socialmedian: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

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Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City — Beijing, China

Source: Travel Pod

Nov 07, 2009

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Beijing, China

Survived the final sleeper train journey to arrive into Beijing at 6am. Spent the last hour of the journey talking to a sweet Chinese teenage girl who wanted to practice her English on me. (I decided not to practice my Mandarin on her as it consists of precisely four words, so the conversation was going to be pretty one-sided!). It was really interesting talking to her; I was surprised at how much access to western culture the Chinese clearly have. She had read all the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings novels, her favourite bands are Coldplay and Westlife (!) and her favourite movie is Twilight. Before I came to China I thought all western culture would be pretty much banned but it's not; you can find Kings of Leon CDs in the shops, Starbucks everywhere, you can get the BBC online and on the TV, but then at the same time things like Facebook and hotmail are banned. I can't work out how this whole capitalist communist state thing works and our guide Tomic ...Read the full article

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