First Impressions of Beijing

I am an illegal alien sleeping on a bamboo mat. My new home is a room in Beijing university student hall and yesterday I was supposed to register with the local police. Since I am staying here secretly I decided not to do so until I leave tomorrow morning.

Beijing is very secure. Uniformed security guards are everywhere. In fact it is so secure that the subway station at the railway station was closed when I arrived. Thus me and my guide spent 2 hours in overcrowded buses to get to the university. As we arrived he looked at the Beijing Metro internet page where it read the closure was due to a security issue. That's it.

'Kung Fu Fighting' is the music of choice in the buses, it seems to be put on infinity repeat. Its a nice soundtrack to the driver's efforts of infiltrating Beijing traffic. The major weapon is pre-emptive honking, which is effective but not invincible. It did not help against another bus taking our rear view mirror with us while overtaking.

In the subway there are video screens mounted in the tunnels showing advertisement movies traveling at the exact same speed as the trains, so one can watch them from the inside.

After five hours of trying different banks and ATM's to get money with my credit card I can finally buy the high end portable recorder the German magazine wants me to take to Ningxia. The agent stays in a apartment high riser on the outskirts of Beijing, the well furnished room is full of sophisticated audio equipment. Directly next to the house, visible from the window in the agent's room, is a slum-like quarter for migrant workers. It smells of rotten garbage and human waste as we walk through, the houses have dirt floors and look like they might collapse at any time. I did not expect to find such a vivid example of the sharp divide between rich and poor one always reads about in articles. Especially not in the capital city and on my first day.

Beijing