Beijing: Street walking

...or walking the streets of Beijing. I decided to take a walk in the late afternoon and see some of Beijing. This is still my first full day, so I was not trying to be too ambitious in case I was tired from my flight the day before. I just kind of left the apartment, went downstairs past the Carrefour, turned right and headed up the block.

I found that there were a LOT of people on bicycles. People of all ages: young and old, use bicycles to get around. Like most large cities, a parking space for a car is expensive so  people use mass transit, busses and subways, and walking and cycling to get from A to B.

The weather was nice, but cool (it is winter) and the people mostly ignored me which worked to my benefit.

This is the Carrefour that is in the same building as the apartment. This turned out to be very convenient. I could walk down there and get a meatball for breakfast every morning.

Notice the "rat's nest" of wires strung over the street. I found that very interesting and marvelled that it did not seem to cause any issues.

A lot of people wore masks to help avoid breathing in pollution, but, even thought I am known to have Asthma, I had no problems breathing the air in Beijing.

This gentleman saw me taking his picture. I asked him with my eyes and he gave me a nod. After I took the picture,  he gave me a big smile. I actually, wished I took one of that smile!

I thought these motorized bike were very interesting, as well as the built in mittens on the handlebars!

Beijing: Infrared

I bought a modified Olympus E-PM1 off of Ebay from a seller called Image Laboratory because I thought it would be great to take some infrared pictures from the Great Wall. I took these pictures around the building and grounds to see how it worked. I used a 720nm filter to block the visible light so all it recorded is the near infrared frequencies and higher. This means that things that reflect infrared light get lighter (the grass is white for example) and things that do not become dark. It is an interesting and striking effect I think!

I love that you can see the veins in my hand!

This looks pretty normal, but her coat was actually a deep red!

Beijing: Xiapu hot pot

We had dinner that night at a place called Xiapu for what is called hot pot. The way that it works is that you order from the menu the vegetables and noodles and mean that you wish, they bring you a pot of broth, and when it boils, you put the food in piece by piece to cook, then into your bowl that has sauce it, and then eat it up!

It was very interesting and very good, but not great. Yan said it was a normal dinner and not a special one.