Beijing – first impressions – 2

First impression of Beijing were quite mixed. After passing passport control I grabbed a cab to go to the hotel. From the airport to the city goes quite nice motorway. It looked like it was a foggy morning, but it turned out to be just pollution. On the motorway all signs were dubbed in English. Taxi driver asked 400yuans for a trip to hotel. Interestingly enough, the same trip back was just 100yuan.

When motorway entered a city traffic became chaotic. Just later, walking in the city I realised how chaotic it is. Traffic lights, lanes, priorities do exist in theory, but in practice it is not safe to cross a street, even on the green light.

Guards, police and army are everywhere. I’ve never seen so many people in the uniform on the streets of a city before.

You can often see groupls of people in similar clothes doing exercises in the parks or outside the factory buildings.