Beijing Update

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Kay and I both had some days off work for the new year's holiday and we decided to go visit Joanne in Beijing. Not mainly because we wanted to go to Beijing, but because that's where Joanne happened to be located. Of course, I won't back down from a chance to set foot on the Great Wall, but it is proving hard to convince the ladies. Anyway, I padded my itinerary with one extra day on each side of Kay's flights to give myself some more room to maneuver. After all, one never knows if there is a sudden urge to visit the military museum...


December 28th - Adrenalin rush

"Welcome to Nässjö. X2000 southbound for Hässleholm, Lund, Malmö departure time 16:50 expected 16:53 will depart from track six. X2000 northbound for Linköping, Norrköping, Stockholm departure time 17:08 expected 17:53 will depart from track five."

You know it is going to be one of those days when the railway station clerk doesn't even offer up a single explanation or remark to an express train that is soon to be one hour delayed not even halfway through its route. At this time almost 40%!o(MISSING)f the Swedish express trains regularly fail to keep up with the time table, and noone seems to have the patience to throw a tantrum about it anymore. We've just collectively accepted that the once pride of Statens Järnvägar now runs less smoothly than the southbound service out of North Korea. As train 542 finally arrived at the platform about an hour behind schedule it was being chased by another express train, and it led to some amusing and some not so amusing chaos as people scrambled onto the wrong train as it quickly left Nässjö behind. The onboard purser explained that if anyone happened to have got on the wrong train they'd have to get off and switch trains at the next station. The pattern repeated all the way to Stockholm.

I found myself seated next to a guy from the north who was on his way to catch a connecting train in Stockholm, and as we finally arrived he found himself with about one minute to do it. Still, not being the only guy facing this dilemma at least he could take some comfort in the knowledge that SJ decided to hold the connecting train some extra minutes to at least give their passengers a sportsman's challenge. I knew I might not be so lucky. Airlines are a different breed, and as always, it is the passenger's responsibility to assure that his connection is on time. As I found myself in the near empty Arlanda terminal 4 the screens were angrily flashing "Go To Gate", which meant I still had almost a 30 minute margin to catch my plane, and I could begin to relax a bit.


December 29th - No rest for the wicked

You've really got to hand it to Beijing: from above no other city seems to look as widespread and dull. It is as if the entire region has been draped with a thick blanket of grey and brown. Of course the fact that this is the third time I arrive in winter explains a great deal, it would have been nice to see the city in summer bloom, but we were destined to endure the cold again. Although there were an unusually high number of blue sky days it was also bitterly cold and windy. The camera didn't do much outdoor work this time as I simply couldn't work up the inner strength to move about outdoors holding a cold lump of metal in my unproctected hands for long. That's how I ended up with six billion restaurant shots and not much else...

Arriving at the spiffy new Terminal 3 at the Capital Airport I had plenty of time to marvel at the architecture as the immigration line dragged on, the officer not offering a single word or smile. Joanne waited for me on the outside and escorted me to the outdoor bus terminal on the bottom floor from where we quickly departed for a quick dash to the northeastern suburbs, not far from the airport. Taxi drivers typically shun such short distance travel but the bus made rapid progress. There's now also a very useful airport express train bound for Dongzhimen which connects to the subway and a bus terminal. Still, as Joanne joked, there's not really much express in the service. The train slowly lumbers on rails next to the freeway and more resembles a suburban train than anything else.

As we made it to her flat near Shaoyaoyu area I had time to drop the bags and then we headed outside into the chilly evening again. A shower and some sleep would have been nice, having not slept very much on the plane (the patented red wine treatment failed, so I ended up playing a lot of the Shanghai tile game on that dreadful difficulty level I can never seem to beat...), but Joanne had other plans for me. Her company was having a new year's dinner and since this was open to family I got a free ticket for a mighty buffet. It turned out the restaurant was in fact an interconnected gallery of different kitchens dishing out an amazing number of dishes form all sorts of cuisines. Apart from all the obvious Chinese dishes there were lots of Japanese, Korean, Indian and Western treats. Then there were plates upon plates with desserts and fruits. Hundreds of people were gathered inside several big dining halls as well as more secluded and private banquet halls.

