Beijing takes off

My first time to Beijing was in 1990 .I started learning Chinese around 1988. I'm very interested in Chinese culture. When I had a chance to come to Beijing, I gladly came, by train. .From Hungary through Russia to Mongolia and then to Beijing. But it was not easy, because the journey took six days . And about the impression, even though I had read some books and watched some videos, when I got to Beijing, of course, it was a completely different feeling . Firstly, my biggest impression was that there were so many people .The second impression was that there were not many western-style restaurants. One of our relatives sent us to the only McDonald's in Beijing. It was in Wangfujing, and there were a lot of people . Now after 30 years, there's no place without McDonald's (in Beijing), so it's changed a lot .Shopping was different. Foreigners had to go to the Friendship Store to buy things, and then the options were limited there. So it was really like another country compared to the present. Payment must be made in foreign currency then, not in RMB .The Beijing that I came to know in Hungary was a theoretical Beijing, then when I came to the actual Beijing, I found no difference between the Great Wall and Forbidden City and so on I read about in books and the real Great Wall and Forbidden City. The differences were in daily life, because those were details that could not be understood by reading.I think the biggest change in Beijing is in infrastructure, including transportation. As I said, it used to take six days (to travel from Hungary to China). Now if there were a high-speed train, it might take one day to get to Beijing.At that time, Beijing had only two subway lines. Line 1, Line 2. Now there seem to be 15.  We have a saying in Hungary: If you build a small lake, sooner or later there will be frogs living in the lake, and maybe fish in the future.That means as conditions improve,  With high-speed rail, highways, tunnels of all kinds, things will develop faster in the future .“There will be frogs even in a small lake”.