I almost feel like I’ve just gone on a holiday. But nah, I had to work. It was meetings and more meetings with editors from university presses, teachers and professors.
\nThe flight there was good. I love Singapore Airlines – it certainly is a great way to fly! I love the on-demand entertainment system. I watched Swimming Pool<\/i> on the flight to Beijing and was pleasantly surprised to find that the film hadn’t been censored. There were like 50 odd films to choose from! I also had plenty of music albums to choose from for my musical enjoyment. Spolit for choice I tell you!
\nImmigration at Beijing airport was a nightmare though. The lines were sssoooooo long and disorganised and it took me slightly more than an hour to clear immigration! They definitely need a bigger terminal.
\nI spent a night in Beijing before flying off to Shenyang the following morning. At the airport that very morning, the baggage system had a major screw-up and thousands of pieces of luggage were lying somewhere around. The conveyor belts were stuck and people were left waiting behind the counter. It took ages for me to check my luggage in.
\nOn arriving in Shenyang, I found my luggage missing! Horros of horrors. And I had all my documents inside – stuff i needed for my meeting that very afternoon. Thankfully I still had my laptop with me which enabled me to carry on with the meeting. I was also very grateful to have my Chinese colleague with me or else I would have been at a loss. I had difficulty understanding what the airport officials were saying about my luggage because of their strong accents.
\nAnyway, I left Shenyang airport with no luggage. Thankfully, at about 5pm, my colleague received a call from the airport to say that my luggage had arrived on a later flight. We told them that we would pick the luggage up the next morning as we would be returning to Beijing the very next day. I heaved a huge sigh of relief as I would have been really upset had the luggage really been lost. And apparently the compensation is only RMB100 for lost luggage! That’s pathetic if you ask me!
\nI didn’t really go exploring as I didn’t have much time to do so. The only sight-seeing I managed to do was on Saturday morning before my flight back to Singapore at 4pm. I went to the Summer Palace (Yi He Yuan) and the Forbidden City (Gu Gong) before going to the airport. Both were very impressive. The Summer Palace was where the royal family retreated in the summer to escape from the heat. The Forbidden City’s grandeur is undeniable. On entering the Forbidden City, one can’t help but feel in awe of the architecture which is such an impressive showcase of Chinese culture and history.
\nOf course I ate a lot as well! I had lots of interesting food that I hadn’t eaten before. Will describe more of it in future. I didn’t manage to take any pictures as it would have looked very stupid to my colleague and clients if I whipped out a camera to take pictures of the food. But yeah, I think I ate so much that I’ve put on weight! For one thing, I’m sure that all the rich food has led to me falling ill. I’m now down with the flu and cough. Argh.
\nI think the amount of Mandarin I used in the five days I was there is equivalent to the amount of Mandarin I had spoken in my lifetime before I went to China. It was definitely good practice for me! Of course there were times where I found myself speaking the words in the wrong tone, hence the taxi drivers didn’t know where I wanted to go.
\nBy and large I understood most of the Chinese that was spoken to me. It was only when the accent was too strong or the people spoke too fast or used words that were too difficult that I couldn’t understand. If I stayed in China longer, I’m sure my mandarin would improve by leaps and bounds!
\nOn the flight back to Singapore, I was seated next to two women around my age. My guess is that they were in Beijing on a business trip. We were seated in the middle row of the plane, right in front of the screen. I was perfectly happy with the seat that I was allocated seeing that there was so much legroom, and hence I was perplexed when those two women were really upset with their allocated seats. They were saying that they wanted to change seats and that SIA’s service really sucked ‘cos they were expected to share the big screen in front of them!
\nOn hearing that, I was rather amused ‘cos these two are obviously pretty well-travelled individuals but it just shows that they don’t really open their eyes! So when moi casually pulls out the little TV screen that’s stowed away at the side of the seat, the two women got a pleasant shock and then proceeded to ask me where theirs was. So it was the DSD to the rescue! Bimbos!
\nAnyway, will write more and post some pictures in future. Am presently swamped at work because I have so many reports to write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I almost feel like I’ve just gone on a holiday. But nah, I had to work. It was meetings and more meetings with editors from university presses, teachers and professors. The flight there was good. I love Singapore Airlines – … Continue reading