China, day 5 (July 3, 2006)
… back onto the journals. The "Current Location" is the location the journal is about, not where I actually am (home). All of the pictures are up: Trip to China 2006 gallery (thanks to Jon for the gallery space).
This was an even quieter day for me. My father had meetings in Beijing until about 14:00, so he just let me stay in the hotel room until about noon. That was fine with me as it gave me a chance to go online and chat with friends back home a bit.
I packed, and Joey came to pick me up around 13:00. We went to have something very different for lunch: Domino's Pizza. Actually, I am pretty sure that I had never eaten Domino's before. It was pretty good, although it was a bit expensive by Chinese standards because the prices were the same as the US prices. It think it was between 70 and 80 RMB for the meal. 75 RMB = US$9.
Then we took a taxi ride to meet up with my father at the company where he was having his meeting. I had to wait a bit for the meeting to end, but afterwards my father, Johnson (who lives in Shanghai), and I took a taxi to Beijing Airport.
The security in the airport was quite different from that in a US airport. As my father put it, there are no silly security requirements. One does not have to take laptops out of one's bags. One does not have to take off one's shoes. It was much quicker to get through.
Johnson arranged the flight and bought the tickets for us. Because he flies between Beijing and Shanghai often, he gets frequent flyer benefits on Shanghai Airlines like my father does on United. Although Shanghai Airlines is apparently in the process of joining Star Alliance, so that will change. (That is, then my father will get his United benefits on Shanghai Airlines.) Thanks to the frequent flyer benefits, Johnson's seat got upgraded to first class (although, after the plane took off), and he let me have the seat. It was only a two hour flight (about the same as NY-Chicago), so it did not matter very much.
Beijing Airport is apparently too small for the number of flights it handles, so the plane could not come to the gate. Instead, everyone going on the plane had to get onto a bus to the plane. The bus had an interesting sign on it: (I certainly got some odd looks when the flash went off to take that picture.)
We took a van taxi from the airport because there were a lot of people trying to get taxis and our luggage would not have easily fit in a regular sized car anyway. Amazingly, it was only 5 RMB more than a regular taxi (16 RMB initial cost), and the same 2.10 RMB/km cost. Taxis in China are cheap. They were 2 RMB/km in Beijing and 2.10 RMB/km in Shanghai. That is about US$0.39/mile or a bit over a fifth of what a New York taxi costs.
When we got to our hotel, the J.W. Marriott, we found out that it is an oddly designed building. The lobby is on the 38th floor and the hotel rooms start on the 41st. The idea is that every room has a view. The problem is that means we had to take two elevators to get between the ground floor and our room.
Before going to sleep, we took a stroll down Nanjing Lu, a shopping street which is very close to the Marriott. Although I had had a first class meal on the plane, my father was hungry. So, we found a cafe to sit at outside. As we walked down to it I got my first good look at Shanghai. It is a much more modern city than Beijing. It looks like New York with colored lights everywhere.
We were both tired from traveling, so we returned to the hotel room soon to go to sleep.
To be continued…