My sister’s backpacking all over southeast Asia this summer and I meet her at the Beijing airport a couple days ago. We’re gonna hit Tiananmen Square and the cheap parts of the Forbidden City before heading to Tianjin. The problem is she’s got two of her boyfriend’s souvenirs (thanks, Josh!) in her backpack: a lighter that looks like a handgun and brass knuckles. This means that we’re going to — unavoidably — test multiple security scanner checkpoints between the airport and home: the Beijing airport express train, the Beijing subway, Tiananmen Square and the Beijing South Train Station.

The Beijing Airport Express Train
We walk out of Terminal 3 toward the platform for the Airport Express, which connects to the Beijing subway. A friendly young woman who looks like a recent college grad motions for us to put our backpacks through the scanner. Turns out that gun looks fantastic on the scanner screens.

“You have a gun in your bag,” she says, turning the screen toward me.

“It’s just a lighter.”

“OK,” she motions us on. No inspection, and nothing about the brass knuckles. Those express train passengers are lucky we didn’t decide to go postal on them.

Beijing Subway: Dōngzhímén (东直门)
They make us scan our bags to enter the subway. No one says anything. We pick up our packs and move on, hoping that the stifling rush hour subway crowds don’t trigger our claustrophobia in a bad way.

Tiananmen Square
We exit the subway and head down the underpass to enter Tiananmen Square. Finally some security that cares! :) They immediately spot the gun and the brass knuckles, don’t feel like taking my word for it that it’s just a lighter, make us take them both out for examination, and temporarily confiscate the brass knuckles. No Canadians will be hauling off on anyone in Tiananmen Square today, at least not these Canadians.

We leave the Square to find lunch and re-enter at a different checkpoint, the gun is still in my sister’s backpack. They catch it again and make us take it out for inspection before letting us repack and continue on.

Beijing Subway: Tiānānmén Dōng (天安门东)
We return to the original checkpoint to pick up the confiscated brass knuckles on our way out of the Square. Then we enter the Tiananmen East subway station. Scanned again, ignored again, and we’re on our merry way.

Beijing South Train Station
Honestly can’t remember if we had to scan our bags entering Beijing South Station from the subway or not. We didn’t get searched, in either case.

We have to do it again when I take her from Tianjin to the Beijing airport, which means going through the high speed train, Beijing subway, airport security checkpoints. After that we’ll wait and see what Canada customs does…

[Update: Aug. 12]
On the way to the Beijing airport from Tianjin we’d made the gun and brass knuckles easily accessible, thinking we’d need to take them out for inspection.

Tianjin Train Station
Scanned again. Ignored yet again. Had to fight through some overly-anxious fellow travelers who were nervous about leaving their bags on the conveyor belt a split second longer than they had to.

Beijing South Train Station subway entrance
It looked like they were staring at the screen, but nobody blinked and we sailed right through.

But even with the apparent holes in Tianjin and Beijing’s subway and train security, I have to say it’s a lot tighter than what I remember of the security on Vancouver’s Skytrain, where you can walk right on without paying. But to be fair to the Skytrain, we did see the security in action last time we were in Vancouver and it seemed to work pretty well.

My folks came to see us during Spring Festival and we spent a couple days in Beijing. If you’ve ever wondered what Tiananmen and the Forbidden City look like, then this photo gallery is for you! Click the link or photos below.

Tiananmen & The Forbidden City 天安门广场和故宫 – 2010 Feb 21

My folks came to see us during Spring Festival and we spent a couple days in Beijing. Ditan Park has Beijing’s biggest Spring Festival Temple Fair and it barely contains an unbelievable amount of people, noise and colour. We had a blast, though I wouldn’t recommend it for those who easily suffer from sensory overload! Click the link or the photos below to go to the photo gallery.

Beijing’s Ditan Park Temple Fair 地坛庙会 – 2010 Feb. 20

Tiananmen Square (天安门广场 tiānānmen guǎnchǎng) and the Forbidden City (a.k.a. the Palace Museum a.k.a. 故宫 gùgōng) during Spring Festival.

