Reporting on China II: Beijing (1 of 3)
After my stay in Hong Kong on which I reported in my previous posts, I left the Special Administrative Region bound for Beijing. Flying out of Chek Lap Kok Airport on an Air China flight, I could get a final glimpse at the city’s breathtaking skyline peeking out of the haze lying on the hills of the islands that form Hong Kong. It took only a few minutes until the aircraft reached the airspace of mainland China. This being my first flight on a Chinese carrier, I was surprised to see the leg space on this aircraft was excellent compared to my 12-hour red-eye to Hong Kong. The flight attendants served a delicious lunch by economy class standards and I watched SUV commercials of Chinese car brands such as Brilliance and Roewe. What sparked my curiosity was that the luxury SUV commercials didn’t praise the “pleasure of driving” or the comfort of the driving experience but the luxurious features of the backseat. Apparently the target audience was not Western auto enthusiasts but wealthy Chinese business mean seeking a comfortable travel experience (definitely not behind the steering wheel in Chinese traffic!) when being driven to meeting locations, clients and factories. Every now and then, the sheer endless stream of SUV commercials was interrupted by tourism promotion videos featuring China’s many culturally-interesting places and of course the World Expo in Shanghai.
As the cloud cover waned I spent much of the rest of the three-hour flight watching the landscapes passing by beneath the plane. I saw humongous cities with large industrial estates – the Chinese version of urban sprawl with super highways reaching far into the outskirts of industrial towns – and the yellowish-gray smog that didn’t disappear until we reached less densely populated areas. After a while the mountain ranges of southern Sichuan province appeared. Mighty rivers and fields dominated the landscape for a long time until tiny factory buildings with the typical blue roofs you can find all across China appeared shortly before the arrival at Beijing’s state-of-the-art Capital International Airport. Leaving the aircraft and walking into the air-conditioned and light-flooded terminal, my first impression of Beijing formed: clean, sterile, artificial, perfectly organized and spectacular. Immigration inspection was the quickest I’ve ever experienced maybe except for Singapore. What caught my eye is that travelers are encouraged to rate the person checking one’s passport. There’s a tiny device at the immigration inspection counters with buttons with smilies on it. A laughing smiley, a neutral-looking one and a smiley with a frowny face. I chose the laughing one as I was very satisfied with the quick passport control.
The airport staff is extremely friendly, helpful and speaks perfect English. At several tourist information counters, you can have your hotel’s name written down in mandarin characters so you don’t encounter problems when using a taxi to reach your hotel.
Since I was participating in an international program for university students, I didn’t have to organize my own ground transportation but was taken to the hotel in central Beijing by bus with the other program participants. With the outside temperature at 95°F, sunshine and blue skies, low smog levels and relatively good traffic conditions, we enjoyed the bus ride past four (of the seven) ring roads that encircle Beijing. When entering the 300-tower Central Business District the new headquarters of CCTV (China Central Television) - a skyscraper that looks like two sevens fitted together designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas - caught our eye as it is the number one landmark building in the CBD.
Our kind local guides gave us a brief introduction to Beijing, an overview of the city’s history, some advice on what to do and what to avoid and finally taught us a few useful phrases of Mandarin like Ni hao ma (Hello, how are you?) and Zai jian (Good bye, see you again).
To be continued…
