1/31/09

What a day.

 

After about 24 hours of travel I am finally in Beijing. What a weird place. It’s a strange mix of high tech LED displays and run down east European housing. Where should I start? I guess where I left off last entry.

 

My plane arrived at gate 96 as I was munching down on my $8.68 Whopper and fries at the Burger King in the airport. I hurried over to board but they were still preparing the plane, refueling, re-fooding, loading cargo etc. A strange liquid started pouring out of the bottom of the plane where a tube was inserted. No one seemed to notice this for about 5 minutes after a rather large puddle had accumulated below. I could only assume (hope) it was water. After boarding I noticed only 3 screens in front of me, which meant no choice of in flight movies, and perhaps no choice of language to watch, said movies. I dozed in and out of sleep the whole 11.5 hour journey. I had three seats to myself so sleeping was quite comfortable. Occasionally I would wake to food or drink being served. The second meal was a choice of either rice or noodles. The steward asked in thick a thick Chinese accent “Rice or noodles”. I was about to respond to him in Chinese but I realized I didn’t know the word for noodles, so I chose rice. I didn’t particularly care which one I received, I just wanted to use some Chinese before landing.

 

Beijing airport looks just like any major airport; it reminded me of Heathrow airport…before you get to the hellhole that is Heathrow baggage claim. The whole airport seemed shiny and new (later I found out it basically was). There was all the usual suspects: Coach, Burberry, Starbucks, KFC.(wtf?).

 

On line for customs the guy behind me asked if I went to school in Austin – he read my tag. I turned around to the 6 foot something black guy I had seen waiting in my terminal all day. It turns out he played basketball for UT, a Nigerian team, a Korean team and at one point Utah Jazz. He now plays for some team in China. He had a broken arm but was under contract so he had to return to China. As he was telling me this story on our way to baggage claim, it reminded me of a book my dad gave me about a guy who plays college basketball and bums around on foreign teams and the NBA. I told Gabe, my first friend in China, about the book and he said “Oh yeah, that’s my boy. Paul Shirley. Good guy. I just spoke to him the other day…”

 

How….weird…is…that….

 

I got here at night, but I can already sense how polluted it is. The streetlights make some roads look like Victorian London. If I hadn’t heard the stories, or lungs I might have thought it was just fog. Driving is an adventure to say the least. Our driver was pretty conservative, but some taxis haul around like it’s Mario Kart. I want to save this sort of discussion for later entries, when I have a more detailed picture of driving etiquette or lack thereof.

 

OK. I’m tired. Everyone is really friendly, Chinese and American students alike. We’ll see what happens…

 

Word of the day

Seat belt – anquandai - 安全带