My Trip to China

I have just returned from China, on a Cultural Exchange Trip through my T'ai Chi class.It is taking me quite some time to take in all that I did, saw, ate and visited whilst I was there.

First thing one notices is that China is HUGE. We flew into Beijing airport and we were all collected and taken to an hotel, where we stayed for 5 nights. Our hotel was spotless, our room had everything one could possible need, and once one mastered the art of eating with chop sticks, there was always enough food to feed an army at meal times.The weather was hot and rather humid, so we had a great deal of mist, dust particles and pollution about. Beijing is well spread out, has to be with 14 million people living there! One does not get the feeling of being closed in by skyscrapers, as there are not that many of them just now.

There is a continual buzz night and day as the roads which are massive expressways with traffic in one direction 6 lanes wide. There are still a large number of cyclists and everyone dodges everyone else with the help of their hooters on the inner roads, where one literally takes ones life in ones hands just trying to cross a road at the traffic lights, and the occasional traffic attendant making things even worse!!! You see no one really pays any attention to road signs, lights or anything else for that matter, but they just veave their way through the traffic even going over the central dividing line and into on coming traffic, before everyone has to swerve to let them in. Not to mention of course people crossing on foot and all the bikes going up the road the wrong way as well. One really does need eyes in the back of ones head to drive there. We were assured that there was a very hard indeed Driving Test needed to be passed to be let loose on the roads. Beats me how they have a population problem! The Chinese people seem very friendly and although we could not talk and be understood by language, sign language worked pretty well all the same. I had thought all signs would be in Chinese, but quite a number also had English as well ( I think!) I will come back with more thoughts soon.............