Captions are under each photo. You can leave comments on this page at the bottom. (For an interesting historical overview of slogans on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, see here.)

2010 Feb 21

“Temple fairs” (庙会) abound during Spring Festival in China. Dìtán Park (地坛公园) has Beijing’s biggest (the 地坛庙会) and we hit it on the last day of the fair. As you’ll see in the photos, it was packed, sprawling, happy, controlled chaos, with just as much noise as colour. The five of us (Jessica and I, 8-month-old Lilia, and my parents) had a blast, but I wouldn’t recommended it for people who easily suffer from sensory overload!

Captions are below each photo. You can leave comments at the bottom.

2010 Feb. 20

Last night, 7:23, according to the monitoring equipment installed in the U.S. embassy in Beijing:

What “500″ means:

150+ = “Unhealthy”, 200+ = “Very Unhealthy”, 300+ = “Hazardous”. So what are we supposed to call it when it maxes out the scale?

Of course, you might be wondering what the Ministry of Environmental Protection was reporting at the same time:

The Chinese version site had the same:

As we couldn’t see down the street today, I don’t wonder who’s numbers are more accurate. However, three things you need to know about comparing pollution numbers:

1. Part of the reason for the discrepancy is that China doesn’t monitor the smaller, more harmful forms of air pollution.
2. It also helps that they shifted the location of their monitoring equipment to get better averages and record more “blue sky days”.
3. Measurement scales vary from country to country. You can see how China’s pollution scale compares to those of Honk Kong and the U.S. here: API and PM10 – health and here: Using the Beijing Air Quality Index (AQI) – Part I. These are also helpful (Wikipedia): Air Quality Index and Air Pollution Index. This site has a convenient widget that lets you compare China’s interpretation of its current pollution levels with that of other countries.

On days like this you can smell it as soon as you open the front door and see it just by looking across the street.

We first found these sites via MyHealth Beijing. Click the screen shots to view the source pages. See the links below for some pollution photos.

Related:

• Behold the power of China’s weather gods!
• Everything you wish you didn’t know about air pollution in China

Finally! I just discovered a great site by a family doctor in Beijing (close enough!) with all the info you need — like what to do — about the appalling infuriating horrifying confounding oppressive chewable inexcusable damnable lethal ghastly hideous depressing atrocious illiberal obscene foul nose-burning abominable face-coating heinous lì hai monstrous odious execrable unholy [they-don't-make-strong-enough-negative-descriptors] air pollution. For example:

• How Bad Is It, Really?
• Why you should Close Your Windows at Night
• About air purifiers
• Pollution slideshow
• Using the Beijing Air Quality Index (AQI) (why “200″ is 4x worse than “100″)

Call me a pampered whiny rich foreigner if you want, I don’t care; I want to liiiiiive!

And please, by all means, you’re welcome to add adjectives to my list (but keep it PG!). Sometimes it just feels good to vent to get it off your chest, especially since you can’t vent to get it out of your chest.

I’ll add a photo later if I can bring myself to take one (through tears, no doubt).

Other posts about Tianjin’s indecent pollution:

• Behold the power of China’s weather gods!
• This week in Tianjin (photos)
• Chewing Tianjin’s Air
• Putting the OMG! in Smog

All these photos are from within the last couple weeks, some from yesterday. The translations are definitely suspect.

“Donkey meat take-out”
Trying to read signs pays off. I recently ‘discovered’ that there’s a donkey meat restaurant on my way to the gym. Donkey meat is good!

