The afternoon begun with Tian'anmen Square, reported to be the largest square in the world. It is said to hold 1,000,000 people. I thought it was pretty big, but Paul didn't think it was as big as he expected. The Chinese soldiers guarding the various monuments were interesting, but quite undisciplined. While they were "guarding" one was talking on his cell phone while another was watching his comrades train behind a fence and another one was yawning. Thinking of the Buckingham Palace guards and those guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, these guards seemed to have a very different view of their job. As before, there were tons of people -- all mostly young, meaning teens and early twenties. The surprise to me was very few small children, even on a Sunday afternoon, when I expected families to be out together. The style of clothing for toddlers is a snow-suit type garment that is split up the back for pottying. As we travelled around the country, we discovered that this was to make job convenient WHEREVER the need arose.
There were tons of street vendors trying to sell postcards, etc., but there was also a young man that didn't seem to fit the pattern. He started giving things away to Steve, one of our group--and wouldn't take any money. He gave a deck of cards and a necklace. We tried to pay him with money and food, but he wouldn't take anything. Our guides said that apparently he was a street orphan and that the police watch out for him and make sure he's ok. Except for this young man, we found that just about everyone wanted to sell us something. We began to call them "one dollar people", because about all the English they knew was "one dollar, one dollar". You could get postcards, kites or Rolex watches for "one dollar". Well, maybe two dollars for the Rolex.
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