Arrival in Beijing

18 July 2008

Yesterday I travelled from Oxford, England, to Beijing, China. These are my impressions.

First of all, I like to think that yesterday was a bit of a tour de force with some of the ‘great’ world airports. First was London Heathrow. Heathrow is the busiest, most important airport in what was, as recently as 100 years ago, the most powerful nation on Earth. (Is it still the busiest airport in Europe?). It’s not as impressive as you might think. I’m sure that the English weather doesn’t do much for the impression that it gives. I woke up at my house in Oxford. It was cold and cloudy, forecast for heavy rain. The bus ride went through the grey landscape. The first stop on the bus route is Terminal 5, the latest and greatest piece of British air infrastructure completed in the last decade (I won’t even mention its disastrous opening last March in this blog). Given what I’ve seen of airports, and especially given my current surroundings in Beijing, Terminal 5 seems a bit over-hyped. It is small. This must make for closeness to terminals. Never having travelled through there (thankfully, given its short, disastrous history), I can’t be much of a judge. It basically looks like a smaller version of the Denver International Airport. The bus then wound its way through the back streets of Heathrow, small alleys which ran along stretches of barbed-wire chain link fence with hangars and trolleys on the other side, roads which the general public is not allowed to use. Finally one reaches the great destination that it the Central Bus Station. From here one walks through a food court and down a ramp to the passages that take you to Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 4. I followed the signs to Terminal 3, checked in, and made it through security. Immediately through security, literally inches from the fold-out chairs (which I think I recognized from Argos) that the BAA has provides for travellers, one finds oneself in the Duty Free shopping. I bought a bottle of single malt scotch for my Chinese hosts and proceeded to entertain myself in the terminal. In all Heathrow Terminals it is impossible to know which gate to go to until it is nearly time to board. So one makes do with the diversion which is provided: shopping.

There are shops everywhere in Heathrow Terminal 2. The planners certainly had no regard for travellers when building the place. The ceilings are low, the waiting and rest areas are in the middle of the corridors (which one would expect to be set aside for walking), and shops abound. Duty free shops, clothes shops, several WH Smiths. The food court is upstairs, with one grotty airport pub and an overpriced sandwich bar engulfing the space which belongs to Café Nero, whose line was out the door. Here the airport planners nearly tease the customers, providing a large south-facing window looking down from the food court. This would be nice if there were anything to see besides endless grey sky and the occasional plane floating by. I decided to go for a two pound sandwich from WH Smiths, which was highly unsatisfying. I checked my internet for the first time in days at one of the booths which was provided. Finally the gate number for my flight displayed, I walked there, and I milled about until I was permitted to board the flight for Frankfurt.

And then I flew.

Frankfurt airport was my second airport impression of the day. I have to be absolutely fair and say that the weather in Germany was no more complimentary to the general mood than the weather in England. More grey skies, but at least there were pine trees and a nice city skyline to see from the window as the plane came in for landing. I generally curse Frankfurt airport. They have separate security checkpoints for each bundle of gates, which is annoying. Even if you have a connecting flight, they will scan your bag and make you dispense of any liquid you might be carrying. This once cost me dear; I had bought a bottle of vodka duty free at Heathrow, which was confiscated before I boarded my connecting flight in Frankfurt. True, I did open the seal and use it to mix a bloody Mary before landing, but at any other airport this would not have been an issue. It taught me a lesson, and today my scotch stayed safely in its sealed duty free bag. But they still asked to inspect my bag after having it go through the x-ray machine; the grubby German man running his fingers along the seal of the red duty-free plastic bag. The whiskey made it through in my safe hands.

I mainly slept in the Frankfurt airport. I had a layover of nearly two hours, so I got to my gate and stretched out. Before I knew what was happening I heard the gate steward announce the final call for passengers on flight 720 to ‘Peking.’ I ran. I made it.

I don’t think the sun ever really set on our plane. We were travelling so far north, above Siberia, that the sun just seemed to get lower and lower on the northern horizon, but I don’t think it ever quite set. Every so often I would look out the window to see where it was. When the stewardesses instructed people to shut their window shades it was just low enough to make twilight behind the clouds to the far north.

