Travelogue China - Part II

5 days in the capital of the world’s most populated country are grossly inadequate. When they get dispensed in plush hotel rooms, AC taxis, client premises and famous dining places the real China has been conveniently bypassed. Such should be the qualified introduction for my travel experiences in Beijing. In others words, what follows is the just the tip of the iceberg from my bird’s eye with dark shades to protect from the glare.

Weather – Beijing is pretty up north latitude and is swathed with harsh winters. Apartments have central heaters which are switched on for 6 months. Thankfully, it was prefect weather when I went. However most notable was the air pollution in Beijing. The worst I have ever seen in my life. The smog is so thick that visibility is restricted to about 50-100 meters only. It really makes it very gloomy. In fact, for Beijing 2008 Olympics the government had enforced several measures over 2-3 years to reduce the pollution levels in the city.

Transportation –This is one area where I got more than what was expected. Let me start first with the roads. The city is basically a horizontal city and hence it’s huge. 10kms is nearby for Beijing. There are 6 ring roads, all concentric and fast expressways with no signals at all. In the centre is the famous Tiananmen Square. This ringed design makes every area very easily accessible. I wondered how they managed to build these ring roads so systematically; given the fact Beijing should be a very ancient city.
Talking of traffic, it’s pretty smooth. And regulation is a significant facilitator for this. Odd and even numbered cars are allowed to come out on roads on alternate days. Only on Saturday & Saturday it’s free for all. One important thing worth mentioning is that Beijing has no market for small cars. The superfast ring road design has rendered it a market for the big, swanky, fast cars. However, my guess is the Tier 2 and 3 cities must be where the small cars may ensconce.
I could not expose myself to the other forms of transportation viz bus, train, underground rail so have no observations in that area. Taxis and cabs are pretty good. One thing I did not understand was the no. of receipts the cabbies handed. Since they do not speak English, it was a challenge even figuring what had been the fare! First they print out the total fare as per the meter, then they eject a small square shaped paper with government stamp on it and once we received even a third addendum to these bills.
Then there was the Beijing International Airport. As expected, huge and awesome. But not quite of the same scale like Hong Kong. One new stuff here was a push button for entering feedback for the immigration staff. So when they finished their stamping, they would enable the device and you could choose one of the 4 buttons ranging from a wide smiley to a morose face.

People & Living – I asked my Chinese colleague one question. Sometimes, names are same for men or women for example Li. How do you distinguish wether it’s a man or a woman? The key to this lies in a subtle difference in the way the names are written in the Chinese script. Also, many Chinese have English names, atleast the first name. This is more a personal choice rather than something obligatory. The custom which began in Hong Kong has spread to the mainland and is one of the tangible signs of globalization on Chinese ethos. The Chinese have a lot of names and words beginning with x, y and z. I was also interested in knowing the education system. The best engineering college is Tsinghua University in Beijing which conducts national examination for entrance. There are reservations by province presumably accordingly to population of that province. Doesn’t that make more sense than reservations on caste in India? Point to ponder. Well it’s a no brainer actually. We Indians have inherited something catastrophic since our civilization began flourishing on the banks of the Indus. That would be religion. There is no official religion in China. Hans which form 90% of the population do not have a religion. So shall it be, religion will continue to be the opium of Indian masses.

Script – The one thing that fascinated me most was the Chinese script. Native English or even Hindi speakers will find reading Mandarin something similar to those rebus games we used to play in college. It’s really like unraveling a puzzle which has a coded message. Basically, the Chinese do not have an alphabet set. They use pictures or symbols to depict objects, then combine these symbols, or modify them to make new meanings. That is something similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics but that was ancient! Hence, The Chinese writing system is the oldest surviving writing system in the world. There are about 45,000 symbols out which mastery over 3k-4k is enough to know Mandarin thoroughly. The Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese also follow the same script. Although Mandarin and Cantonese use the same script they are completely different, to take an example from back home – Gujarati and Bengali. Mandarin is spoken in Mainland China, while South China (Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau) is referred to as Canton. I suspect learning Mandarin would be easier for a native English speaker than learning French, because one does not have to adjust to spellings, pronunciation that what his eyes see.

Food - :-). The prime urge for me when I travel is to get exposed to new things and also dispel my misconceptions about the place I am travelling to. On this trip, one of the areas where a great misconception got disabused was food. I went to Beijing expecting terrible food. But I was proved wrong. If you are a non rigid non vegetarian, you would love Chinese cuisine. The taste is quite close to our Indian masalas. They eat a lot more garlic though. So let me list the animals which I ate, in decreasing order of bizarreness – Sea Cucumber, Peking duck, Pork, and Chicken. On one evening, a Director level guy took us out for dinner to Da Dong Roast Duck restaurant, one of the most popular eating places in Beijing. If waiting time has a direct correlation to popularity, then please be advised that we waited 1 hour for a table! The Chinese custom of eating I have explained in my previous post, only thing to add is that they taste rather than eat. What I mean by that is, they don’t really eat one or two items in a meal fulsomely, rather they eat 10-15 items in small quantities. Having said that, its common sense that such may not be the case in everyday meals.

Corporate Culture – My observations on corporate culture is strictly limited to one company which I was consulting to. But there are some generalizations which can be extrapolated, I believe. The culture appears to be just an extension of their political ideology. It must be noted that below the ministers there is some sort of industry forum which is comprised of about 300 odd CEOs. This body is the de facto engine for policy formulation, giving ground level pulses to the political heads. Talking specifically of my own client, the CEO was a very weird man. First, he did not look like one from any angle. He had a very queer way of talking by looking straight ahead and not turning his head to point towards the person with whom he was conversing. But he was a sharp guy and pretty successful in his short stint at the helm too, so nothing to take away from him really. Also when we were at the lunch table, I observed he served food for my company leaders seated next to him. So he is not that crude after all. Just his style. Another point on culture, when he spoke nobody else spoke.

To sum up, I have just begun the preface to what should pullulate into a deep understanding of a country which is going to dominate the globe in not so long future. Hope to pack my bags soon!