We Just Got China'd

Crossing the street in Beijing is a daily life-threatening risk that the Chinese and us, "white people" have to take. It appears that, unlike Switzerland, the Chinese don't really care much for the whole "pedestrians have the right of way" scene.
More often than not it ends up in us, wildly dodging buses and taxis and eventually someone yells "run" in a panic stricken voice as we sprint to cross the 10 lane intersection.
Good Times.
Who needs fear of lions, malaria, sex trafficking and hepatitis when in Beijing you nearly perish crossing the street, suffocating in subways or being shot by the armored guard on every corner.

We've made up a new term here on the Chilippines team called "China'd".
China'd - verb
When a local or group of locals take advantage of foreigners by forcing them into an awkward position in which they feel they should purchase something they really don't need, or being pressured to do something that provides no benefit to the foreigner, but only to the local. Usually involving money.
e.g. We just got China'd hard.
or We just got china'd into taking the slow bus.

Our team made it out to one of the seven man-made Wonders of the World: The Great Wall of China. Turns out it's all it's cracked up to be.
Who knew a wall could be so awesome.  We were only on the wall for like 2 hours, which seems long but actually isn't enough.
Like I said, surprisingly awesome. It's ridiculous how much labour went into this wall, which, from what I know, didn't really ever fulfill it's purpose.
However, we did get China'd a bit.
When looking for bus 919 to Badaling, we realized there are about a billion of these buses. Not knowing which was the fast or slow, we just allowed some woman to direct us onto one of the buses. Turns out it was the slow, as death bus. We had to stop the bus twice, had a lot of trouble getting it into 2nd gear and it was packed to the gills.
And with that sweet sweet China smell lingering in the air.
Lovely...
On the way back we made sure to get on the fast bus, which had it's own problems.
This old lady totally puked all over herself and others, we had to stand for half the ride, and we witnessed a small child pee and poop into a bag.
The general public on the bus seemed rather un-phased by the whole ordeal, however the White people didn't really know how to feel. Babys in China don't wear diapers, they just do their business wherever, whenever, actually.

One of the best china'ing techniques is locals who want to practice their english, and then conveniently need you to buy them a beer or coffee. This was something we were warned about and then totally happened to me almost exactly as the guy said.
Love that. No China'ing took place that day, in fact, I may have China'd him a bit.
But seriously, Beijing rocks, I can definitely see myself coming back.

 

-cheers