Thirteen hour flights can be pretty draining. Then again, sleeping the majority of the flight makes for a much easier transition of a 15 hour time change and the virtual elimination of September 30th, 2009 from my life. China proved once again that reliability is not a priority in the Orient. Thirty minutes before our scheduled landing in Beijing we were redirected to Tianjin because of "poor weather conditions." On the tarmac, we waited, and waited. Two hours to be precise. Of course, my arrival date of October 1st happens to be the 60th anniversary of the Communist ruling of the People's Republic of China. Consequently, Beijing airport cut off all flights arriving after 9 am. Lucky for us, we landed at 8:45 am, just in time for tea.
The airport was massive, just as I remembered. I hurried down to the taxi-fetch and hopped into the first taxi available. I called the hotel for directions and, like clockwork--always reliable--found out all the roads leading into the vicinity of my hotel were shut down for security purposes.
Goodbye taxi driver, hello God-forsaken subway system. Even the subway system had it's limits. The closest I could get to the hotel was a 15 minute walk. Not too bad when you don't have a 50 lb backpack on and a 50 lb bag to handle.
Much to nobodies surprise, I got lost. In my infinite wisdom I decided that Line 2's stop at Dongsi Shitiao was equivalent to Line 5's stop at Dongsi. Turns out I ended up on the wrong side of Beijing. I guess that's one of the beauties of not really knowing where the heck you're going--you get to see places you never would have in perfect circumstances.
I called the hotel and they sent a bus boy to come and rescue me from the Zelda-esque maze of Beijing. I arrived at the hotel and quickly dropped off my bags in the room and headed straight for Tiananmen to see the parade. Apparently, in China, parades are exclusively for the people in them and foreigners watching them on TV. I couldn't get within a mile from the parade route, let alone Tiananmen. Barricaded for days. I resorted to sitting in my room and watching the display I was so thrilled to be able to see in person--or so I thought.
I'm pretty exhausted, probably because of the time change but I'm sure walking around for two hours in search of a back entrance to fool the government and see the parade firsthand didn't help. I guess it also doesn't help walking through customs watching yourself on an infrared computer monitor hoping to God your temperature doesn't rise above 98.6 degrees in which case you'd be spending your first 10 days quarantined to a room with no human interaction. I passed. My final challenge of the day was to circumvent China's ban of Blogspot, Facebook, CNN, and just about every other website that isn't controlled by the Chinese government. Took me about two hours to figure out I could do it with a personal VPN. And now, I can bring you these glorious blog posts for the next 2.5 months.
I did some research on Tibet, I'll be attempting to connive my way into that glorious region tomorrow when I visit a travel agent. Turns out the Chinese language comes back rather quickly, and to my surprise, I actually got along quite well with the taxi drivers, hotel clerks, and soldiers.
The pictures posted are of a fighter-jet flyby and a stoic, full of pride, Chinese modern warrior. Enjoy. ---Turns out internet doesn't want to allow me to upload pictures. Maybe tomorrow.
Zaijian,
Michael
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