I tried to approach the buffet with a mixed strategy, one weird thing for every familiar (and desired) dish I raided. Thus I ended up with weird combinations of tomatoes, chicken tikka and fish skin jelly, or how about deepfried durian, lamb in white wine and jellyfish? As the night dragged on the dinner turned into a drinking zone, with people duelling each other to finish their full glasses of whatever happened to be in them (red or white, or on some occasions a lil' bit of both). Although I stayed well clear of the battle I noted the number of empty bottles piling up on the table and started to sense trouble. Let's just say that not everyone walked from the table by their own accord...


December 30th - The aftermath

After spending the night on Joanne's couch I woke up some time around three thirty in the afternoon. I figued the alarm clock must be way off, until I happened to glance out the window and see the low afternoon sun. Whoops... we were supposed to pick up Kay at the airport at 5 pm and so had to get busy in a hurry. Kay arrived on time and we did not, planes are never delayed when you need them to...

The first task was to dress Kay in a winter coat to prevent her from dying of cold outside, then we went back to Joanne's apartment to dump her bag and headed back out again for dinner and breakfast respectively... Joanne had made reservations at a tourist trap place with a live show for a chance to catch some Beijing opera. The restaurant featured a stage with all sorts of performances taking place during the meal which was quite nice to watch. Afterwards we stopped by two of Joanne's old classmates who were visiting Beijing over the New Year, drinking tasty tea from tiny cups in their small living room. When we got home it was so late that we couldn't be arsed to move into the hotel and so violated Joanne's personal space for one more night.


December 31st - 2008 down the drain

We didn't really accomplish that much on the last day of the year. After a remarkably slow start Kay and I finally headed over to the hotel and threw in our bags in the room. It looked deceptively nice and clean in the sunshine but we got a cold surprise in the night. I also don't know what the deal is with these micro-public Chinese bathrooms. My worst experience was in Hong Kong where the toilet had plain glass walls like some perverted variant of Big Brother for all the room's other occupants to spectate. Sure, there were some tacky blinds to pull down but they weren't exactly that efficient in keeping out prying eyes and we had to resort to switching off the light... Anyway, at least here at the Shan Shui hotel the glass walls were frosted but the sink was placed outside, and the most weird design feature was the single door used to close either the bathroom or the shower compartment, but not both. Hai ya....

Out on town we ended up at a sandwich bar at San Li Tun for an overdimensioned sandwich brunch. Then we spent the day wandering about the fashionable hutong area just off the Forbidden City, ducking into strategically placed shops and galleries to ward off the worst of the cold. This area reminds me of the colonial district in downtown Macau, the historic buildings don't really mix that well with modern day bars, coffe shops and fashion boutiques. I guess that is progress for you. In the evening Joanne took us to a club in the basement of a mall down south. It featured this really cool outdoor plaza with an enormous screen roof featuring marine fish and a huge wale swimming across the screen from time to time. The whole impression was ruined a bit by someone's inexplicable decision to include a stupid golden mermaid in the midst of it.

After dinner we met with Joanne's colleagues Sheryl and Nick from the night before for a new year's countdown in a club or party or whatever called Genesis. The night started really slow, the first hour or so the dj had a crowd of six or so and a little cleaning lady that slowly shuffled across the dancefloor with her little broom and scrape quite oblivious to her surroundings, it was quite hilarious to see. When things heated up around midnight the volume shot through the roof and the gauge in my cell phone gave up once it crossed 114dB. At that time a full of himself DJ Terry Tu (affectionately referred to as Terri Ble) was busy having the crowd cheer him on for his youtube promotional videos while the music turned quite sour. When we left a little while later I was certain the tinnitus would stay with me for the rest of my life but it faded after a couple of days...

Over the following days the three of us took it real easy, mainly resorting to eating and sleeping. We started off the year with some traditional fish lips....eh, hot pot... and also found room for some Italian and of course a stop for some truly delicious Beijing duck at the classy Da Dong Kao Ya, but no really strange things this time. At one point we attempted to visit the zoo only to realize we arrived too late in the afternoon. The biting cold of January paired with the angry wind tearing at your limbs really doesn't invite to a whole lot of walking around town, and the camera stayed silent for most of the time too. One morning Kay and I headed south for an excursion into the open air weekend market at Jinsong, where all manners of artifacts are displayed for your browsing. Bring a furry hat and gloves. I also tried to teach Kay the art of GTA on Joanne's big flatscreen TV...


