Arrival in Beijing

Well, I'm in China, safe and sound. The plane ride was relatively painless. It only turned out to be 12 hours (instead of the 16 I was expecting) and I got to sit next to an open seat, which made it much less of a problem when the guy in front of me wanted to put his seat back. However, I didn't get one of those nifty new 747s where each separate seat has its own TV on the seat in front of it. I managed, however.

We landed in Beijing and got through customs rather painlessly. After finding our luggage we met our tour guide, Sam. He's a pretty typical Chinese tour guide: in his mid 20's, speaks English well enough, cracks little jokes now and then. On the bus ride to the hotel, my mom and I got to meet some of the other tour members. We apparently had six people on our tour: a mother-daughter from Florida, an older mother-daughter from Virginia, and my mom and me. The mom from Florida was quick to express her disapproval of China. I think during the thirty-minute bus ride to the hotel she had four rants about how the location of our hotel was "unacceptable", demanding a place to stay downtown. She said was severely disappointed in the travel company's experience. Note, this is before we even pulled into the hotel.

That reminds me of something my Chinese professor, Zhang Laoshi, once told me. The Internet was down for the entire campus while we were in Tianjin. It was sweltering hot, and the power was not very reliable either. All the while, Zhang is grinning saying, "It's a Chinese Cultural Experience!"

This afternoon we took a walk around the hotel. We found an ATM and went out to eat. It was a pretty good restaurant; we ate fish and dumplings.

I'd keep chatting about the things I miss about China (people squatting instead of sitting down, the way old people hang out) and the things I don't miss (smoking, air pollution, the effect some food has on my system), but I'm really tired. I slept a little on the plane, but not enough. I'm hoping my jet lag won't be too bad tomorrow. As for tomorrow, we're visiting Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden Palace, The Temple of Heaven, and the Summer Palace. I'll try to snap some photos while I'm there. Later.