Fun in Beijing
I'm in Beijing for a mostly pleasure trip, though tomorrow I'm going to be networking with a big design group that offered me a job before I moved to Fenghua. I really just want to see how the company works, I haven't met any established Chinese Industrial Designers here before. The company is also quite prestigious and I'm curious how their different international design groups work together and for the company as a whole. Flextronics.
I had the scariest flight of my life yesterday from Ningbo to Beijing. There was something very much wrong with the plane. As soon as we accelerated down the runway the plane started this strong lateral, fish tailing motion, and when we took off it was the most sudden and abrupt I've ever felt. The whole flight felt like we were in the worst storm, but the skies were clear. I wasn't the only passenger to have my coffee spilled badly. We didn't start getting really concerned until we started circling Beijing for a while. And the circling was really steep with alternate banking on either side, with the huge drops, ascents, and fish tailing. I was in the last row next to an older pair of business travellers from Finland. I started sweating when the older guy said "there is something wrong with the plane, I've never felt anything like this before", confirming my suspicions. When we finally did our bouncing landing when we got views out of alternating sides of the plane of the runway everyone sighed and some clapped. It got really quiet for the last 20 minutes for so of the flight, except for a few people getting sick. Fun fun. It was an Airbus A380 (I think - 6 seats wide). I was even trying to figure out how the best place to write a note that would survive the crash. While we were flying around Beijing it was difficult to understand a plane behaving so erratically could land safely.
Beijing is fun. I met up with Laurie with whom we share a mutual friend in Arkansas. She speaks pretty good Chinese with the pirate-sounding Beijing accent. She recommended a cool hostel in the hutongs north of the Forbidden City. As we came up to it on one of the hundreds of narrow streets, from a direction I've never come from it occurred to me that is was the same hostel I'd stayed in September 2004. The old hutongs being destroyed everywhere are really cool looking. I'm going to post some photos. Like me in Shanghai she's seen most of the tourist spots a few times, and I've seen a few already myself so we went to the old bunker tunnel system that was built in the 1960's during fear of an atomic war with the USSR after China's war with them in the mid 60's. I knew there had been tension between them, but I didn't know there had actually been a war. The bunkers were extensive, dank and scary. Quite a not-well put together tourist spot, but in its own scary way quite interesting. We were told that every city in China (I saw Fenghua's) had them built during this period.
Afterwards I set out to find another hostel I'd read about. It's way back off the main road so I must have walked 6 or 7 miles looking for it. I had to get a cab finally who helped me find it. In hindsight I should have taken a three-wheel pedicab just because they know the area. It's really nice that everyone speaks Mandarin here as opposed to switching to the local dialect.
I handed the uneaten half of my watermelon with a table of other travellers only to find out there were all Industrial Design students from Norway finishing up a study abroad type trip here in China. I'm enjoying the western company for a few days.
This is where I'm staying (since I can't post photos from this computer).
www.fareastyh.com. I recommed it. 45RMB/night.
I had the scariest flight of my life yesterday from Ningbo to Beijing. There was something very much wrong with the plane. As soon as we accelerated down the runway the plane started this strong lateral, fish tailing motion, and when we took off it was the most sudden and abrupt I've ever felt. The whole flight felt like we were in the worst storm, but the skies were clear. I wasn't the only passenger to have my coffee spilled badly. We didn't start getting really concerned until we started circling Beijing for a while. And the circling was really steep with alternate banking on either side, with the huge drops, ascents, and fish tailing. I was in the last row next to an older pair of business travellers from Finland. I started sweating when the older guy said "there is something wrong with the plane, I've never felt anything like this before", confirming my suspicions. When we finally did our bouncing landing when we got views out of alternating sides of the plane of the runway everyone sighed and some clapped. It got really quiet for the last 20 minutes for so of the flight, except for a few people getting sick. Fun fun. It was an Airbus A380 (I think - 6 seats wide). I was even trying to figure out how the best place to write a note that would survive the crash. While we were flying around Beijing it was difficult to understand a plane behaving so erratically could land safely.
Beijing is fun. I met up with Laurie with whom we share a mutual friend in Arkansas. She speaks pretty good Chinese with the pirate-sounding Beijing accent. She recommended a cool hostel in the hutongs north of the Forbidden City. As we came up to it on one of the hundreds of narrow streets, from a direction I've never come from it occurred to me that is was the same hostel I'd stayed in September 2004. The old hutongs being destroyed everywhere are really cool looking. I'm going to post some photos. Like me in Shanghai she's seen most of the tourist spots a few times, and I've seen a few already myself so we went to the old bunker tunnel system that was built in the 1960's during fear of an atomic war with the USSR after China's war with them in the mid 60's. I knew there had been tension between them, but I didn't know there had actually been a war. The bunkers were extensive, dank and scary. Quite a not-well put together tourist spot, but in its own scary way quite interesting. We were told that every city in China (I saw Fenghua's) had them built during this period.
Afterwards I set out to find another hostel I'd read about. It's way back off the main road so I must have walked 6 or 7 miles looking for it. I had to get a cab finally who helped me find it. In hindsight I should have taken a three-wheel pedicab just because they know the area. It's really nice that everyone speaks Mandarin here as opposed to switching to the local dialect.
I handed the uneaten half of my watermelon with a table of other travellers only to find out there were all Industrial Design students from Norway finishing up a study abroad type trip here in China. I'm enjoying the western company for a few days.
This is where I'm staying (since I can't post photos from this computer).
www.fareastyh.com. I recommed it. 45RMB/night.
posted by Israel Holby at 5:33 PM
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