Hello Beijing

Beijing, the big cheese, the capital city, the host of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the #1 city in China that the Chinese want to visit. Well, we finally made plans to go in the “off season” to see what all the fuss was about. We tried to plan it all out but decided to keep a simple plan for Beijing, get to the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square and everything else was gravy.

At the airport, waiting for our plane to Beijing there was a tv screen playing what we would call a Public Service Announcement (PSA). It was in Chinese but there were English subtitles. The PSA was about the swine flu. The first thing it said was that the swine flu comes from America, “what a shame”. Huh? The swine flu (H1N1) epidemic comes from the US? Now that took us by surprise to see this (and we knew it because at the same time there was the subtitles there was a map of the US with arrows coming out from it leading all over the globe. I knew there were outbreaks of the virus in the US but there were also outbreaks in other parts of the world (but perhaps an infected person traveled around the globe infecting others like Johnny Appleseed). The rest of the message was about how to protect yourself from the virus (wash your hands, wear you mask, etc.). It was a little disturbing to see this because it put a bulls eye on our back if we sneezed, coughed or scratched. If you coughed, you took a quick look around to ensure you weren’t being monitored and that behind the column there were a bunch of people wearing full hazmat gear to throw you into a plastic covered bubble stretcher and take you away to the local “treatment center” (or maybe it’s just me that gets the visual image of Planet of the Apes where they round up the humans with the nets and the choke collars. Get your hands off of me you damned dirty ape!). We flew China Eastern airlines which is our airline of choice in China, don’t know exactly why but we’ve flown them everywhere we have gone. I like the airline, the planes seem in good condition and the service is okay but the big problem I have with them is their reaction to real or perceived turbulence. Any time there is any kind of air movement around the plane, they are on the speaker telling people to take their seats and not to use the toilets. It’s crazy, I hate to fly so any kind of bump in the air bothers me but this is nothing. IT doesn’t seem to matter to them at all, it is crazy. It’s just the constant announcements about turbulence. Don’t overreact to it and leave people alone for crying out loud. If I gotta go, I’m getting up so just let it be. It was about a 2 hour flight and I swear they made the announcement every 15 minutes. Enough already. Now it’s not like the Chinese pay any attention, they get up and use the toilet when they have to so it doesn’t seem to matter much to them. They are lucky if the plane actually hits the runway before the Chinese start to get up out of their seats and get their stuff out of the overhead bins. Seriously, they will get up when they want to get their stuff and get ready by the door (if you’re not first…you’re last!). Now that should be a bigger problem but they seem to let that slide (unless we hit a bump on the runway, then it’s take your seats, fasten your seatbelts and don’t use the toilets.).

We arrive in Beijing, grab a cab and head to the hotel. For those in the Atlanta area, we all know I-285 creates a ring around the city. In Beijing, they have 5 rings around the city (Five!), and they are working on ring 6 as we speak. We were on the outside of the 5th ring but it still took us almost an hour to get to the hotel. Traffic was a mess, once you got near the highway rings, it came to a crawl. We checked in and got good service from the reception staff. We stayed at a Marriott Suites since it was cheaper for a small apartment than it would be for two rooms at a standard hotel. The room was okay and we were just happy to be there. We planned on heading to the Great Wall the next day and just sat a relaxed for an hour or so before deciding where to go to eat. Tammy found a place ironically called “The Place” which was a Western shopping mall with restaurants and stuff. We didn’t know where we would eat but we knew the choices would be there. Again, back into traffic, it was unbelievable. Traffic never really moved fast, it was a crawl or stop. Despite the ride not being very far, it took about 40 minutes to arrive. We walked around and saw an Indian restaurant and decided that is where we would eat. Ganges Restaurant, it get’s the Dudley Seal of Approval. The food was better than the Indian we find locally and the service was good and they had different beers to try. I tried another Australian beer called Pure Blond which was really good (so I’ve got two new Aussie beers on my repertoire, Redback and Pure Blond). The food wasn’t too spicy, we (meaning me) didn’t want to take a chance knowing I had a long car ride ahead of us to the Great Wall and sometimes Indian food is given a bad rap for impacting the digestive track. We ate everything, Mutton Samosas, Chicken Biryani, Nan Bread, Chicken Tikka and Chicken Tikka Masala. Absolutely delicious!

Afterwards, we stopped at a market to pick up food for the next day and then find a taxi to get us home. This is where Beijing lost us. A cab would come by, we would hop in and show them our taxi card (the Expat’s best friend if you want to get around town in a taxi) and they would tell us something and give us the “wave off”. Either they didn’t know where we needed to go or they just plain weren’t going to take us there. Granted, we were a longer distance than perhaps other places but we were still going to pay them. It took about 5 cabs to finally get one to take us home. It seemed so unnecessary. We’ve had the same kind of problem every once in awhile in Suzhou but the drivers seemed a lot more rude than what we were accustomed to. We had heard some stories about the cabbies in Beijing before we took the trip. I would have to say that they were pretty accurate. The cabbies will take your money and not give you change unless you press the issue. If they give you change, it was to the closest 5 or 10 RMB (so if the ride was 46 RMB, if you gave them 50 RMB, they would claim not to have any change and keep the extra 4 RMB. If you gave the 100 RMB, you got 50 RMB back and they didn’t give you a second look). This was our first taste of Beijng cabbies and it didn’t really give you the warm fuzzies for the rest of the trip but we had 3 days so we hoped this wasn’t a sign of things to come (but it was).