Alone at Wangfujing

China comes with some unfortunate irony. Every evening, people congregate on the streets, eating food, shopping, and "just chilling", late into the night. Even parents with kids stay ride subway trains back to their homes past midnight and it's safe. Of course it's great that it's safe for people to walk the streets so late, but the reason it's safe to walk the streets late is because China is a police state. The night my friends and I go to Wangfujing, a popular shopping and social area, to absorb the nightlife, we see a man put into the back of a police car, holding a little girl. It's kind of disturbing, even though I've already seen at least 10 people get arrested while I've been here.

Wanfujing is comparable to a toned-down Times Square. Among the lights and billboards, are reputable stores with mostly upscale prices and little bargaining. It's the home of the Beijing Olympics Store, as well as a 13-floor bookstore (which will allegedly have the 7th Harry Potter book on the day of its release...in English).

There's a saturday-night street food festival going on, featuring everything that can possibly be put on a stick, and then some. Corn, bugs, and more normal meats are among the stick foods, but there's also this one stand selling what we believe is hot pot to-go. I'm not sure how this works with plastic panda cups, but it's interesting nonetheless.

We are planning to meet some more people at a bench in front of the Olympics store. It's almost time for them to be there, and some of my friends have to go to the bathroom, so they leave as I am taking a picture of an amusing billboard (who decided the cultural capital of Europe, and why is it posted over a KFC??!!) .

When I turn around, I realize I don't know anybody around me. I sit down on the bench, which is half-occupied by a couple having a really drawn-out argument that is making me incredibly uncomfortable. What's worse is that I am sitting next to a trash can, and in 10 minutes, 6 people come by and open the lid looking for plastic bottles to recycle for money, then give me a once-over to see if I'm drinking anything that they can wait for me to finish. Then a man comes over to me and asks me for money, pulling two handless stumps from under his shirt and clapping them together. I tell him in Chinese that I don't have anything and he leaves me alone, even though we both know I'm lying. But only I know that I feel genuinely guilty about not giving him money.

Fortunately, my friends come back soon after that, and when I tell them that I got rid of a man with no hands, they say "Oh yeah, we saw him too" and we just continue on to go buy fruit-on-a-stick. I guess it's more real when you're alone.
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By the way, the Hot Pot place in Wangfujing that has somebody wear a puffy fat man suit and do weird things in front of the doorway to attract customers (see previous "I love China" post) actually uses two costumes, depending on time of day. I still can't get Lara to go dance with either version of him though.