China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

Living next to a school sports field in China gives you a glimpse of what school sports or physical education must be like. There is specific music which is used for the general stretching while having all the students (it seems of many classes at the same time) lined up nicely in rows. The teacher is on stage with a microphone counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 3, 2, 3, 4 … over and over again while the students have to put their arms up and to the side and to the other side and over at the exact same time. No wonder that China was able to have such a perfectly coordinated Olympic Opening Ceremony.

And today it seemed like it was full moon even though that was already yesterday. I had 2 people crash their bikes into mine. First a guy who suddenly decided to turn to the side walk while I was passing by him on the right side. Well, I should not have ridden on the right side, but there was a taxi on the left. We both fell off our bikes but nothing happened. Then later in busy rush hour traffic I am overtaking a lady on the left side (this time that is the proper way to do it) when she without looking suddenly decides to turn left. And that having a young maybe 3 year old child sitting on the back of her bike without any kind of strap nor helmet. Well good that her child did not fall on the ground. But that was really crazy.

The autumn continues to be great. Temperatures are going down, but it is still sunny and clear blue skies. Like today. Just perfect autumn weather! Here is again the forecast as from the BBC weather website:

How fun it is to look for apartments. Here two incidents:

We come to the meeting point with the housing agent on our old style Beijing bikes. When the landlord shows up the first thing she says to the agent is: „They have no money. Look what kind of bikes they are riding.“. Then despite the fact that we talk to both of them in Chinese the landlord tells the agent that she can go down to 4000.-RMB. The agent tells us then that the rent of the apartment can be 5000.-RMB. The landlord then tells the agent how horrible the former people living in the apartment were as they invited friends over and were really noisy (wew). They had music on (tse tse). The neighbors had to call the police (must have been really bad people). Despite the fact that the landlord then gave me a little small piece of paper with her name and telephone number on it when the agent was not looking we decided that we will not take this apartment.

Today we first met a housing agent A. She then met housing agent B (who we first thought was her partner, but we later realizes they are from different companies). Together we looked at a few apartments. One of them we just happened to pass by and they had their door open so agent A asked them if they are looking for someone to rent it. Agent A then took us to have a look at it as apartment 5. For apartment number 6 we were told to wait for someone to come, but we already had an appointment with another agent C so we said we need to go. Agent C did not want us to meet at the building complex (same one) but at their office. So we cycled there, waited for the agent, they finally came 2 people and one old bike. We then cycled at very low speed with this agent C back to the building complex. There agent C brought us to an apartment that we had already seen, but said we need to wait for the key. And do you know who brought the key? Agent B. We started to laugh really loud. But agent B said that now the guy for the last apartment arrived. And you can guess also he was not the landlord but just again another agent. So the two housing agent C guys and the agent B and this new agent D went together with us to have a look at that apartment. But also this apartment we will not rent even though it was not too bad – we will not pay three levels of agents.

Today I went to the Beijing Exhibition Center for a German friend who owns a pet shop. I have never been to this Exhibition Center. It is actually quite nice:

This China International Pet Show (CIPS) was all about accessories for pets – mainly dogs, cats and fish. I was amazed how much pet clothes (but not for fish) there were:

And a lot of other stands reminded me of juggling stands as there were so many balls and other small objects.

On the open space in front of the Exhibition Center some elderly Beijingers were doing a Beijing Opera Play. They had wild costumes, especially for the butterfly and the crane.

November starts and the same beautiful forecast: We still have sunny weather and clear blue skies in Beijing. I love fall weather here.

Yeah! Our building complex has already started the central heating. The general rule in Beijing is that heating starts November 15th. But we are lucky!