The Happy Abandon: Beijing

China and U.S. might not have much in common - but one similarity that we picked-up on as soon as we got to Beijing is how massive everything. Like in the U.S., it feels like there is a mindset in China that bigger is better. On the first day we arrived we decided to walk the few blocks to Tiananmen square, only to find out that each city block is about 1 mile long! We quickly opted to take the subway most places after that. Tiananmen square, the buildings around the square, and the Forbidden City grounds were so huge it seems that they weren't even built to human scale.

Here a few other random China observations:

While the English translation on street signs were not nearly as hilarious as in Japan and Korea, the English translations in restaurant menus were pretty absurd. Many times the name of the dish did not correspond with the dish in the picture whatsoever. Oddly enough, we found a bunch of restaurants that tend to use the term "explosion," in a way that makes no sense, to describe many of the dishes (like, "onion explodes the table" to describe chicken with onions, hot peppers and rice).
Chinese people are incredibly loud phone talkers! At first, we thought that we just happened to keep walking by people having heated arguments over the phone, but eventually we realized that they were just having normal conversations.
Watch out for stepping on big loogies - you may not even be safe indoors!
Instead of using diapers, babies just have big slits down the mid-section of their pants. When it's time to go, the parent just holds the baby up in the air and let's them do their business, sometimes right on the street.
Speaking of babies, and on a much more serious note, where are the little baby girls? In three+ weeks in China, I think we saw just one or two girl babies the whole time. According to this article in The Economist, there is sad trend happening in the world, and not just in China, that should be getting way more attention than it has been.

In general, China is a complex and fascinating place, with such rich history and so much recent change. We feel like we barely scratched the surface.

Tiananmen Square

The Forbidden City. This photo sums it up: insanely massive, lots of concrete, numerous red buildings that all look relatively similar to one another.