To most Americans, many of the available foods would look like something out of the Little Shop of Horrors. Markets away from the hotel featured a variety of meats on a skewer, most of which were unidentifiable but one of which was duck fetuses, five per stick. Dog is also served. Nonetheless, a few of us did pass by one of Lassie's cousins being skinned on the street. But the most remarkable thing about the Chinese isn't that they eat dogs but that they work like them.
Most people apparently work seven days a week and long days at that.
They have but a handful of holidays a year, the main one being the Chinese New Year. Much more so than New York, Beijing is a city that doesn't sleep at night. Construction workers can be seen building the city even at midnight. Yet to the longtime observer of China, what is so interesting here is that they are not just formally employed for such long hours but that so many of them are truly being industrious. I couldn't understand why until I saw somebody painting it.