I had the fortune of traveling to China over winter break to visit family. Here are some, well, a lot, of pictures that I came away with. The next part will cover Tianjin and include some aerials from Beijing to Tokyo. Hope you enjoy!
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Confucius says:
With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.
Nice photos. The thing that bothers me about the place is that for an incredibly old and incredibly densely populated place, most of the photos I've ever seen (outside of the Forbidden City area anyway) include massive 8-10 lane roads that would look right at home in the American Sun Belt, and that's a shame.
__________________ As a staunch Marxist, I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member. Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well I have others.
10023, huge boulevards with heavy traffic definitely detract from the quality of life, and require constant awareness when crossing. Fortunately, they almost always have bike/moped/parking lanes along their sides that are separated by a barrier, have wide sidewalks, and cut through very walkable neighborhoods. Even the new clusters of giant highrise apartments typically feature lots of retail space at the ground level.
PA, I think it's estimated that there are over 2 million cars in Beijing (pop 17 mil) and rising, in a metro with roughly the same land area as the Portland metro area (pop 2 mil)!
^^
Yeah, Beijing has a lot of freeways and wide roads in its urban area, but one should not forget that this is a metropolitan area approaching 20 million in year 2010. I'm sure the freeway/wide road km/person isn't that high compared to a US or even European metropolitan area.
Beijing will also have the world's second largest (or even largest) metro network in 2020, and that will hopefully ease the congestion on the roads.
^Exactly. Another reason that traffic is so bad on the arterials could be that there are so few of them compared to American cities and much less of the city is as easily accessible by automobile. I read somewhere that 40% of Beijingers still bike or walk as their primary means of transportation, unimaginable in the US.
And yes, it was insanely cold! I forgot to bring my long underwear, too.
Amazing and weird.... Such a strange city. Hope they can clear that air up for the olympics.... It's almost at L.A. levels!!
You're joking, yes?
__________________
Confucius says:
With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow - I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.
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