BJ Sandwich

Traveling abroad is always exciting. Seeing new things, eating different foods, learning new languages, cultures and histories are a few reasons people break away from their comfort zones and routine lives. We have all been a tourist at one point or another, on a guided tour or following maps around a city. When you know a city very well and are no longer a tourist, picking out the tourists is easy and sometimes very fun.

After living in Beijing for two years, we have seen every tourist destination. Now that it’s summer again, tourists are flocking to the city, foreigners and Chinese alike. The Great Wall is crowded, the Nest is swarming and the hutongs attract tourists looking for a more “local” experience.

There are many more noticeable sites in Beijing in the summer that you wouldn’t see in the winter. For example, babies with slit pants so that they can pee with ease, kites flying, men with their shirts rolled up exposing their bellies, watermelons in plastic bags, ladies carrying umbrellas to shade their skin from the sun, a lot of drunk men eating BBQ, and much more.

So after all our time spent in the city there is little that surprises us anymore. We would not usually take pictures of foreigners; the sites and the local people spark our interest more. With that said, a few weeks ago while visiting the Ho Hai hutong area we saw a site that was not only hilarious but also worthy of a picture.

Every foreigner, resident or traveler, enjoys I ♥ BJ t-shirts, for obvious reasons. It is also very clear that a lot of foreign men like Chinese ladies. To see these two foreign men wearing matching I ♥ BJ t-shirts, riding a tandem bicycle with a Chinese lady in the middle was comical and the epitome of a tourist in Beijing. Now that we are preparing to leave Beijing we have officially captured the typical, amusing adventures of foreign men in the city.