beijing

you may describe beijing in; a tiny word, a small word and a bad word:
a huge motherfucker.

they have a lot of cars..approximately 2,8 million, by I believe it to be more.
they also have a lot of busses, but they have a subwaydiet. only 4 lines to be reckoned with.
if you compare it with spagetti and tokyo, you could say that tokyo has a full plate of spagetti, and beijing is just finished eating, so there`s only 4 spagetti left. you have to walk a long way to the nearest station. I was lucky, halfway there was a great dumpling restaurant, it became my regular pit-stop...mmhmmh.

anna, a girl from the hostel, and I went to the forbidden city.
we were not alone, but since we came early in the morning, we avoided the unbearable rush of tourists.
the day was sunny and incredibly warm, every spot of shadow were occupied. after spending a long time in the museum of clocks and watches, a dark and cold place, we decided to go to the tian`anmen square and see the mao picture. by the way, a little boy peed on the carpet inside the clock and watches museum. the kids in china have pants with an open crotch, that way they may go eau de toilet whenever they feel like it...nice.
tian`anmen square is the biggest square I have ever seen, and the buildings surrounding it, could probably contain the city of oslo. subway line 1, runs beneath it, and have stations on tian`anmen east and west..big square, big.

OMA and the marvellous CCTV.
I must admit that my attitude towards this building was a little like:
yeh yeh yeh...O-M-A..blah blah blah. but when I stepped out of the subway and saw it in real life, I must say that it almost gave me a new hair doo. it`s just impressive as hell. I don`t get how it`s possible. the engineers must be geniuses. I mean it`s so big and high and heavy! I have to go back to beijing when it`s finished, eat cake in the corner of the top floor, knowing it`s nothing but air beneath the structure.

the Olympic arena was also big.
I`m worried that they might not be done by the time the games starts. to me, professional construction worker as I am, it looked like they had a lot remaining both on the building and the park. but the workers seemed to take it easy, hanging around inside the fence smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. maybe they know what they`re doing.
shigoto ikozet boys! translation; work! lets go!

summer palace...huge area.
saw the place together with 30.000 others.
I`m not so good coping with tourist etiquette.
ended up reading lonely planet on a rock by the shore of the lake, info: they handed out 150.000 condoms in the olympic village in salt lake city, it wasn`t enough. the olympics lasted for 2 weeks.
then I start to wonder how they manage to show up at the games at all? how many people live in the village?
china have to import all the condoms, because a chinese normal is smaller than a regular normal. why they don`t just hand out large I don`t know..lonely planet couldn`t enlighten me on that. didn`t actually see the palace at all...ops. it looked good from a distance.

tried to see two buildings by LOT-EK.
but the only adress I had was sanlitun north, and sanlitun south.
surprise, sanlitun is a rather big area.
didn`t find them.

the streets of beijing is not clean.
so when you wander around you frequently look down.
many times during my stay, I have thought; hmm, what is that?
and then; well, I rather not know.

the reason why all the photos are a little greyish, is because of the pollution.
I think