I slept pretty well on the plane, as well as one might expect. Having the seat next to me vacant was nice. I woke thinking that I would look out the window to see darkness. When I opened it just a crack a blinding stream of light shone through. I immediately shut it again. The sun must have been due north for that to happen, for it to be right on level to shoot through the plane like that. Another passenger a few rows in front of me had the gall to open his and leave it open; a stewardess had to ask him to close it because it was blinding the people on the other side of the plane.

I love window seats, because I’m mesmerised by whatever I see below me. Most of the time it’s only clouds, but there was some good stuff about two hours before landing. The ground was brown and barren. If I hadn’t known we were flying over east Asia I wouldn’t have doubted somebody telling me that we were flying over the southwest of the US; it looked so similar.

With about half an hour before landing the landscape got a bit greener, with more signs of human existence. Then we went through some puffy clouds and never really came out. Even when we were clearly descending we were still thick in the clouds; you could see the wisps of moisture shooting over the wings as they extended and curled, the signs of approach. And then, suddenly, we were over what was clearly China. We were over green fields dotted with the occasional warehouse. We were over little green trucks driving on motorways that had blue signs. I presume the directions they give must be in Chinese; I couldn’t see them clearly. When we broke the cloud, or the smog I presume, we were low, probably 1000 feet maximum. It didn’t take long before I was looking down on what I presumed must have been the new Beijing International Terminal, which I had read about and was excited to see.

In contrast with the other two airports I had seen in the past 24 hours, and really in contrast with most of the airports of the world, Beijing terminal three looked really special from the air. From a distance it looked like some strange boomerang, the kind that you would play with in a park. As we got closer and lower its smooth, almost parabolic (or maybe perfectly parabolic) ceiling became prominent. There were triangular skylights that stuck out from the smoothness and stuck in the air, all in the same direction. It was almost as though some giant ninja had just hurled a bunch of his ninja stars, and they had all stuck in the roof with the same incidence and uniformity. It was cool.

I only really realized how large the plane was, despite seeing that it had an upstairs for first class passengers, when we touched down on the runway. You can usually guess when the plane is going to touch down; I guessed completely wrong today. I had expected that we had a few more seconds at least to float down when suddenly the landing gear banged against the tarmac. It was relatively smooth, and a good deal of the people in the back of the plane started cheering. I don’t know if this is a Chinese tradition, a German tradition, or if some people were just taking the piss.

I got off the plane and expected to have a long walk through some nasty corridor to a central immigration office, as one usually finds in airports. In Heathrow you walk for what seems like miles through a labyrinth of corridors, steadily getting more crowded as more and more tributaries lead into the river of immigrants. Finally you find yourself at the fluorescent delta that is immigration control. In Heathrow this means more serpentine lines, low ceilings, and nasty, surly officers behind glass cages. It was not something I looked forward to.

The Chinese do things a bit different in their new airport. I got through the ramp and found myself in a large, open area. The ceiling was several stories high and a cool breeze was running through. This was not some separate herding zone for international arrivals; this was a proper landing gate. It was separated from the departure zones not by a glass wall, but by a balcony overlooking the first floor. Within minutes I had arrived at the immigration desks. The lines were long but steady-moving. The ninja-star skylights allowed for plenty of natural light (or what could be had, given the smog and overcast skies), and a fountain in the courtyard below provided the ambient sounds. Cool breeze abounded; fluorescent lighting was nowhere to be seen. There were smiling Chinese faces sitting behind colourful Beijing 2008 tables, providing pamphlets on the Olympics and the airport. My immigration officer was a bit slow and meticulous, which concerned me as I didn’t know the exact address of Da’s relatives in Beijing, but soon I was stamped through with yet another mark on my ever-filling passport. Each officer had an electronic panel opposite their desk, facing the customer, which had four buttons: one green of a face with a wide grin, another green with an ambivalent smile, one red with a slight frown, and another red that looked downright angry. These would blink after the stamp was put on the passport; I assume they were for customer satisfaction. It seems a dangerous thing, if as an immigration officer you are judged by the happiness of the people you allow to pass through your desk. Aren’t these people there to make people suffer, as they are in Britain and America? Despite these doubts, I went with the flow and pressed the button with the wide grin. I assume that this means the same in China as it does in the western world.

I caught the train from one end of the giant boomerang to the other, where baggage claim was located. My bag was a bit slow coming up, which gave me time to look around and think. There is something wonderful about being in a spanking-new airport. Everything is clean, it is recently designed and therefore designed to be bright, and nobody has had a chance to add those after-thoughts that make other airports so unpleasant. Heathrow, in my opinion, is an amalgamation of afterthoughts. If it wants to keep up, somebody should just destroy the whole thing and begin afresh.

