Hello beautiful world!
After walking until our feet (and my heart - pardon the cliché) hurt in the zoo, we finally found the Beijing Aquarium. It has huge, as things apparently tend to be around there. And, even though we were a tinsy bit scared of what we'd find, (I personally fantasized about whales lying in a puddle in concrete boxes, and fish gently floating on its back in various aquariums), we finally decided to go in. The blistering sun ushered us in as well, I'll admit. And man. What a different world, compared to the outside zoo.
Fishies! And in so many colours! I got my diver's license in Sri Lanka last year, and one of the best parts of it was so just follow small fish around the corals. Just staring at the rainbow of colours found in both the tiny things swimming around me, aswell at the plants and corals, was an awesome way to spend a day. And now, there were fishies everywhere!
While the tropical fishes and corals were nice and dandy for a good while, what we found next held up captive for an indecent amount of time. There were colours, and shiny lights and aquariums so big I felt like a little kid just staring into the water. "Why", you might ask. "What can be better than little fishies in shiny colours? Hmmm?". Well. They had this:
JELLYFISH! After seeing this video a few months ago, I've been just a tiny bit obsessed with the mindless little lumps of jelly. Because, even though they're probably not so self-conscious about it, they look absolutely stunning. They way they swim, the way they float and the way they seem to just not give a damn about how we struggle with gravity while they magically float around - the little girl inside me wanted to jump up and down, clap her hands and yell "prettyyy!". (Let's not discuss if the older girl on the outside did the same.)
And hold on tight, because there will me more jellyfish up soon. I have too, I've got some many photos of these little jelly monsters that I should be ashamed of myself. 
Before we headed for the aquarium, we had planned to see how the pandas in the zoo were doing. We were in China, there were pandas. "Allright, gotta see it." The road there was long though. As both Beijing and Shanghai proved: if you're going to do anything, you've got to do it big. An ideology that was reflected in the zoo aswell. It was huge! So we walked, and we walked, and came to see a lot of.. well. Various animals in various conditions.
After that we tried to head a little more straight to the pandas, wanting to see at least what we had planned. It took some time, and on the road we hurried past a lot of different animals in different boxes, cages or fields. We found the pandas in the end though. And, as the main attraction of the Beijing Zoo, I'd read that they'd be treated like royals compared to the remaining inhabitants of the zoo. Royals? Well, I'm not sure I'd say that. But they had a significantly better place to stroll around in than most other creatures we saw. They did seem just as stressed and understimulated as I would, living my life with a whole bunch of people staring me down from the other side of a transparent wall. It is, however, a beautiful animal, and I'd love to see in out in the wild. Free. Sitting in its furry ass, being chill and eating bamboo.
Having found the star of the zoo, we decided that enough was enough. It was time to get out of the place, and find that aquarium that was supposed to be somewhere in that zoo. We grabbed some bottles of water, picked up a somewhat comprehensible map and left the furry bamboo-chewing panda. We left little turles in little glass boxes, and we left tigers in concrete cages. There and and then, we'd had enough zoo. Do I regret going there? No, not at all. Did I feel comfortable there? Again: not at all. But I don't believe in only going places, seeing things that pleases you. To be able to know and express what I like, I think it's equally important to experience the things I don't like. And this day held some of both sides.
I'm awfully sorry for starting my experiences in China like this, I know it seems harsh and brutal and.. well, awful. But as I'm writing this, I'm also looking through my photos from the aquarium, which we finally found. And that, that is a whole different story. Promise!
The people were, mostly at least, a great bunch of friendly faces. Sure, we didn't understand a damn word the other said at times, but with sound effects and frantic waving of hands, communication is easily made possible. In short, I learned to say only two phrases in Mandarin: nǐhǎo (hello) and xièxie (thank you). If you're able to smile and laugh at yourself, those two are at least somewhat sufficient. At least in the process of ordering dinner, or asking for basic help and directions. If you want a taxi however, just give up. We did. And then we tried again. And gave up again. And so it went on. To put it short: we basically lived down in the subway system.
I'm baack. Dead tired, in a cloud of jetlag and with my hand buried in a 1 kg bag of M&Ms from the taxfree shop. Can't say I'm hating it. To put it short: China was great! I'm aware that I've only seen a fraction of it by visiting big urban areas like Beijing and Shanghai, but the little taste I've had really makes me want to explore the rural parts aswell. People were usually really friendly, allthough communication with the locals usually were limitied to frantic gesturing and odd sounds. My non-existent Mandarin was as good as their English, so at least we were on even terms.
You know you want to go there, meet the people, smell it, feel it. I mean, ah, I'm itching to get out of this country.
