2 Things

Every city has its beggars, Beijing does too. I'm assuming that they
are a little more frequent here, but I've never spent much time in a
similar city. There are the regulars, sometimes they are annoying and
will hustle after you and shake their can while holding it out to
you. You can get decent money for recycling bottles so if I have an
empty one I will give it to the people rummaging through the trash.
But my language partner tells me that they are secretly rich, and
that one day they will be on the streets, next day going into a nice
restaurant. Oh well.
But what I wanted to say is that 2 days now I've seen this kid, maybe
3 or 4 years, just sitting on the sidewalk amusing himself, looking
pretty ragged, with a can out in front of him. No obvious adult in
sight that would be watching him. So somebody has placed him there to
sit there and evoke money from people. The city is pretty safe and I
couldn't think of any harm coming to him, but still.

I also told my roommates that I'm making a no smoking rule for our
apartment. This is after they had numerous friends over this past
weekend/week who smoked inside and made our apartment smell.