My first day in Luoyang (a.k.a. I hope the air in rest of China isn't like this!)

Luoyang is a very pretty city, there is lots of green space, and the architecture is as interesting and varied as Beijing.  However this is the worst pollution I've ever experienced in my life, by far, and I've been in Beijing on a "310" day.  I wandered about for about 2 or 3 hours and now my eyes hurt, my lungs hurt, I have a headache (I don't think it's hangover from the hangover) and I'm blowing (censored) out of my nose.

I didn't see any of the locals wearing pollution masks, so I thought it might not be all that bad (and I didn't want to start out my visit with a rude impression) so I went out without mine.  Big mistake, and it won't happen again, and I don't care if they think I'm rude wearing my mask in their lovely city.  I might even wear my swim goggles as well.

However I did have a few very good interactions with the locals (which may not have happened if I had been wearing my mask).  I was getting a LOT of stares, I'm not sure if I was sticking out because I was carrying around a giant tourist map, or if there was some other reason I was sticking out.  I said "ni hao" to everybody, and some said "ni hao" back and some even said "Hello!"  A few asked where I was from ("Canada?  Never heard of it."  "You've heard of America, right?  It's just to the north."  Seriously.)  On guy on a scooter even offered me a lift, unfortunately I couldn't think of anywhere for him to take me.  "wo jiu guang guang, I said.  (Just wandering aimlessly about.)

A small group of kids (maybe 14 or 15 years old) approached me, very excited.  They'd been studying English and never had a chance to talk to a real English person before.  So I humoured them with some English and even showed off a bit of my Chinese.  (Other than these kids, for the most part these Luoyangers and I are having a lot of trouble understanding each other.)

Here are some Luoyang pics:

No pineapple beer but I found the next best thing.  I don't think this will catch on though.

I couldn't find a good place to eat so I wound up in a mall eating fast food.  Afterwards I found the Luoyang version of "Gui Jie", so tomorrow I should have better food pics.

Kind of a Chinese Space Needle or CN Tower.  I wandered around the base of the tower.  In any other country you would be able to go to the top and have an expensive meal or cocktail, but here it's just a communications tower :-(

Lots of green space, too bad about all the smog :-(

Tania will probably think this one is fake too!  But it's not.