China - Part 1 - Beijing shopping n' such

After going thru piles n' piles of photos from our retrieval of the boy, I decided that it might be interesting to do a series of posts focused on various things/people/places or whatever else. I wanted to do this because when we first started the blog, I had no idea how to put pictures in and certainly didn't know how to move them around if I did manage to get some inserted.  We had some good posts that would have been a little more interesting if there were photos to support the stories.

I want to do it in at least a somewhat chronological order and so in doing such, we start with a not so interesting subject; shopping in Beijing.

This photo is taken out of our hotel room window in Beijing. Notice the pointy roof near the upper middle of this photo.  That is the street where the rest of the photos in this post are taken.  It's a great big, wide street that is closed off too traffic all day, every day. It's a walking mall of various kinds of shops.  Also of note from this photo, although you can't really tell now that it's compressed for the fancy, hi-tech, world wide interweb, is that there are mountains in the far background (Great Wall) and also, the Forbidden City was visable on Sundays only. I say Sunday's only because that is when the smog would settle enough to allow those things to be seen.

This is shot #1 on the "walking mall" street.  I was amazed at this point (our first 8 hours in China) on how the shops are scrunched (yes, that's a word) together and it seemed that no matter what side street you looked down, they were packed in just as tight.  We didn't go into too many shops but we did go into a bookstore and the arts n' crafts emporium. The bookstore said they had cd's but we didn't see any and I suspected they were probably books on disc anyway.  The emporium was multi levels of stuff that I couldn't have cared less about. Lesley was happy as the proverbial clam but I was just appalled by the workers attaching themselves to us and following us around. I like to shop in peace and as we came to realize in China, that is simply not an option. 
I was very thankful that Robby had to eventually use the pot so we got to leave the store and hit up the local KFC for a potty. A squatty-potty no less.

This is in a shopping... oh, let's call it an alley.  It was just behind the shops in the walking mall so there are TON'S of independent vendors that lurked behind those shops and had a lot of visitors perusing there "goods" (a.k.a. junk/trinkets/tourist-y kinds of things...).



This is also in the "alley".  This is a bit of a representation of what it really looks like.  It was a little bit frightening for three Americans out of the country for the first time to be in something like this. This is prior to us meeting any of our guides and having them explain to us that the Chinese are a fairly helpful people and the crime rates are very low there. This alley-way is filled with the type of "goods" that we would see over and over again at every little tourist store from Beijing to Changchun to Guongzhou. No thank you, we already have enough of that kind of crap at home.

The next several photos are of the "walking mall" at night, which was our final night in Beijing while we were out looking for a specific restaurant that Lesley wanted to eat at to get some Peking Duck. We finally found the silly thing after what felt like about 3 miles of walking (with a whiny, tired Robby!).  They had no tables open, except for some seating at the bar. Then we found out that it would take nearly an hour to cook the aforementioned duck.  We were so tired that we still ate there, basically out of defeat. Poor Rob even fell asleep on the bar stool while we were waiting for our food. One of the waiters (owner maybe?) was very concerned for him but we assured him that he was indeed fine, despite how he must have looked!  Lesley had crispy duck sandwiches that were awesome but it wasn't Peking Duck. 
Back to the photo... Notice the golden arches at the top-middle of the photo.  The most common American restaurants in Beijing (and probably China overall) are KFC and McDonalds. The red sign with Chinese writing in the bottom left quadrant of the photo is the McD's, as is the second floor too.

Yet another shot, of what I'm not so sure.  I think I was just trying to take photos to demostrate how long of a shopping area the "walking mall" is.  At some point in our walking after we were done eating, I went out to the middle of the street to try and take a picture of Momma and Robby, and I encountered a "lady of the night".  I had no idea what she was saying to me, but her intentions were clear.

Notice the building on the left. It's not uncommon that the entire side of a building will be a light-up billboard for advertising shoes, make-up, jewelry or some other insignificant items.  When you're walking, there are so many billboards and banners and lights and posters and flashy things and whatever else that you can't focus on any one thing.



Yet another shot of stores and light up billboards and people and consumerism that is emulating our American behaviors.  I probably took this shot because of the clocktower but who's to say at this point. 

Yet another shot for which I have no comment...

And finally, one last shot. 


Hopefully I've been able to convey some of what we were feeling while walking down this street.  That is to say, it was pretty interesting at first but after you saw one block of it, it all started to look the same and wasn't nearly as fascinating as it had initially seemed. 

It's almost identical to shopping in America!