China!
Trip Start
Jul 17, 2008
1
4
26
Trip End
Aug 16, 2008
Beijing,
China
Friday, July 18, 2008
We approach Beijing from the north coming across Russia and then Mongolia (no they couldn't just drop me off). Lynn, Matt and I start to get more and more excited. When we start our approach, we're glued to the windows.
The first thing we notice is the smog. There's a lot of it. Everything is in this haze. You've seen the pictures. If this is improved for the Olympics, they still have a bunch of work left to do.
We get off the plane and head off into the airport. The airport is huge. Enormous. Terminal 3 was just built for the Olympics and I think they are not using Terminals 1 and 2. There's a monorail that links the actual terminal with the arrivals/departures checkin building.
Clearing immigration was a lot easier than I expected. After all the hassle getting my visa for China (they wanted a note from my employer indicating I was on vacation!) I expected more difficulty. I think it helped that the agent obviously spoke absolutely no English at all. Too much trouble to raise any concerns with my visa I suppose. Works for me.
In America at airports you see men in uniform with big guns. Often though, they're looking relaxed leaning against walls, chatting with each other or generally looking casual. It's often not very intimidating. In China, their security has no guns but they are standing at attention with their arms behind their back. This is very formal and VERY intimidating.
When workers change shifts (x-ray screeners for example), you can see them coming a mile away. They march in formation to their respective stations. It is quite the scene to see and very interesting. Imagine trying to get TSA screeners to do anything in coordination?
I made an assumption. My assumption was that because of the Olympics English would be a little more prominent. Agents and staff would know basic words to help us ignorent foriegners to where we need to get. No so I discovered. After picking up my bags I went to the hotel desk to find out if my airport hotel had a shuttle. Lynn and Matt headed off to a taxi to go downtown so I was on my own. My hotel did have a shuttle! It's at level 1 C08. I head off to level 1. There are a bunch of shuttle buses taking passengers. So far so good. But there are no markings on the poles. And each bus seems to go to downtown Beijing. Ugh. I wander around a little bit before realizing there has been some sort of miscommunication. I head back up to the accomodations desk for clarification. There I am unable to fully communicate that the bus is not on level 1. She calls the hotel and I'm put on with them. The first person I talked to was very nice. But I just couldn't get through that I knew about the shuttle already, I needed to know where the pickup point was. Finally the fluent-English receptionist was located, came on the phone and explained that it was level B1 C08-06. Armed with this information I wandered off toward the parking area. 5 minutes later I was at the bus stop. Or at least I thought I was. Nothing was clearly marked 'Sino-Swiss Hotel' but there were stops for busses. My bus showed up 20 minutes later and I was on my way to the hotel.
The route to the hotel was through a mixture of highways and local roads. On each, there were lots of people on bicycles and walking. They had huge bike lanes - dedicated. Not a line on the road separating cars from bikes but an entire lane as wide as a car lane with a curb separating them from cars. Off in the distance a huge bike parking lot was visible on airport property. I wonder if Norwalk is going to be investing in bike lanes like this anytime soon?
The hotel was selected for two reasons. The first is that it was close to the airport. The second is for comfort. After the long 13 flight, a good night's sleep is a must. I checkin and ask if Alex (my brother) is already there. Again after some confusion, I discover he is in and he's 4 doors down from my room. I head up to the room drop my bags off and knock on Alex's door.
Alex and I see each other 3-5 times a year at most. It was very bizarre to meet him in China.
We head off for dinner. We decide on the hotel chinese restaurant. Other choices were wraps and Japanese. The restaurant itself would have been described as 'cheesy' if it had been in North America. We wondered if it was done that way in order to give tourists what they expected to see. We stay away from pigeon and pig stomach sticking with chicken and beef for the first night. There will be plenty of time to experiment with new flavours and tastes.
After dinner we head to the martini bar for a nightcap. The live music consists of two asian women (Filipino?) in go-go outfits and a man on keyboard. The music consisted of a range of genres all done in karaoke style. No one was applauding at the end of the songs, a courtesy to performers of any type, so Alex and I applauded a little. No one in the bar joined in.
In English tone reflects emotion or attitude (anger or sarcasm for example). In China tone is a part of the word. So something spelled "ma" means something different if you pronounce it ma, maw, mae. Something as simple as 'thank you' kept us guessing all evening how to pronounce it properly. It's spelled xiexie but pronounced something like shi-eh-shi-eh or see-eh-see-eh. The tonal subleties eluded us and still do. We settled on either since either seem to be understood by our hosts.
After some drinks Alex and I headed off at around 11 to our respective rooms, and prepared for our 5 AM wake up.
