Beijing Again

We flew 12 hours from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Narita (Tokyo) and the flight arrived exactly on time, but a thunderstorm delayed our departure for Beijing by nearly an hour. Bill was there to meet me at the airport and it was good to be in Beijing again. The city has been busy during the 10 months since we were here, dressing up for the Olympics.

Everywhere beautiful landscaping, banners every hundred feet along the highways, toll booth attendants dressed in costumes, etc., etc. The millionaire mansions that were under construction last fall are now occupied, and the grimy local neighborhoods have been spiffed up. It’s all very impressive…lots of change in short time. And every so often a military style vehicle with guards in camouflage (do they think they can hide on the freeway) and machine guns. Bill says it’s the radical Muslims they are most concerned about.

On the road from the airport two huge new hotels (Crowne Plaza and Marriott) have sprung up, surrounded by several other buildings that weren’t here before. The airport used by Northwest is the "Old Airport" that we used last fall. It is only a side terminal to the new, much larger, Capital Airport.

Saturday morning we drove down to the Upper East Side where the Beanstalk School in Chaoyang District. We managed to connect with Charlotte, the HR director, and so got to tour the school and see my apartment. By some mix-up, which everyone says is normal, so I suppose it’s not really a mix-up, I ended up with the apartment I had rejected. It’s one redeeming feature is the hide-a-bed, so I’m hoping for company to make good on that. The apartment building is called World View or Cando…take you pick. It’s right next to the 4th Ring Road, but my apartment looks to the inner court. There is a tennis court for residents and I hear tell there is a swimming pool. More later on that.