48 Hours in Beijing

Arlanda airport seemed to be okay and when returning from there to Helsinki, I fell asleep during the flight and missed free coffee/tea service… Besides that small incident all the flights were on time and actually went really fast. At the Beijing airport everything went smoothly: filling the arrival form, queuing for the passport control, picking luggage and walking through the custom – I was officially in China!

Now I have been here around 48 hours and thought to tell my first impressions:

First of all, people: it feels weird to be minority as so far I have used always been in places where western people are majority but now it is vice versa. I have already been in couple of photos with some Chinese people, guess it’s just so fun for them to see “weird looking westerns.” But still I was expecting streets and everything bee actually much more crowded than they have been. It is said that Chinese have always been good for doing practical innovations, one of the best I saw is the gloves attached on scooter / on bike that keeps your hands warm while driving.

 Secondly the language is interesting, regardless those Chinese courses I took during the Autumn I am really confused. The language barrier do exist because here it is really rare if someone speaks even few words of English so the communication has been so far me speaking English to someone and someone talking Chinese to me connected with a waving hands, pointing pictures and using the pen and the paper… I really need to work on my Chinese to make surviving here bit easier. Translation is still on process.

Thirdly about weather, everyone told me that air is so polluted in there that you can barely breathe and seeing the sun is really rare. Within these few days, sun has been shining and I sky have been almost clear. Air has been fine, not at all as bad as I was expecting… To be honest, I don’t (yet) notice even the difference, but that will be changed, I'm sure of that.

Fourth point is food… It is delicious, the variety of have been great, so far I tried for example duck wings, dumplings, noodles, fried mushroom pan etc... Quite basic things as you can see, especially to compare the things that are available: Lamb testicles, roasted duck head, pork heart on a spit and everything else that you might imagine for. Food is cheap: Meal can be found easily in a price range of 2-4 euros. But be aware: being able to eat with chopsticks is vital, otherwise is better only to rely on soups or starve.