There are similar piles of rubbish left rotting in the street as I remember from Madras 15 years ago, but on a smaller scale, and without the resident cows. The driving here is as absurd as any I have seen, except that the speed is more moderate.
I only realised the other day reading an old guidebook to China, what it was that was missing from what we had seen so far, and that was that in my mind, I was still expecting to see everyone in regulation blue Mao suits, and of course, none is to be seen. The clothes here are as homogenised as anywhere else. Occasionally an old man or woman wanders into view looking like they have taken the wrong turn off the set of a film, but in general, the dress seems unremarkable.
So many things here are on the continuum between bemusing and bewildering, often caused, I am sure, by our incorrect preconceptions. How can it be that in a police state (as I thought) we spend all our time riding around in illegal taxis? And why are there so few police?
Here in the migrant 'village' it is pretty much a developing country with the accompanying bewildering array of levels of affluence: migrant workers who make their living hawking fruit from the back of a tricycle, whose children defecate on the streets to have the product scooped up by their parents and plopped into the open sewer, all within feet of pavement restaurants crowded with patrons either oblivious to, or unconcerned about the frankly startling absence of hygiene standards openly demonstrated by the establishment. Meanwhile the occasional Volvo XC90 or Porsche Cayenne picks its way past the thrombosis of bikes, trikes, rickshaws and log-jam of pedestrians and illegal taxis, and above them, the better-off migrants live in apartments with air conditioning. The Migrant centre where we are based has two rooms with AC - a real blessing in this heat, and Beijing has been letting us off lightly - but the shared toilet facilities literally take the breath away from twenty paces. Today, as for several during our stay, there was no water - it happens, apparently. No water to flush the misdirected ordure away, nor to wash hands. Ye gods this is the nation with the second biggest economy on the planet, which holds more foreign currency reserves than the Eurozone, Japan and Russia (2,3,4 in the list) put together, that has 2.4 trillion USD in its reserves, and its children are forced to behave like Yahoos when nature calls. Having exhausted my supply of worthy synonyms for defecate, I looked it up in my Mac's thesaurus: as an example of usage it gives nobody wants to see dogs defecating on the beach. Well exactly, and nobody wants to see the children of the second wealthiest nation defecating, pooping, using the restroom, spending tuppence, doing a number two or any other euphemism, in the street, all so that we can buy our consumer goods a couple of quid cheaper. And I know, it has been thus, and will be thus, and I'm not the first to notice, and this is no new insight. It's just that knowing a toilet, used by forty kids for 2 days with no way of flushing it into the already malfunctioning apology of a sewer, is going to stink is not the same as actually smelling that toilet, of tasting the air as it competes with the gag reflex at the back of your throat. You have to be there.
Oh well, enough of that.
Anyway, today has been a good day, tinged with sadness. This is the end of our full week here in Beijing, and I realised today that we see the children on Monday for a normal day, treat them to a trip to the museum on Tuesday, and then we will go our separate ways. I know this is going to cause much sadness, and Ali might cry…
Tomorrow a rest day with some sightseeing.
Here are the latest daguerreotypes:
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