Today I have a few more shots of the general area ... you can see the buildings in my neigbourhood below ... the subway station is very close by ... i took this pic standing on the platform ... that clock tower is centrally located in the apartment complex! Its pretty handy to be walking distance from the subway!

This picture may appear boring but whats behind it is very interesting ... it's beijings invoicing system for the 'service industry, entertainment industry and pyhsical culture industry' so the invoice says. So basically your cash handling kindof places. The city is littered with hunred's of thousands of restaurants ... how do you get them to decalre all that quai running through their hands so you can tax them ... you put a lottery on the invoce!!! let me explain ..You see in the top left corner ive scratched away the 'reward' area. In this case it just say 'thanks' bzzzt no free lunch today! ....but you can win anything up to 100 rmb (so ive heard). I've won 5rmb ... once in 2 years ... laopos won about 20 rmb over around 5 years.

So why is the scratchie there? my theory is it gets the consumers to ask for an invoice ...hell they might get lucky...the business is then forced to declare the sale because the invoices are either prepurchased pre printed ones from the gvt ... yes indeed! or this one looks like it is infact online directly to the gvt coffers! pretty clever huh! I only recently alerted to this whn laopo's asked for a invoice and because it was a more expensive meal the owner of the little business offered her a 1.25 Litre Kele (coke) ... which was accepted ... so go figure ... it was cheaper to give her a freebie than to print out the invoice! I'm not sure of the tax levels but i'll be investigating it a little more. Sooooo get the picture ... if the goverment wants to put pressure on consumers to request invoice just hand a free lunch ... to 1 in a million customers. or so.

Oh and theres a password underneath the other scratchy section as some kindof anti-forgery protection. Along with a printing number, a printing terminal number and a 'anti forgery code' amd a tax registry code. Do you think someine tried to make fake one before to skip out on their tax...... never!

ok... the head liner topic small is cool ...heres a sneek peek inside the apartment ... thats the entire apartment .. im standing in the window. So its a bedroom lounge room living room dining room all in one kindof place. Your typical carboard boxer. The cool thing is the landlords provide all the furniture ... tv ... cupboards .. tables ... washing machines etc. It's small but its cosy. Small room = little cleaning ... as laopo says ... 'every coin has 2 faces' .

alrighty today's shenme dongxi is a beijing delicacy! Scorpions on a stick ... maybe you've seen this on a travel show or something but it's really mostly just a crowd puller as far as i can tell ... Ive eaten the neighbouring sea horse ... but bugs just aint my thing ... oh and the reason they look so fresh ... they are still alive!!! the pic just couldn't convey it so i uploaded a short avi! They get plunged into a deep frier before consumption! They mostly still sell just the ol nu rou .. ( beef .. or the transliteration is 'cow meat') ... yang rou (sheep meat) ... ji rou or joo rou (chicken meat or pig meat) ... on a stick. These scorpions are found mostly in central beijing only .. around the wanfujing district. The suburban stick vendors just sell the regular gear!