Friday, August 18, 2006: Arrival in Beijing

Ok, in my last post I included a couple potential titles that really go with this post. Let's see if you can figure out which ones!

When we arrived in Beijing, we followed the crowd down to baggage claim to retrieve our bags. I wasn't sure if our agency had sent someone to pick us up or not, since we were arriving in the domestic terminal and everyone else had direct flights from San Francisco to Beijing and would be arriving in the international terminal. While Jason waited for the bags, I wandered off to find a map of the airport. One thing we'd learned from our Guangzhou experience was to pay attention to the map (which had actually literally mapped out where we should have gone, but we hadn't bothered to pull it out while we were in the Guangzhou airport). I couldn't find one-- but I did spy a woman with what looked like a CCAI banner/flag through the glass wall. OH HAPPY DAY!

Jill greeted us and took us to the driver. She chatted with us all the way to the Crowne Plaza Hotel, where we are staying. She gave us the itinerary for the next couple days and told us that we are part of a very large group (38 of us in all!). She asked Jason if he was from China, and he explained he's Chinese but had only been to Hong Kong-- and that had been 30 years or so before. She told us they call people like him bananas because they are "yellow on the outside but white on the inside." Then she turned to me and said they call people "like me" the big nose. Anyone care to guess what that means? Is that a reference to the difference between caucasian and asian nose sizes?

At the hotel, Jill got us all checked in. She told us who to tip and how much to tip. She told us how to get to the grocery store and the shopping area. She reminded us to lock up our passports because we won't need them tomorrow. She even had a calling card for us to purchase (which we did promptly so we could go right to our room and call Casey). It was excellent. I'm so happy to have Jill helping us!
The hotel seems pretty nice so far. We were able to get 24-hour Internet access for 60 RMB per day-- at an exchange rate of 1:8, that works out to around $7.50-- not bad for an Internet junky like me! You can see what our room looks like to the left. There's a king size bed, a flat screen TV, and even slippers and bathrobes for us!

Ok, well, we are off to explore on our own. I need to at least change my shirt before I wander out in public . . .

Addendum: Our First Evening in Beijing
After we got settled into the room, we wandered down the street to the walking, shopping district. We found a "foreign language book store," but it only had books in Chinese. Or so we thought. We discovered later that the English books were up on the third floor and we didn't even know there was more than one floor! We also went into the Canon store, where we found a backup battery for the digital camera. Best Buy told us we couldn't get them in stores because our "old" model had been discontinued (it's three years old). Lucky us to find it because on Saturday our battery died while we were taking photos in the forbidden city!

We also found a giant "kids" store-- with lots and lots of toys. We were surprised there were no Asian-looking baby dolls. We went to look at the baby stuff and were stunned to discover the McClaren Triumph stroller (which we have at home and I absolutely love) was over $200 American dollars!!! Geesh! They were also selling the Beijing 2008 Olympic mascots as stuffed animals. Cute. We still didn't buy any.

Finally, we wandered into the market place. Out front was a set of statutes of a Chinese girl and a Chinese boy. In the alley/market place, they had seahorses on a stick. As you can see in the photo, they also had live scorpions on a stick. And they sold snake meat. Oh yeah-- delicious, I'm sure (just like the scorpions!). Of course, we didn't really try any. . . Jason and my mom did take us on an intentional back alley tour of Beijing, though. Wow did we see a lot of bicycles!

Then we wandered back to the hotel, where we ate dinner and I fell asleep watching an episode of Rescue Me on the laptop (just like at home!).