January 4th - Cosmic granny and little tiger

On the morning of the fourth Joanne went back to work and Kay had an early flight out of town so we had to get up real early for a ride to the capital airport. My mandarin skills may not amount to much, but at least I am proud to be able to direct a cab to the airport without having to flap my arms and make buzzing noises... After waving off Kay at 8 am I had some time to kill before meeting up with another friend of mine for lunch, and I decided I might as well hang around at the airport for a few hours with a good book as I didn't particularily feel like heading back to the cold hotel room or wandering the chilly streets. I managed to read a handful of pages before I was approcahed by an old lady (apparently of Chinese birth) who was happy to find someone who spoke English. She then proceeded to dump her life's story on me and told me that she had been stuck in the airport unable to head into town since yesterday because she couldn't manage to get herself understood. It is not that the service staff don't speak English; I can fully sympathise with them not being able to do much but smile nervously as she lay down her confused and jerky narrative.

Anyway, after twenty minutes or so I seemed to fully appreciate the problem, she had attempted to head into India without a visa and had been sent back on the first plane via Beijing and now she had lost her AMEX card and was hunting for the Nepali embassy in Beijing. She declared that as a cosmic being these earthly formalities were kind of doing her head in. I started to sympathise with the airport staff even more. Once we got the information from the smiling guy at a service counter I took her to the airport express train and helped her to the platform. I heartily declined an offer to join her for dinner and hurried back to the couch and my book. As I waived my goodbye and wandered back I happened to glance at the watch and realized that all of a sudden I was running late for lunch and had to turn back to the platform and get myself a ticket as well. However, I made sure to board at the opposite end of the train.

I mentioned earlier that the high speed component seems to be lacking in the airport express train. That is certainly the impression you get for the first 15 minutes when it doesn't even leave the airport. Overall though, it was a comfortable ride to Dongzhimen especially since it means not having to deal with the greedy airport cab drivers, whom I have had rather miserable experiences with in the past. The airport bus is also an excellent choice, just as long as you are relatively confident in where to get off.

Back at Dongzhimen I transferred to the now crowded blue line, a train that runs around the city centre on a sort of rectangular circuit. Getting off at Fuchengmen station I noticed that I was starting to catch a cold. I suppose I finally succumbed to what everyone else had been coughing about for the last couple of days. The weather was quite nice but the biting cold wind didn't seem to want to give in. The pollution levels are also quite problematic; I ususally don't pay much attention to it but in Beijing it can be really hard not to let it affect you. One thing that especially ticked me off was the huge Public Security vans that are parked in the sidewalk, not only presenting an obstacle for pedestrians but also continually running the engines, presumably to make use of the cabin heating. It is quite heartbreaking.

Right, before long I encountered my new friend and we had a little improvised tiger meeting at a nearby ramen noodle place. It was when we discovered that we were born in the same Chinese birthsign that we quickly adopted the names little tiger and, well, I guess that makes me the old one... Little Tiger is the only person I've encountered through the admittedly atrocious facebook site, and it occurred while I was studying Chinese online at the remote Dalarna University in Sweden last semester. All the time spent straggling to -dictionary in hand- decode her layman's level messages (with limited success) meant that she now saw it fit to blast me with repeated volleys of spoken mandarin. She'd speak two or three sentences and after some slow analysis on my part I would be happy to understand when there was a "It is..." or "I am..." part in one of those sentences, and so on.

After lunch we went for a tour of her local school which was conveniently located nearby, the China Foreign Affairs University. On my way back to Fuchengmen station the big junction we'd walked past an hour ago was now the scene of what appeared to have been quite a vicious collision involving at least one severly banged up car. This was the third accident I witnessed this week, the other two being harmless bumper to bumper action. One such incident took place between the two cars just in front of the taxi we were riding in, but luckily we managed to avoid joining in on the fun. I returned to Shaoyaoyu and walked back to the hotel. Joanne was home from work and looked quite miserable having also caught the cold and some fever. We had some Korean takeaway delivered for our last supper before it was time for me to return to my cold hotel room and pack up my things. I watched some CCTV snacking on my new favourite gao dian bread snacks and some elaborately plastic wrapped gelatinous orange candy.


