So, here is a picture of the Tian’anmen Square in Beijing, as I promised in the last article! The trip in the Trans-Siberian train went very well, I will write an article about it soon.
I visited Tian’anmen Square as soon as possible when I arrived in Beijing. I asked this police officer if I could take a picture of him. He accepted, but I could take only one picture. So, I tried to take him from the best angle possible in order to be able to see the portrait of Mao in the background. (This police officer looks very serious on the photo, but actually, right before I took this picture, he was laughing of a joke that his colleague had just said. But for the picture, he stood straight and he removed his smile).
In some restaurants in Beijing the menu is only written in Chinese. It is therefore difficult to order something when you don’t know how to read the sinograms. I recognized two sinograms, the one that means “beef” 肉, and the one that means “rice” 米. I pointed to the waiter these two sinograms on the menu hoping he would serve me a dish of beef and rice.
But this is what I got… I think it was some kind of rice in water… in a lot of water! The taste was very diluted and so the dish tasted more like water than anything else.
But then, they served me the main dish! It was a lot better than the entrée. Big noodles cooked with beef. The rice that I had ordered was only to be found in the entrée and the beef, in the main dish. Price of the meal: 元11, that is approximately $1,50.
On another table close to mine were sitting three friends who were eating together. They seemed to be very surprised to see a foreigner eating at this restaurant. They told me “hello” and one of them asked me if he could take a picture of me… and I accepted.
He was not the first one to take a picture of me. Actually he was the third one in the same day! This guy on the picture sent his son to be photographed by my side.
And this picture was taken in Tian’anmen Square during the day. The girl asked her boyfriend who spoke English to ask me to take a picture of her by my side. I accepted… but at one condition:
…that I could also take a picture of her myself. I put this condition to whoever wants to take a picture of me. I love portraits and I think that this is the best way to get models! The picture of this young lady is perfectly at the image of Beijing: beautiful, young, nice and welcoming. The treatment given to foreigners in Beijing is probably the best one you can find in the world. We are treated like VIPs. Strangers greet us in the street and they smile at us. If you need help, everybody is ready to give you an advice, but only in Chinese. I think that a foreigner who speaks Chinese can have a lot of fun in Beijing with the people.
Here is another foreigner who is being taken a picture of by a complete stranger. He is Uruguayan, I knew him in the Trans-Siberian train. Before I went to Tian’anmen Square, a German tourist warned me that a lot of people would take pictures of me. He had his picture taken three times, the same day in a very short period of time. But he is blond and very tall, whereas I have brown hair and I am short. So, I thought I would not look exotic enough for the Chinese… but it doesn’t seem so! All the foreigners experience it!
To conclude, here is a picture of another meal that I had in a restaurant. I think it was duck… the menu was written in Chinese only and I chose randomly. The meat is chopped in small pieces in order to be eaten with chopsticks. Note the Coca-Cola brand in Chinese on the bottle.
