China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

There are many cultural differences between Chinese and Germans. Today I had to laugh when I went for the toilets at the Western furniture store IKEA. There was a queue in the lady’s washroom. But when a looked ahead I saw all the toilet doors on the right side and half of them on the left side were all open. Guess what? They did not use them because they were toilets with toilet bowls with seats. The 2 toilets they were waiting for were the squatting toilets. The toilet seat I wanted to use had footprints of dirty shoes on it. Somebody must have squatted on the seat. And that is not unusual in China. Normal toilets in China are the squatting ones having just a hole in the ground. Often in modern places they put up signs saying „no squatting on toilet seat“.

Another interesting thing was that when you walk through the aisles of the IKEA furniture pickup floor with some long packages on your cart that people would come up to you telling you that that will not fit into a taxi. For the very long packages I believe that is true. So these people were offering to drive us home and carry our stuff and they could even help build up some of the furniture. IKEA has a delivery service, but you have to pay for that. These people were all very friendly, not pushy or annoying, just offering their services in a nice way. So for us it was much more convenient (and cheaper) to discuss a good price with one of these drivers. These things just make life easy in China. You do not have to think about „oh if this does not fit into the taxi what do we do?“ as there will be somebody coming to you presenting a solution before you can think about it. The Chinese are very good at finding niche markets and doing good business.

Today is Shaopeng’s 30th birthday. A friend of Shaopeng’s girlfriend had a housewarming party. So Shaopeng’s girlfriend invited all of Shaopeng’s friends to come to the housewarming and turn it into a surprise birthday party for Shaopeng. So we all went there.Here are two pictures a friend of mine took. Maybe she was already quite drunk…

For those of you who do not live in Beijing: An address in Beijing usually just consists of „residential complex name or hutong name“, „building number“ and „apartment number“. So for this house warming it was said that it is the „building 3 of the new part“ of the residential complex. Me and some friends arrived coincidentally at the same time at the same place just to find out that we were not in the newest part of the complex. By now (after Olympics) there was a complete new residential complex across the big airport express with the same name. You ask yourself why they could not have found a nice slightly different name. Oh well.

The past few days it had been bitter cold in Beijing especially with the arctic winds. Wind is great in Beijing as it blows away any clouds or smog and just gives us cristal clear blue skies. But it makes it much colder. After riding home on my bike after the surprise birthday party I did want to see the current temperature: It is only -12 degrees Celcius. But I am sure with the wind chill factor it is around -20 degrees Celcius. At least it felt like that.

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.