[still quotation from the book whose title and author I forgot]
Bell Tower Hotel, Xian, 22 May 1984
Peking is a very different city from tthe pinched, yellow-caked, painfullly poor village I arrived in last January. Now it resembles Canton, It is very romantic: there was a young coouple pawing each other on the bus yesterday - oh, not very daring gropes, really, and she was obviously less into it than he was - under the amazed eye of a grizzled provincial. The staid Pekingese on the bus, like hip Londoners, all managed to look a thousand other directions without looking glances.
Peking, 21 June 1984
Peking, as Louise would say, is really frisky. Full of colour: sweaty workers stinking of garlic eaten whole and raw, wearing pink tank tops, women in glittery and practically transparent dresses, all dressed rather the way I do, without any regards for things te clashing and mirrors, but with a vague eye to the utterly unimitable. People slither underneath the rope segregating the men's part of the swimming pool for the women's without any compunction, and no one ever blows the whistle.
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