шанхай мне очень понравился
соседняя тема с фото оттуда
http://forum.russianamerica.com/f/sh...ad.php?t=71000
старый город что-то с чем-то...
будийский храм....
красивый город
http://www.businessinsider.com/i-ble...ent=emailshare
(с фото)
I Accidentally Blew $400 On Lunch In Beijing And It May Have Been A Scam
Last week I accidentally spent $400 on lunch.
This happened in Beijing — a city where a cab all the way across town costs $5 and a full pack of Tylenol costs roughly $0.80.
For my money, I am now in the possession of two things. A wooden box full of tea cups that have drawings of Confucius on them. And this story.
The original plan for my Tuesday was for a guided tour of some of the city's most famous sights: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. I was to get up at 6 a.m. and meet a tour guide in the lobby of my hotel, the Kerry Hotel.
Having gone on a similarly guided tour of the Great Wall on Sunday, I knew what I was in for: a consumer-packaged-goods version of China that would cost about $100, and have me back at the hotel by 5 p.m.
That plan went out the window Monday night at about 1:30 a.m.
It would make me sound tough, adventurous and very Bourdain-y to say I did so because I wanted to see the "real" China.
But really, I canceled the tour because on Monday night I was exhausted. I'd just spent a day flying to and from a city near Shanghai called Hangzhou. My flight back to Beijing had been delayed, and I didn't want to get up early the next morning.
I woke up Tuesday morning feeling conflicted. I hadn't filed a story in a week, so I felt behind on work. But I also felt guilty about canceling my tour. I felt like I was missing out on China.
So I went to the hotel restaurant, ate some of the strange tiny fruit they serve, and then worked on slideshows until noon. It was a cozy few hours. A non-HD version of Monday Night Football was on Chinese cable. I used my iPhone to Facetime with my wife. I was in my comfort zone.
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Nicholas Carlson
My hotel room at the Kerry
At about noon, my fear of missing out on China finally overwhelmed my obligation to be posting.
I went to the lobby, walked over to the concierge desk and asked how hard it would be for me to take a taxi to the Forbidden City by myself and to later find a taxi to bring me back.
The concierge said it would be very easy. Then, before I even had a chance to say, OK, I'd like to do that, he walked quickly out from behind his concierge desk, out the hotel's front door, and flagged down a cab. I followed him outside. He opened the cab door for me. Then he leaned in and gave the cab driver what seemed to be detailed, lengthy instructions. Then he handed me a piece of paper with the hotel's name on it and a little map showing its location on the flip side. He said I could give the card to any taxi driver and the driver would know how to take me home.
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Nicholas Carlson/Business Insider
My cab to Tiananmen Square
We pulled away from the hotel. I felt a little rushed. I was also a little worried. If it was going to be so easy getting back, why did I need a map to do it? But I was also exhilarated. Finally, I was headed off the beaten path. It was time to see China.
Then I noticed something annoying. The cab, a newish Hyundai, had over-the-shoulder seat belts. The straps hung where you would normally find them. But there was nothing to click the seatbelt into by my thigh. This was worrying.
I believe that Chinese drivers are just as "good" at driving as American drivers — that statistically, the place is no more dangerous on the roads.
But it doesn't feel like it. People in China do not line up for things like ticket counters or airport gates. They rush in and fill all available gaps, sometimes gently shoving to create new ones. They bring the same mentality to the roads. They will turn two-lane roads into three lane roads by driving between two slower cars. They will turn right at an intersection without slowing down or even looking left at on-coming traffic.
In the back seat of my taxi, I stuffed both hands into the gap between the back rest and the seat, frantically looking for a buckle. I didn't find one.
(An American I later met in China tells me cab safety used to be much worse in Beijing only a few years ago. He said that when he visited China then, he'd gotten into a cab where the back right door wouldn't stay closed. His driver told him to hold it shut. "Don't worry," the driver said, "I won't be making many left turns.")
We rode through the wide, car-clogged streets of Beijing. We drove past endless new buildings — the kind of generic structures that belong as much in Beijing as uptown Charlotte, office parks of US-101 south of San Francisco, and anywhere in the vast sprawl of Dallas. Only the characters on the signs said this was China. The cars around us were almost all new: many Volkswagens, some BMWs, lots of Hondas. They were sedans and SUVs. There were no trucks and no beaters at all.
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Nicholas Carlson
Beijing from the window of my cab
After a 20-minute drive we arrived at Tiananmen Square.
My driver gestured that to get to the Forbidden City, I would have to get out and here, enter the square, and then take an underground passage.
He spoke to me very loudly and slowly — just the way I remember my dad talking to the French during our European vacation when I was a kid.
I got out of the cab. I went through a metal detector and a pat-down from a woman in a uniform.
I stepped onto the Square.
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Nicholas Carlson/Business Insider
Tiananmen Square
I pulled out my iPhone and opened an app I'd bought for a self-guided walking tour.
It was one of those "augmented reality" apps where you point the camera at something in front of you, and on the screen there's text telling you what you're looking at.
I was pointing the camera at a large building, which the app told me was the Beijing Opera, when someone behind me said, "Hello!"
I turned around to see who was speaking English. Before me, there was a short Chinese man in a hoodie and a leather jacket. He was waving at me.
The small man introduced himself to me. I'm not going to share his name for reasons that will become obvious later.
I told him, "I'm Nicholas."
He looked surprised.
He said, "There is a very famous Nicholas, no?"
I laughed. I figured he meant Saint Nicholas. It turns out that Christmas is a big gift-giving holiday in China, and even though it was only the middle of November there were already Christmas decorations all over Beijing.
But he didn't mean Santa Claus.
He wanted me to help him remember the famous Nicholas. He said, in that way you do when something is on the tip of your tongue, "An actor."
I guessed: "Nicholas Cage?"
He said, "Yes!"
Then, after a pause, he said, "and you are not him?"
He asked this as though he was pretty sure I was not Nicholas Cage, but he wasn't totally sure, and he didn't want to offend me in case I was.
I said no, I am not Nicholas Cage.
He asked me how I liked China and Beijing. I said it liked it very much so far, especially the food. He asked me if I knew what building I had been looking at.
Because of the augmented reality app, I responded confidentially that I did — it was was the Beijing Opera house.
Peking Duck Lunch12
Nicholas Carlson/Business Insider
The app said this was the Beijing Opera house. It's not
He laughed at me. He said, no, it was not. It was Mao's mausoleum. He asked me if I knew who Mao was. I said I did.
Then my new friend began pointing out the other buildings around the Square and told me about them. There's a parliament building, a museum, and a monument to the people.
He asked me, "Shall we walk while we talk?"
I said OK. I was pretty happy to have found someone to show me around. More than to see old buildings, this is why I had flown around the world.
We walked around the monument, which is a large rectangle in the middle of the Square.
My new friend told me about how ancient the Square was, except for the paving stones beneath our feet.
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Nicholas Carlson/Business Insider
The paving stones of Tiananmen Square
He said those were replaced after "many thousands" of students were massacred in the square in 1989. He said we should walk to the spot where that one student stood in front of a tank column in that famous old photo.
I found myself being guarded in my response to him bringing up anything political. Because I'm a journalist, it had been hard to get a visa to get into China. Also, I'd applied for a tourist visa, not a working visa. A paranoid thought crossed my mind that my new friend might actually be some kind of undercover handler charged with keeping tabs on me. I dismissed the idea as silly, but decided to stay cautious.
As we walked on, my new friend began to ask me some pretty personal questions: Was I married? Was I happy about being married? Why didn't I have kids yet?
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