Beijing - First Impressions

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Getting the cheapest flights to Beijing from Vietnam meant having to make a few more stops along the way - the overnight at Singapore and then another domestic flight within China… three flights all up to travel only about 7 hours! The result of this process meant that we spent most of the last 36 hours in airports… today we have been hanging out at Guangzhou airport mostly… we had a long wait until we had to catch our next flight to Beijing.

We left Singapore this morning, about an hour before the embargo was lifted and the final book of Harry Potter went on sale. An hour before!!! We were so disappointed ☹ We could see all the wrapped-up pallets of the books, just waiting to be opened and sold and read, yet there was no way we could get our hands on them!!! Talk about frustrating… and then, further frustration when there was not a Harry Potter book to be seen at Guangzhou! We traipsed the halls, searching everything that even looked remotely like a bookstore but alas and alack all we could find was Chinese propaganda for sale. No Harry. We thought we got close at Beijing Domestic Airport, when we saw a man walking off in the distance carrying a Harry Potter bag, but despite our best efforts we couldn’t find the source. We are still holding high hopes for picking up a copy in the city…

Aside from the thickness of the pollution that was immediately obvious as it greyed and blurred even our close surroundings, we got our first impressions of Beijing from a taxi ride. Winding for 10 minutes through dirty crowded dilapidated streets with unsurfaced roads, random animals, shanty houses and seemingly poverty stricken people, suddenly to emerge through a tiny little gap, with no warning, onto a sky-scraper lined and perfectly manicured modern main road characterised by shiny glass and marble, big hotels and fancy shops. We could have been in a different city. The juxtaposition of these two environments existing within such close proximity to one another highlighted the “contradiction” that people seem to talk about when they describe Beijing. Had the taxi driver not taken us down this route I don’t think that we would have been aware that this hidden community even existed. It seems that China is doing its best to maintain a façade of wealth and prosperity in preparation for the 2008 games. We also noticed a lot of construction work with large blocks of land being cleared and new structures being erected in many places. Perhaps that part of the city that we drove through might not be there for much longer.

There were a few dramas with our hostel when we arrived. Despite our booking they didn’t have space for us. In the end, we got put in a double room for the four of us… which they put an extra mattress in… we are just glad to have somewhere to sleep!

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