Surfarama

This post has taken a while to get out the door, but it probably isn’t completely a bad thing because now I can reflect on my trip to Beijing without gushing too much.

As an undergrad I studied some Chinese economic history and I’ve wanted to visit mainland China ever since. I’ve been to Hong Kong on business a bunch of times and have always loved that, but never been to China proper before now.

The timing was pretty good too, we managed to get a great deal on Air New Zealand’s inaugural direct flight into Beijing which was kinda cool with the CEO, Rob Fyfe, and NZ’s Minister of Tourism, Damien O’Connor, onboard to celebrate the opening the of the new route. We even had a Maori welcome party at the Beijing end…

Beijing is a cool city. Arriving at the new Beijing Airport, one of the first things you notice is the architecture…the new airport is the largest airport building in the world and is quite stunning. Driving into the city you notice just how much new development has been going on, and how much of it is really interesting. The Birdsnest and Icecube are amazing, but are not the only ones…the Airport, CCTV and Beijing Opera House buildings are all noteworthy amongst loads of others.

No question Beijing has an issue with smog, but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. On good days the sky was clear and blue, although you did still have a hazy horizon to remind you that you were in a big ‘ol city with something approaching 20M people. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the smog in Beijing is not much worse than any other similar sized city. If you ride the Tube in London for a day you’ll appreciate atleast that Beijing isn’t the only city in the world with pollution issues.

We had a weekend to look around before getting down to business and were lucky enough to have a local, Mr Jiang, to show us around on Saturday. We certainly saw more of the city than we would have had we been getting around ourselves. We checked out the main Olympic venues, Tiananmen Square, the new Apple Store which opened the same day and had lunch at a well known restaurant featuring some Northern Chinese cuisine. I tried the marinated Jellyfish which definitely has an unusual texture but is very tasty. In the afternoon we checked out the Beijing Opera House and spent a few hours walking around the Emperors Summer Palace. A bloody full day by any measure.

On Sunday we headed up to the Great Wall and checked out the Ming Tombs on the way, before heading out for a killer duck meal at what I’m told is the oldest Duck restaurant in Beijing. I had scorpions as a starter, which I think had some fairly positive physiological effects on me (more on this later).

The rest of the week was taken up with business, which was really interesting in itself, but we did manage to squeeze in a quick nosey around the electronics shopping district near the Baidu office (think floor after floor of electronics stores featuring everything under the sun), and a couple of hours wandering around the Forbidden City which was fabulous. I did the whole tourist thing with the audio guide and had a full on history lesson. Recommended.

A couple of other great experiences…Over dinner the conversation somehow turned to wine and Mr Jiang invited me to try some traditional Chinese ‘wine’. Sounded good, except there is a fairly large gap between his definition of wine and my own. What he was actually offering me was a traditional grain based liquor which I think is commonly known as Baiju or Shaojiu (Wikipedia entry), and this stuff is strong enough to fell an elephant. Seriously I am pretty sure you could run your car on it. I was presented with a mini bottle of it at lunch time and was able to manage a few sips before I could start feeling the effects. It is typically in the order of 53% Alcohol by volume and is most certainly an acquired taste. Apparently there are parts of China (in the North) where they commonly drink Baiju for breakfast…those must be some hard men. I should also point out that I also tried some locally made red wine which was really good.

Another must do are the outdoor food stalls which you’ll find around here. We went on my last night in Beijing. They are super busy and serve some amazing food, including Silk worm kebabs (not bad), scorpions (yummy) and other delicacies like snake on a stick (wish I had tried it) and cow’s intestines (OK, but not my fav). Because they are so accessible and near many of the big hotels they are popular with the tourists but still worth checking out for an interesting, cheap, meal.

So yeah, overall I loved Beijing. The people were extremely friendly. My workmate, Allen, did an outstanding job arranging everything so we got very cheap hotels accommodation and got to see a huge amount in busy week. And the business was good too. Couldn’t ask for more, and hopefully will have a chance to get back in the medium term too.