The next few entries concern my recent trip to Beijing. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!
I found out when I checked in for my flight on Wednesday that I got upgraded on my flight to Chicago thanks to United’s “everyone with status is automatically eligible for an upgrade” program, and since the flight was on a newly-refurbished 757, I got to sit in one of the nice new International business “pod” seats for the first time. I daresay that this particular change would almost make the cost of flying business class worth it, and it definitely would make a systemwide or regional upgrade more worth it.
In Chicago, I had lunch at Berghoff Café, which was a Reuben with fresh-sliced Corned beef and their own root beer. Really tasty. If you happen to be flying through Chicago, I'd recommend a stop there.
I stopped to plug in my laptop and phone to charge them for a while before boarding and I saw instructions for Airport WiFi which said to disable IPv6, VPN, and firewall for best results (but then told you to use Windows built-in Firewall elsewhere in the directions). The IPv6 booster in me was saddened by this, and the security geek in me was appalled by the instructions. So of course I had to take pictures so that I can post them “wall of shame” style…
As expected, I didn’t get an upgrade on my flight to Beijing, but it was just as well, because business class wasn’t actually anything but bigger seats (that reclined further) and better food – no pods on most of the 777s yet.
Coach had standard crappy airline food – chicken and “stuffing” plus salad for the first meal, ramen noodles as a snack, then a hot turkey sandwich (with a stale roll) as a second meal.
Annoyingly, I discovered that I had already read 2 of the 4 books that I brought to read on the plane, so I’m down to one relatively short book and 2 magazines for the return flight. Hope the movie selection is good…
I arrived in Beijing and didn’t even have to reset my watch, because they are exactly 12 hours ahead of EDT. Beijing airport is huge! The area where you go through immigration has a probably 4 or 5 story ceiling and is at least the size of a small football stadium inside. On the way to immigration, there is a gate labeled “proceed slowly, infrared temperature imaging in use.” I have been told that this is one of the ways that they try to find and quarantine anyone with a fever, but I didn’t see anyone getting pulled aside while I was there.
The line for immigration involved about 30 minutes of waiting, but was uneventful. Each immigrations agent has this little panel at their desk with a happy face, a straight face and a sad face on buttons, and the idea is that you are supposed to rate your trip through immigration, but I didn't really see anyone using it. Notably, you do immigration and customs before you retrieve your bags, and by the time I got to baggage claim my bag was waiting for me on the carousel.
Since China is another of those countries that hasn’t really embraced plastic as a payment form yet, I went and got cash from the China Construction Bank ATM, since BoA apparently partnered with them and so some of the fees are waived. Finding it was a bit of a quest, because the info sheet just said “west side of 4th floor” and I didn’t know which direction west was, but I found it eventually. Yuan in hand, I headed for the taxis. I had about a 15 min wait for a taxi, but was able to hand the driver the printout our hosts gave us that had my destination in Chinese, and away we went.
I was trying to get to the hotel during rush hour (5pm) so it took more than 1 hour to get there. Beijing has several of what they call “ring roads” which just like they sound, ring the city concentrically. The hotel is off of the 3rd ring road. Traffic on the ring roads is like the worst parts of downtown traffic and the DC beltway all rolled into one, because it is also a limited access highway that (already) doesn’t have enough lanes but it also has a lot of exits, so there’s near constant congestion due to people trying to get on and off. At least some traffic laws appear to be enforced (people don’t usually run red lights), but lane changes are basically games of chicken, and lanes designated for a specific purpose (turning lanes, bike lanes) seem to be theoretical at best. I definitely saw lots of people using the shoulder/turning lanes for passing zones, and even saw one person driving along in the bike lane because traffic wasn’t moving fast enough in the regular lanes. I also got my first view into the well-publicized pollution that has plagued Beijing as more people have started driving. It’s less brown than the smog in LA, but definitely creates a visible haze that dramatically reduces visibility and makes a halo around lights and signs.
Since I didn’t sleep at all on the plane, and it was now nearly 6 am according to my body clock, I was falling asleep while in the cab, but eventually we got to the hotel.
The cab fare was very cheap compared to home – 112 RMB = ~$15, and that is actually one of the more expensive fares I had during the course of the week. Compare this with the $40 fare from my house to Dulles the morning I left.
When I checked in, the hotel scanned my passport – as I learned when reading the immigration card I filled out, apparently if you aren’t staying in a hotel, you have only a few days to register where you are staying with the government, but the hotels do it for you. Makes me wonder about the security precautions that are in place for that info – do they retain it locally, or does it just go to the same place that the scans from my immigration entrance go? Who has access to the info? How long are the scans retained? Etc… I guess if that’s my biggest security concern in China, things are pretty good.
My room is quite nice – I’m on the 12th floor of 24. It’s a standard size hotel room with king size bed, TV, couch, and desk, plus a bay window that overlooks the hotel’s garden. It makes my similarly-priced room in Hiroshima last year look even more like a closet by comparison. What I don’t understand is that my 5-star hotel room, which is otherwise very well-appointed has, as the only clock in the room, a tiny, crappy travel-size analog clock that would sell for about $15 (or less) back in the States. It doesn’t light up, so you can’t tell what time it is when you wake up and it’s still dark, and the alarm is one of those single-handed things, where if you want to set it for anything but the top of the hour, you have to guess as to the right position between the two hours. I guess a lot of people just use their phones as alarms anymore, but I’m old-fashioned like that, I like an actual clock alarm.
This room is like some other EU or Asian hotels in that you have to put your room key in a slot at the entrance to the room in order to turn on the room lights, and there is a second switch to turn them off from the bedside, plus a set of night lights that turns on a very dim light under the cabinetry in the bathroom and next to the bed. I don’t understand why that doesn’t catch on in US hotels – I assume that the rewiring required would make it a fairly difficult retrofit to existing hotels, but it makes so much sense for new ones! I bet it saves a good deal of wasted power.
The bathroom is pretty standard. It does, however, have one of those dual-flush toilets and the usual “help us save the environment, hang up your towel” placards. I’ve been running an experiment this week, and have been dutifully hanging my towel up after every shower. Normally, the hotel staff either ignores those cards altogether, or they’ll let you go at most a day or two before they swap your towels either way. I had the same towel all week, so they actually follow the process instead of it just being a greenwashing tactic.
Other interesting things about this hotel are that every night when they make up the bed, they lay a bookmark on the turned down linens which has a quote from the book Lost Horizon – get it, because that’s about Shangri-La? There has been a different one with a different quote each day of the week. Also, each elevator has a carpet with the day of the week on it in English and Chinese. At first, I thought that there was a different day of the week in each elevator, and since there were 6 elevators, I kept wondering which day of the week they had skipped. It turned out that actually, the entire carpet is swapped every day, so that each day the elevator carpet matches the day of the week.
Since I mainly just needed to eat something before passing out, I ate at the hotel buffet – sushi, Indian food, Chinese food (though I think they just call it “food” here) Mongolian BBQ, and assorted pastries and desserts. I must have misheard the woman when she told me the price, or I was just that much of a travel zombie, because I was surprised to find my bill was over 400 RMB ($60!). At least the food was tasty, but I would find out later in the week just how horribly overpriced it was.
After dinner, it was time for some much-needed rest.
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