the green man showing, you certainly don't expect right of way. And if there are no lights, there may as well not be any crossing stripes there. The vehicles turning right (equivalent of a left hand turn in New Zealand) do so against a red light. Not only do you have to watch for cars, but for cycles, motorbikes and motorised cycles coming and going in all directions. The Chinese are very nonchalant and relaxed about the intersections. They will head through one on nothing more than a flimsy bicycle, with cars crossing in all directions, and be happily chatting away on a cell phone, possible smoking a cigarette as well.
Vomit. Before my trip was a little concerned about coping with the Asian food, particularly in China. My only previous experience of genuine Chinese food was not a happy one, when a group of Chinese acquaintances took me to Yum Cha in Palmerston North. I gagged quite a few times at the table and was very nearly sick in front of my kind hosts. In China I only threw up once. And that was after eating at Subway. Go figure. My Subway Melt had huge chunks of raw bacon fat in it. And while that goes down OK, once it hits my stomach, it is returned with some momentum. Ironic, don't you think?
The smog in Beijing and surrounds is most impressive. In a bad way, of course. I never actually saw the sun, or any blue sky in the 4 days I was in the city. Sometimes I could see where the sun was, because that patch of smog was a little brighter than the rest. The average visibility was less than 5km, sometimes down to about 2km. After the first day, I felt like I had been smoking. It's sad to think that the residents have to breath that stuff every day of their lives.
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