A Horse & Cart in the Capital: Beijing (Nihao, Cupcake!)

September 18, 2011

A Horse & Cart in the Capital: Beijing

One of the fun & novel things about living abroad is scenes of yesterday like this horse & cart.

It's a simple thing and always makes me smile.

Beijing is trying hard to be a cutting edge modern city. But despite its best efforts the people from the countryside keep finding their way in and spoiling that image.

Just about every day you can find a horse & cart (sometimes three) on any one corner selling fruit from a nearby farm just outside the city. We encountered this one while riding our bikes. In fact, I took this shot while still riding my bike (multi-tasking at its best).

As we rode upon the scene, a police officer in his car was scolding the cart driver through his bullhorn. The cart driver rode away on down the street, but halfway down the block he paused, looked over his shoulder and once he confirmed that the police officer was driving away, promptly returned to his original spot and went right on selling his fruit - watermelon.

I've witnessed similar scenes. The police seem only half motivated to prevent these illegal vendors from selling their wares in the city. It is the vendors' livlihood afterall and they must get far more for their produce (or whatever they happen to be selling - jewelry, hair accessories, cell phone accessories, r/c cars, socks, bootleg CDs, etc, etc, etc) in the city than they do where they come from in the countryside.