Beijing

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080806/ap_on_sp_ol/oly_china_sanitized_beijing;_ylt=AsPAW79LA0li53Kd4G.8FIVvzwcF

"Sanitary" and "Beijing". Not too words I'd readily put together. And I can really dig where this writer is coming from.

I visited Beijing in 1997. My Dad was invited to speak at a conference, and he was able to get visas for my Mom and me. Pops was tied up most of the days we were there. So Mom and I explored the city. We did a few of the group tours to see big things like Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City (you get to skip a lot of lines that way, and the guides are really good sources of information). But we did a lot of Beijing on foot, exploring the markets, stores, gardens and zoo, and picking up the occasional cab (you haven't lived until you've been in Beijing traffic in a taxi - near death experiences can be very invigorating).

One thing you notice first is that Beijing is one dirty city. It reminded me of a cross between Washington DC and Nogales, Mexico. On the one hand, it's a government town. More conservative than Hong Kong. But on the other, there are people who live in squats down by the river, in shacks made of corrugated tin and cardboard. There are beggars on the street. Plus, we were there in the most polluted month of the year. Every day I'd come back to the hotel and spend (gross alert) about 10 minutes blowing black gook out of my nose.

So in and around the general dirt, you see things like wagons piled with meat being carted around town. In the open air. Nothing over the meat. I think I was less appalled by the flies than by the wagon sitting next to a diesel truck that was just belching black soot onto what would be somebody's dinner. And we also saw people cooking on the sidewalk. Literally on the sidewalk. Sidewalk/fire/pan/food. I am pained to admit, we didn't take advantage of any of the street food. I was only going to be in China a week and a half, and I didn't want to spend even a minute of it confined to the hotel with a case of the skitters. The only thing I can remember buying on the street to eat was some tiny candied apples on a stick. Pretty tasty. And considering that truck full of meat probably drove right up to one of the restaurants where we ate, I'm not sure that meals eaten indoors were any more sanitary. I probably should have just bit the bullet and had a tasty bowl of noodles. Skitters be damned.

If they're moving the street vendors, I have to wonder if they've moved those shacks that were down by the river too. It's been over 10 years, of course. But I'm not sure how fast things like that progress in China. I'm not much of a sports fan. But some of the Olympics coverage does tempt me, just to see how much has changed. But this article makes me wonder if any of the change you see next week will be there a month from now.