it is the best country in the WORLD.

So today I learned that the Chinese government has eliminated poverty, has amazingly clean tap water and is clean and modern while still holding onto its traditional values. At least, that is what they wanted us to think by the end of the tour today. 

We, being the entire set of foreign student volunteers (people from Iowa, North Carolina, Ithaca, Australia, England, etc.), took an amazing tour of one of Beijing's 13 water purification plants. It sounds interesting right? Ha. Actually it was about as boring as it sounds. Full of propaganda and selling points of the water system, and completely irrelevant considering even the locals don't drink the water.

If that wasn't government-enforced enough, next they took us to the "Beijing suburbs." It is kind of like a gated community, only lower class than anything in the states. However, it did have a country club (that more than half of the people living in the community weren't members of albeit) and a golf course. Anyway, they let us tour these 3-courtyard houses that the Chinese government had built for some of these people after buying (taking) their land (for building buildings for the Olympics maybe?). It was so ridiculous. They were built in 2002, but were made to look like the traditional courtyard-style house. The inside of them was perfectly and modernly furnished, decorated and the like. It was as if they were telling us that this was how all of the citizens in China lived even though we had been here long enough to know tat is not the case. They also took us to a "temple" in the community. After seeing the REAL temples and buildings of the Forbidden City, these were just plain costumey. The painting was new, the lawn and sidewalks were perfect, the "old" urns had colorful (fake) flowers in them. It was similar to Epcot's Chinatown in  that it was so incredibly made up.

I knew that the government wanted the city to look good to foreigners, but seriously. Our tour guide even said something like, "now you can tell your friends how good chinese community is and they can think better of us and come visit." I have never been a part of a bigger propaganda scheme in my life.

On a completely different note, I had Peking Duck and it was delicious.