These pretzels are making me thirsty

Here's a list of some observations from my trip thus far (in no particular order):

• American tourists in China use a camera just as much as the cliched Japanese tourists in America.
• It's fun to listen to a conversation in Mandarin because you can make up your own subtitles.
• In Beijing, you can easily get the weather report by looking out the window. If you can see the sky, it's windy (and all the pollution is gone).
• Any Chinese intersection is a perfect display of organized chaos.
• You haven't lived until you see a very elegant Chinese woman hock a righteous luggy on the street.
• American tourists are always trying to equate things in China to things they know in America. Seeing something solely as Chinese is difficult for them.
• Vendors at the night food market in Beijing try to shock tourists by telling them certain food is dog (although they actually have it!).
• When dealing with vendors in the markets it's highly effective to speak German when you want them to go away. They already know English so they don't know what to do for anything else. Although I would imagine someone eventually will call my bluff...but not yet.
• It seems that a lot of beggars in Beijing have seen Eddie Murphy in the beginning of Trading Places.
• China has a bank for everything. The Bank of Construction, Bank of Agriculture, Bank of Commerce, and the lesser known Bank of Pollution and Bank of Entirely Too Many People.
• Shanghai has taller buildings but smaller roads than Beijing which translates into a more cramped feeling.
• They have a Chinese version of the Price Is Right and yes, it's spectacular. (Video forthcoming - oh yes, I took a video and it's mainly me laughing in the background.)
• Seeing Chinese symbols in different fonts would be (and is) confusing. Still can't tell if there's Helvetica (Wheeler). In fact, I'm not sure if anyone can.
• I have an entirely new appreciation for the phrase "big city." After all, Beijing is 18 million and Shanghai is around 20.
• This trip has solidified the fact that I prefer to travel alone.
• There is always someone cleaning something...everywhere, in the lobby, on the street, in the restaurant. Remember, everyone works (read Communism).
• In Mandarin, there is no tense other than the present tense. We say, "I went to the beach yesterday." They say, "I am at the beach yesterday." This difference is one of the reasons that Chinese say English (or any Western language) is very hard to learn.
• I went to the top of the highest occupied floor in the world (as of June 1, 2008) in the new World Financial Center in Shanghai. The observation deck has some glass floors. That makes it incredibly difficult to walk (or hold in lunch).
• China has been nothing like I expected. You don't feel the difference in government. It's very behind the scenes but when you hear stories about, for instance, how difficult it is for people to get home for the Spring Festival (their Thanksgiving and Christmas put together) because scalpers have purchased all the rail and bus tickets and how the government says that they will begin to arrest those same scalpers, you become rather impressed with the efficiency of action as arrests started the next day (and something like 8,000 in the last 4 days). In the US, it would take weeks if not longer for such action to take hold and ironically, it would no longer be needed. Where we threaten action, they act. I could go on and on but I'll save that for dinner conversation (and grad school papers).

That's all for now. I hate that I haven't had much time to blog. We've been running around so much and this is really the first night I decided to stay in and document at least something. Pictures might be posted after my return.

Fortune of the day - if constantly saying, "what?" get hearing checked. (Deep, huh?)