china notes 1

Airports

The check-in process at the chengdu and xian airports are the most confusing I've navigated, and I've gone thru quite a few airports, big and small. It's worse than even the train stations.

PEK (Beijing airport) is HUGE. seriously. They have buses to drive you from your gate to the plane. I was on that bus for like 20 minutes, no joke. I mean, we weren't speeding along at 60mph but it wasn't slow either. 

Security - What are all these security checks for? Transferring at PEK I had to go thru another security line were I had to get my passport, visa, ticket checked, toss my liquids (again), walk thru that scanner thing, and get a very thorough pat down. (...I should remember to go back to wearing regular bras [rather than unlined bralettes] when flying in China. They even run their hands down your legs when you aren't wearing pants.) When boarding you get your tickets scanned, as you walk thru the corridor thing to the plane another dude checks it again, and on the plane once more. ...flying out of PEK to LAX, when in the corridor thing between the gate and the plane, they physically went thru my purse (good thing I'd checked my bag) and made me toss my water which I had just filled at the water station at my gate! ugh. such a waste.

The liquid checks are getting ridiculous. They used to just scan or run a metal detector wand thing on you when you entered the subway, but now you have to take out your water bottle and they put it on some machine thing that does something; I'm not sure what. "Good thing" nearly everyone in China has either single-use water bottles or clear plastic water bottles. I think I would have difficulty with my usual stainless steel water bottle.

Trash / recycling - I didn't see any single bins, they always come in a pair. However, people don't recycle properly anyway. I often times saw single-use bottles in the non-recycle bin. I think because China has to employ sooo many people, a lot of them are trash pickers. So the regular person doesn't have to take personal responsibility for their waste. Probably why there's so much littering also, because you know that within half an hour some street cleaning person will be along to pick up after you. It's not that they think about the street cleaner, but when you litter but are rarely confronted with the consequence of it, you stop thinking about it as a negative act.

Also, I was hoping to find and bring home some leashed bottle cap / single-use bottles (as M saw in Japan). Unfortunately not only did I not see any of those, but many of their aluminum cans don't even have pop tops; they're still pull tabs!! I wish I had paid more attention to the brands, but I tried to use as little single-use anything as I could, which was NOT easy. 

They use inch-long pins instead of paper clips. Seems dangerous

Dogs - so many now! Even saw a dog park in Chengdu. Lots of weather inappropriate dogs tho, poor over-heated things

Way more fat people, obese even. 

Bathrooms - ugh. I figured out a couple years ago that handicap stalls contain a western toilet. This year I did a lot of traveling to remote scenic places tho so I knew I couldn't expect that. Still, I wasn't expecting so many of the trough style toilets. And ones with only half tall walls and no door either! Funny thing tho, from the stains on the walls, it's clear that Chinese women haven't figured out which way to face either. UGH