In one of the second-year Chinese courses in my university we’ve studied, throughout the year, a series of short texts - the first of which was called “dao le beijing” (”Arrived at Beijing”). These texts tell the story of an American student who came to Beijing to study Chinese at some university. Unfortunately, most of what he does in the texts is complain - starting from how he is cheated by food vendors, through how the dormitories don’t have air conditioning, all the way to how public toilets never have toilet paper.
To me, Beijing gives a very different first impression. Even memories from two years ago seem slightly off. People always seem to treat foreigners fairly (usually it seems as if they’re just shy of us), most places do have air conditioning, and public toilets are abundant - much more common than what I would expect to find back in Israel (franky, in Israel, when I’m in a public place such as downtown I simply don’t expect to find a toilet). I’m also amazed at the size of the city. I have a map of Beijing, and simple bus rides from point A to point B take way longer than they should (even taking traffic into account), probably because the map scale is much smaller than the scale I am used to. Other than that, public transport is pretty convenient (as usual in Asia).
I am getting the best hospitality I could ask from both Lin and her family. As fitting of Chinese, this hospitality includes stuffing me full of food - dumplings (jiaozi) yesterday evening when I arrived and peking duck (kaoya) today at lunch. Lin herself is vegetarian, a fact that her Chinese family has never quite gotten used to, so they seem overjoyed that finally someone is eating meat (”Lin’s friends”, as she to call it) and drinking beer with them. I’ve already been invited to two more family events later this week…
Unfortunately I don’t have a camera yet. I plan to buy one here in the near future, so you’d have to wait for a while for pictures.