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Travel Ideas

Beijing, China's Sweat Shop Capital - 10 Worst Cities to Travel

By Tom Thumb, Posted Mar 23, 2007

beijing smog

The future of the world is being determined in places like Bombay and Beijing, god help us.

Beijing is China’s flagship and a damn well organised one at that. Now the darling of all the evil capitalist investors that the commies denounced for all the last half century, Beijing is growing into drab suburbs of grey factories and satanic mills, stocked with peasants from the countryside made to work in sweat shop slavery to produce consumer goods for the West.

Think about that the next time you, say, buy a pair of Nike trainers.

The traffic is absolutely relentless, there isn’t any wildlife in sight (the Chinese have eaten it all), the people are uptight and paranoid after 50 years of police state rule, the communist bureaucracy makes it incredibly hard to get the simplest thing done and on top of that, the Chinese have a superiority complex which makes them think they’re the best race on the planet. The traveler is an object of derision and scorn.

Still, there’s always hope that Beijing won’t last forever. The Gobi Desert is invading by several meters each year. When strong winds blow, the air in Beijing turns yellow with dust and sand and the city ends up looking like a bad photographic print from the 1920’s.

Business Week on Beijing Sweatshops


Tom has been traveling non-stop since the age of 18 and co-founded Road Junky in 2004. Follow him @tomglaister

He’s the author of Hand to Mouth to India, an account of hitchhiking from England to India with no money and which will soon be rereleased by Road Junky Books.

Tales of a Road Junky featuring tales of breaking people out of jail in Delhi, selling fake Rolexes in Japan and other adventures in Israel and Brazil will be out later this year.

He also writes fiction for anyone who never really grew up and his latest novel is Bozo and the Storytellerdownload the audio book for free or even buy a copy…

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