One thing that was interesting, partly spectacular and partly concerning, was seeing some of the airport staff on inspection. I first noticed this while I was waiting for my bag in the baggage claim line. Upstairs, through the glass, was a brigade of about twenty Chinese in white and blue uniform, standing at a sort of relaxed attention with their hands behind their backs, looking forward to a superior and standing in lines. I don’t know what the point of that was. I later saw the same thing near the departure check-in zone. These people are ready for the Olympics in a big way. They do not mess around.

I got through customs, exhausted, and needed a place to rest. There is a Starbucks coffee on the ground level, right outside the meeting point, where I sit now and intend to use as a chill zone until Da and Nils arrive. I ventured upstairs to see the continuing grandeur of the whole place. When I asked at the information where the nearest food was, the polite Chinese woman answered, in respectable English, that I could find a McDonald’s only fifty meters down the hallway on the left. Clearly, as an American that is what I was after. Though I am tempted to see what the Golden Arches have for the Chinese palate I wanted to aim a bit higher for my first meal in China. I didn’t have to look far before I found, in a special fourth floor that was also host to a Burger King, a Korean Restaurant and a foot massage parlour. I settled for the Chinese equivalent of American fast food, serving pork and cabbage in doughey little rolls. I bought three and a cup of iced tea for 15 yuan, or just over one british pound. Considering that this is the airport and prices are considerably higher, I think that I’m going to like eating out here.

I’m stuck in the airport, effectively grounded until Da and Nils arrive, but I can tell already that this is going to be an incredible trip. I have no doubt about it. The sights, the people, the new feel of being in a new place, a new country, a new continent, and in many ways a new world is exhilarating. There are barely any smells here in this climate-controlled, beautiful though slightly sterile airport, but those that reach my nose are enticing. I cannot wait to go from here out onto the streets of Beijing, see the city for what it is, live it, breathe it, feel it. I want to know it for as much as can be known in three weeks. I want to take it all in with a slurp of noodles and miso soup. And I’m doing it with a great friend and guide. How can this trip not be spectacular? I have high hopes, but they are the right kind of hopes: to explore, to discover, and to grow. How can that not happen in a place like this?

I am of two minds as far as being here so close to the Olympics. On the one hand, this is spectacular. The Chinese have been building up to this for seven years. All around me are posters and signs, all around me are people in track suits with fliers and pamphlets. On a screen behind me, which I can see through the reflection of a six-storey window that looks out onto the great bubble and garden that is the car park, flash images of people playing soccer, fencing, enjoying moments of triumph and heartbreak. There is a recurring video of a woman training for table tennis. How cool would it be to see a table tennis competition in this country? Everybody speaks English, everybody is polite. Even as I was going downstairs and outside for a breath of fresh air, waiting on the escalator ramp, the woman ahead of me (who had no official status and who spoke in broken English) asked me where I was from, where I was flying to, and what I would be up to. She insisted that she write down the name of her town, Guilin, so that I could ‘google’ it and pay a visit. It was worth a visit, she said. How often would that happen in America, or Britain (ha!)? People seem friendly here. It’s like it’s been bred into them.

On the other hand, it most likely has been bred into them. I’m get the impression, and I can’t wait to talk about this more with Da, that people here have spent a lot of time and had a lot of encouragement to be extra nice during this, their most glorious summer. This airport is new. Beijing is cleaning up. Factories are closing down to enhance the air quality. There are smoking bans in public places this summer. Everything will be new, sparkling clean, like this airport. Part of me almost wishes that I could see the real Beijing, the one that wasn’t putting on a show for the world, the nitty gritty side of it all. I’m sure there will still be plenty of that to be seen, but it will inevitably be hard to tell what is real and what is put on. I guess I’ll just take whatever this city can give me.

Still, this is a wonderful time to be in Beijing. This is a city and a country which, in my lifetime, will come to international prominence. I may look back on this trip and think that this was my time to see things before they got really out of control, before China really took over. This may be a trip to look back on someday. Which is why I intend to take and keep as much of it in as possible.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Time for some more dumplings.

Final score: Beijing Terminal Three- 1. Heathrow- 0.