January 5th - Zen master

Come Monday morning, and time for me to repeat yesterday's shuttle to the Capital Airport. The flight would leave at 9:35 so I had to get up well in time to beat the crowds. After checkout I walked through the local bustling community on my way to the main road to da di; to grab a cab. The morning sky was extraordinarily blue, making me want to stick around for at least another week. Just when I was finally starting to experiment with the language a bit in the shops and markets. In fact, the weather was really beautiful on this trip, we had blue sky most of the days, which is slightly odd for a city I recall being sometimes so coated in a blanket of smog that the sun would just look like a dim light on the wall. I hit the airport well on time and went to check in for my flight to Stockholm. There was a loooong line at the desk already and it seemed to take forever to move, trying the patience of a lesser soul. That's when I started to pick up the rumours and small talk from the fellow passengers waiting around. Yes, that's right... my flight... was... delayed... for... at least... four hours... Cause: unknown. Aaaaaaarrggghhh!

The worst part of travel is and always was, returning home. You are looking at a sequence of boring events that need to take place to shuttle you from location A to location B, or actually, back from location B to location A. This string of events usually includes a number of separate reservations of different public transit systems. And because each step is operated by a company driven by a hunger for money rather than the desire to serve their customers and offer them unique experiences, comforts and spoils and whatever nonsense they spout in their useless adverts and emails, this usually involves a series of non-refundable tickets, carefully compartmentalized and devoid of any responsibility for the onward consequences. So, when the manure hits the proverbial fan and the first dominoes start to fall, you immediately have to start chasing after the tiles doing your best to prevent them from creating absolute havoc.

Even more amusing; because I had used my incredibly poor judgement and purchased my tickets from Scandinavian Airlines the staff made it quite clear to me that I need seek the assistance from the customer service center that had originally issued my ticket. Well, fellow Scandinavian travellers, all of you who have tried calling the Global Support Center in northern Sweden on anything but regular Swedish office hours have my greatest sympathy. When Scandinavian will wake up from their customer oriented coma and realize that a global airline has certain obligations to the people it strands in places around the world I don't know, but when they do I suggest they open a 24 hour service unlike the joke which is in place now.

The other day, as I was sitting here typing up the blog an email dropped into my inbox. It was yet another useless promo-blurb from Scandinavian Airlines, banging themselves on their chests proclaiming to be Europe's most punctual airline. Considering then that my return flight to Stockholm was pushed back four hours without explanation it only reminded me that I ought to call their customer service line again to complain about having my onward flight ticket refunded, since it was crammed into the john and flushed out of orbit. What sort of self-respecting intercontinental airline greets their stranded clients with "for inquries, our opening hours are 9 am to 5 pm...". Hint: open up a call center in Asia, you morons!

Anyway, as luck would have it, Scandinavian also operated a second flight to Scandinavia that day, the Copenhagen flight scheduled just fifteen minutes after the Stockholm flight, so a fair number of us managed to rebook to that one. Of course that meant the shittiest seats in the cabin listening to people coughing for ten hours before arriving in Copenhagen only to pay up for yet another non-rebookable ticket to Jönköping. Just exactly what part of customer service is missing from the concept of customer service? Well, that would be obvious to anyone, except maybe the airline marketing office. Not that the railroad and express bus operators fare any better. Public transportation remains little more than a joke in Scandinavia (Thanks Andreas for having the decency to reside in Hong Kong and help me patch up my itinerary).

So, as I finally moved away from the conveyor belt bag in hand at Kastrup International Airport, having just dodged the last rude bagsnatcher who rammed his shoulder into mine I sat dow with a book to count a few hours until a bus came about to pick us up in the chilly night. I finally arrived in Jönköping at two in the morning, sliding down the empty and icy main street of my hometown again. Zai jian, bei jing!

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Photos

Beijing girls are really carefree
They are not afraid of anything.

New Year's buffet
In slide 1: mutton, fish skin jelly, jellyfish, seaweed, cucumber, chicken.
In slide 2: meat filled bun, deepfried durian, indian vegetables, papadum.
In slide 3: mustard plant, papadum, curry fish, more durian, lamb.

Houhai Lake by night
Freezing and commercial, but still quite picturesque

Ready now?
This guy invented his very own style of masked Beijing opera. During a single performance he'll make lightning fast changes between a large number of masks.

Outdoor aquarium?
This gigantic screen features various aquatic critters milling about high above the shoppers' heads. Very neat and I am glad I'm not the one paying the electricity bill.

Girl and Trolleybus
One of my favourites

Beijing west railway station
Affectionately known as the McDonald's building. Mao would gyrate if he knew.

I paint a picture...
The Beijing palette consists mainly of shades of grey and brown.

What's up with the beans?
Seriously... in Sweden we eat beans as a side to our meal, not as a dessert!