How you react to Beijing has a lot to do with how adventurous you are.

There are many Beijings.

I am staying in the most expensive quarter, the neighborhood for rich foreigners and exceptionally well-heeled nationals.  That means we shop at Van Cleef and Arpels and eat at Pizza Hut.  Very little weird food.

On the other hand, my boss on the job went to an actual neighborhood and ate a restaurant that had grubs on the menu.  I don’t want to even BE in a restaurant that serves grubs. 

Here in our little enclave, shopping is very western.  Leave it, and the local merchants are so aggressive it gets frightening.  I’ve had several physically accost me and try to body check me from walking away from their stall of pirated goods.  I don’t like that and it gets me very angry.  Getting to any tourist destination means bulling your way through endless gauntlets of these pushy little prairie dogs.

The air is not good.  But not as bad as I hear Shanghai is.  Douglas Coupland describes the air of Shanghai as a mélange of heavy metals.

Taxis are cheap, and eating out is cheap as long as you leave your luxury hotel.

Would I like to stay here for a year?  It certainly wouldn’t be my first pick.  But maybe if you gave me a really cute houseboy and a huge salary and a great flat.  In this neighborhood.  It would be a huge plus if I had a serious interested in developing emphysema.
Perhaps I’ll sound more charmed with the place after I get to see a few more sights.  I’ll see the Forbidden City this weekend.

The thing to remember about China is that it’s simultaneously 3000 years old and 20 years old.  The soda cans have 70s style pull-caps that actually come off (remember those?).  The industrial revolution here started five minutes ago.  It really affects everything, and there’s a WHOLE lot of ugly almost wherever you go.

I’m sure it’s pretty in some parts of the country side.  The trip to the Wall isn’t pretty, because the Gobi Desert has decided to move south.  It’s killing the vegetation on the mountains pretty rapidly.  The city regularly has sand storms that put the residents into gas masks.

Of course, if you went to enjoy the beauty of the bucolic countryside, you also will be dealing with lots of health issues you won’t have in Beijing.  Malaria, diphtheria and an alphabet full of hepetitises await your tourbus.

Instead of China you might consider going somewhere quiet and serene.  Like Calcutta.