Train Station

After lunch today, Per and I went to the train station to buy our tickets to Beijing for next weekend and look around. The train station was chaos! So many people, warmest building ever, and lines that seemed to lead to no where. People thought Per and I were very interesting. Per also pointed out that some of the people, who probably come from the countryside, are very curious about the machines there. So they go up to them and look at them really close. One big Chinese man came up to talk to Per (he wasn't so interested in talking to me). I think he probably just wanted to try out his English so he asked where Per was from, what company he worked for, and how long he would be here. He was nice. A lot of people there stared at us, but this time no one wanted Per's picture or to touch his skin to see if he was real. Haha.

The train station building:

The mass of people standing outside (note the chinese man on the very left with his shirt pulled up over his belly - very common - cooling):

Per and I:

Across from the train station and the river is this very European looking group of buildings. No idea what they are but its rather interesting. You can tell in this picture especially how hazy and foggy it seems here, although I suppose it is pollution.

Some weird clock:

On another note, all day I've felt very sad about something I saw today. I saw this Chinese man, walking with his wife, carrying an adorable little puppy. Some kinda fluffy little dog. When I saw him holding it, I didn't feel like he was admiring how cute it was or showing his wife how adorable their new puppy was. I noticed that under the puppy, in his hand, was a plastic bag. I sorta made a comment to Per that the man probably bought the puppy for dinner....WELL...10 seconds later, he was holding the plastic bag by the handles with the poor little puppy inside. :( I feel heartbroken about the puppy. But I guess to people here, dogs aren't adorable little pets (I've only seen two dogs on leashes). It is a toatlly different thing to them. Hopefully he was taking the the little puppy home to be their pet and just didn't know it wasn't nice to carry it in a bag...hopefully :(