I arrived in Beijing yesterday at around 2:30PM. My boss, Sun Qiang, met me at the airport and escorted me to the hotel where I will be staying at until the company finds me an apartment. The journey to the apartment was a good welcome back to China.
We took a train from the airport into the city proper, then transferred to the subway. I had with me 2 large suitcases, my backpack, laptop bag, and a box that I purchased at the United check-in at the Seattle Airport that served as a third suitcase so that I didn't have to pay the egregious $400 overweight fee (one of my suitcases was 13 pounds over, the other was 3 pounds over. There's a $200 fee for each bag over the 50lb weight limit if you fly international). So, with Sun Qiang's help with my bags we climbed up and down a bunch of stairs and got on the subway, then got off and walked up and down a bunch more stairs and transferred to another subway line, then we climbed up and down a bunch more stairs and surfaced somewhere in Beijing proper to get a cab. Getting a cab in Beijing during rush hour is chaos, and it took over an hour to finally get one.
We made it to the hotel at around 6:00PM. I dropped my stuff off in my room and went outside to get some dinner and walk around. Beijing is much more modern than Chengdu was when I was there 5 or 6 years ago, but the same feeling of walking the Chinese streets washed over me and I caught some serious flashbacks to my Chengdu days.
I slept through the whole night without waking up. I'm a little tired today but it's not bad considering Beijing is 15 hours ahead of Seattle. I walked around some more today and it's hard to imagine that I'll ever get to know the lay of the land here, the city is just neverending.
We took a train from the airport into the city proper, then transferred to the subway. I had with me 2 large suitcases, my backpack, laptop bag, and a box that I purchased at the United check-in at the Seattle Airport that served as a third suitcase so that I didn't have to pay the egregious $400 overweight fee (one of my suitcases was 13 pounds over, the other was 3 pounds over. There's a $200 fee for each bag over the 50lb weight limit if you fly international). So, with Sun Qiang's help with my bags we climbed up and down a bunch of stairs and got on the subway, then got off and walked up and down a bunch more stairs and transferred to another subway line, then we climbed up and down a bunch more stairs and surfaced somewhere in Beijing proper to get a cab. Getting a cab in Beijing during rush hour is chaos, and it took over an hour to finally get one.
We made it to the hotel at around 6:00PM. I dropped my stuff off in my room and went outside to get some dinner and walk around. Beijing is much more modern than Chengdu was when I was there 5 or 6 years ago, but the same feeling of walking the Chinese streets washed over me and I caught some serious flashbacks to my Chengdu days.
I slept through the whole night without waking up. I'm a little tired today but it's not bad considering Beijing is 15 hours ahead of Seattle. I walked around some more today and it's hard to imagine that I'll ever get to know the lay of the land here, the city is just neverending.
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