“Donkey meat take-out” / 外卖 驴肉 / wài mài lǘ ròu

“No making a ruckus”
From a nearby vegetable market:

“Civilly do business, compete fairly, it’s forbidden in the market to make a noisy ruckus”
文明经商，公平竟争， 市场禁止喧哗吵闹
wénmíng jīngshāng, gōngpíng jìng zhēng, shìchǎng jìnzhǐ xuānhuá chǎonào

Civilized bus riding
From a bus stop in Beijing:

“Please line up and wait for the bus, civilly swipe your card, orderly get off the bus”
请排队候车，文明刷卡，顺序下车
qǐng páiduì hòu chē, wénmíng shuā kǎ, shùnxù xià chē

“Orderly get on the bus, politely take your seat, respect the old and cherish the young, civilly ride the bus”
有序上车，礼貌上座，尊老爱幼，文明乘车
yǒu xù shàng chē, lǐmào shàng zuò, zūn lǎo ài yòu, wénmíng chéng chē

Nothing that special; I was just happy that I could actually read something! We were in Beijing seeing friends that we hadn’t visited for over a year. Last time we had to speak mostly in English and couldn’t read signs like this. This time we used 99.9% Chinese and could get around no problem.

“Harmonious Tianjin”
Post-Olympics Tianjin banners on the left (not the best translation):

“With this well-loved place, establish a happy homeland /
Harmonious Tianjin, Joyful New Year’s Day”
同在一方热土，共建美好家园 / 和谐天津，欢度元旦
tóngzài yī fāng rè tǔ, gòng jiàn měihǎo jiāyuán / héxié tiānjīn, huān dù yuándàn

On the right, one of the many surfaces on Tianjin University campus completely covered in ads for daily/hourly rental bedrooms. There’s a booming market in daily/hourly use rooms and “love hotels” near college campuses in China.

Curse you, Beijing signage!
They told us we’d need to learn characters in China, but they never mentioned night vision! Us and a bunch of other people looking for the Beijing South Train Station wandered around last night in sub-zero temperatures in the wind following conflicting signage and conflicting directions from random passerbyers until we backtracked and took a closer look at this particular sign, or more specifically, the home-made one beside it, which says the train station is the other way:

Nice that they scribbled out the arrow for us! (Construction has made the area a little chaotic, and the bus routes and stuff apparently haven’t been changed yet.)

We took a trip with friends to Beijing’s Fragrant Hills to go leaf peeping (that’s New Hampshire-话 for looking at fall foliage), for which 香山 (xiāng shān) is celebrated in popular Chinese imagination. Everyone wants to go see the 红叶s (red autumn leaves). It was a weekday, but the park and its paths were still “people-mountain-people-sea” (人山人海); packed with people. Getting photos was difficult. It was a nice walk and nice scenery, but the hills still have a ways to go before they recover from the deforestation suffered during the 2nd half of the 20th century, the effects of which is still pretty noticable.

There used to be interesting historical sites on these mountains, but they were apparently all burnt down by invading Western forces during the 2nd Opium War, as the signs posted at each place of interest will point out: “… built by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty in 1745. It was burnt down by Anglo-French Allied Forces in 1860.” Pretty sure that didn’t do much to help local environment either.

You can see more photos from today in the photo gallery: Walking in Beijing’s Fragrant Hills.

The road up to the main gate is lined on both sides with food vendors; closest thing to a Taipei nightmarket I’ve seen in China so far. Lots of good stuff to eat: meat-on-a-stick, roasted chestnuts, and bbq’d squid especially. I saw a guy walk by with huge scorpions on-a-stick, their tails all flopping around. I don’t know how they did it, but this was one of the cleanest parks I’ve ever seen; tons of people with food but no garbage or cigarette butts to be seen.

We took a trip to Beijing’s Fragrant Hills to see the fall foliage, for which 香山 is celebrated in popular Chinese imagination. It was a weekday, but the park and its paths were still packed with people. Getting photos was difficult. It was a nice walk, but the hills still have a ways to go before they recover from the deforestation of the 2nd half of the 20th century.

There used to be interesting historical sites on these mountains, but they were apparently all burnt down by invading Western forces during the 2nd Opium War, as the signs posted at each place of interest will point out.

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08 Oct 31