Experiences in China: Episode 2 ~ Peking is a village

23.8.2006
Today, my friend Tanja, Klaas (another friend) and I began to look around for shopping areas in the city. He had discovered an old street with many little shops, the Dazhalanjie.
Pretty shabby there (the toilet in on of the hostels I used there was the most disgusting
toilet I have ever used in my entire life), but everything was really cheap. First of all we bought loads of CDs (for around 2 Euro each) and then we were lead by the shop-owner into a weird alley; "we've got more stuff there". His assistant unlocked a metal-door, put some curtains aside and pointed on many many illegal burned DVDs. As she locked the door behind us we began to feel a little funny but the DVDs were too seductive^^ And so cheap! Afterwards we found a very different kind of shopping on the Wangfujinjie. Huge, sparkling malls and bookstores which were also huge and sold every kind of books and CDs you could imagine. Peking began to be fun.
And despite these huge buildings and large roads (where 5-7 cars could drive next to each other) Klara, Niki and Clemens managed to spot us in the middle of the road, on their bikes (on the bike through Peking - typically Klara)! Haha^^ The world is a village. They stayed in a different Youth-Hostel and had different plans for the day, so we made plans with them for the next day and went back to our hostel.
Going back with the bus we created our sentence of the day. A man with glasses, about 30 years old, permanently stared at Tanja in a way that at first it was really amusing and then it began to get really annoying.
In the evening we ate some Jiaozi (something like chinese Ravioli), with which I had also
begun the day. And then the bed began to cry for me...

Sentence of the day:
"D'you like what you see?!"
- No, we didn't really say that but that guy's face would have
been wonderful haha^^

Weather:
Way too hot...