Christmas in Beijing

Spent a wonderful Christmas in Beijing with family and friends visiting for the week. Temperatures, well into freezing, reached as low as -10C as icy winds blew across the capital but skies were mainly blue and the sun shone down.

It was relaxing being in a city without the western, crazy, pre-Christmas rush in shops and nice being out and about during a regular working week in China.

One of the highlights - ice chair skating on Hou Hai lake. The pedalos and electric boats from summer were all gone and hundreds of ice chairs appeared. Two small, wooden, schoolroom-like chairs - fitted one behind the other, the back one raised slightly higher than the front one - on top of a simple metal frame with runners provided the means of transportation while skaters were provided with, what looked like, a pair of long metal screwdrivers provided the means of propulsion. Terrific fun gliding around the lake, perfecting our dramatic turns, as we avoided crashing into other skaters. With a backdrop of the Drum and Bell towers - who could ask for more?
Ghost Street (Gou Jie) with it's sea of red lanterns lit up at night
Beijing on a winter night - all lit up - provides some wonderful sights. Gou Jie (Ghost Street) is one of the city's main restaurant strips and is beautifully decorated with thousands of red lanterns. The new China World Trade Centre Tower - one of the city's tallest buildings - due to open later this year pumps eerie blue lights up into the night sky like something out of Close Encounters. And the stately Dongbianmen watch tower - one of the last standing remnants of the old Beijing city wall - gives a tiny feeling for what the city must have been like before the wall was taken down and replaced by the multi-lane 2nd Ring Road.

Dongbianmen Watch Tower, now housing the Red gate Art Gallery

Is Beijing finally over-developed?

Walking around the Ritan Park area last weekend we came across this massive shopping development - the brand new Ritan International Trade Center.

The area north of Ritan Park - known as Yabaolu - is Beijing's Russian district hence the Russian language signs to be seen everywhere. Architecturally, with its domed glass ceiling and aerial walkways, the inside of this mall is reminiscent of the famous GUM shopping centre boarding on Moscow's Red Square - maybe deliberately modelled on it - but there the comparison ends since GUM is heaving with shoppers.

It was eery walking around the empty hallways - coming across the occasional shop and a few bored shopkeepers idly texting on their mobiles. With doom and gloom filing the China press and more and more news of Chinese company failures emerging every day, it's hard to believe that Ritan International Trade Center will be a destination worth heading for any time soon....

Beijing Airport Express cont...

Obviously, we were not the only ones to complain about the lack of lifts and escalators at the Dongzhimen Airport Express terminal. But for it to make the China Daily means there is official dissaproval of the situation and the call for 'someone must be held accountable' means that heads are likely to roll. In China, this could be literally.

Not really a smooth ride
(China Daily)Updated: 2008-11-19 07:46
The obvious design flaw in the Beijing Airport Express system causes great trouble for passengers and someone must be held accountable for the flaw, says an article on the website www.qianlong.com. The following is an excerpt:
How many steps do you have to climb when you transfer from the Dongzhimen station of the Line 2 subway to Beijing Airport Express? The answer is more than 100, equivalent to the steps of a 7-story building.
The opening of the airport express has offered more choices for citizens to get to the airport. But after on-the-spot investigations, it was found that at the transfer station in Dongzhimen, few escalators and no lifts are available for passengers with heavy luggage, causing them to climb up and down the many steps.
The subway company can't dismiss the inconvenience caused to passengers by just admitting there were flaws in the construction.
When quizzed about the design flaws, the subway company said it had not been able to find the flaws earlier because the construction and interior decoration of the Beijing Airport Express was fully done by a Beijing-based construction firm.
It's clear that it wanted to shift the responsibility rather than try to remedy the defect.
As the traffic hub of Beijing, Dongzhimen is the place where subway Line 2, Beijing Airport Express, as well as many bus routes converge.
The subway station of Dongzhimen took on a brand-new look after years of renovation and expansion right before the Beijing Olympics. Also, the airport express was built to be luxurious and posh. However, good looks alone do not bring comfort to passengers.
A huge amount of money must have been invested in these facilities, but it seems that the construction department only emphasized the appearance rather than the functions.
People may have many questions in their minds. Did the initial design ever pass any verification by experts? How could the flawed design get the green light from the regulators? Why did the builders complete the project without questioning the obvious flaws?
Construction of public works is closely related to the interests of every citizen and thus the builders should take a people-oriented attitude instead of simply worrying about appearances. More importantly, someone must be held accountable for the big trouble now caused by an obvious design flaw.
(China Daily 11/19/2008 page8)

National Theatre for the Performing Arts

Even though Beijing's National Theatre for the Performing Arts - 'the egg' - officially opened at the very end of last year, we only recently visited the building. Not that we aren't supporters of the performing arts - I had front row seats for Chun Yi: Legend of Kung Fu - but opera and classical music have never been great favourites of mine.

The building was designed by French architect Paul Andreu - he of the collapsing Charles de Gaulle airport terminal building - and was significantly over budget and over schedule.


The end result, though, is spectacular. Just a stone throw away from Tienanmen Square the titanium & glass egg sits, as if suspended, on the waters of the man-made lake surrounding it. Entrance to the building is by a glass-roofed tunnel under the lake so you can look up and see the shimmering waters as you pass below. Inside the six storey structure are two concert halls and a theatre.
The 'egg' with Great Hall of the People in the background

Trim in the park

What could be more satisfiying than sitting in a park on a late summer's afternoon and getting your hair cut? This entrepreneurial barber keeps his overheads low by plying his trade in a small park near our apartment. With a mirror strapped to the back of his bicycle and an old car battery - connected with Frankenstein-like jump leads - providing power to the electric trimmer all usual services are provided despite the al-fresco setting.

Look ma, no net

Health and safety often takes second place to getting the job done in China. We were walking down the street and looked up to see these two repairing a vast neon sign half way up a high-rise. With no nets, cables or other form of safety equipment they fearlessly scampered up and down the structure doing their stuff.

Now it's really over

Olympics over; paralympics over. On Saturday 20th all cars are back on the road and construction begins again. It was good while it lasted.

Wheelchair basketball

Team GB and team China line up for the start of their group wheelchair match during the Beijing paralympics. The 'dancing fan' (National Indoor Stadium) was packed to the gills and we were also graced with the presence of China's president Hu Jintao. Unfortunately for the home crowd, their team went down 34-81.

Team GB went on to take the bronze medal - adding to their spectacular 2nd place finish overall and more than 100 paralympic medals in total.
GB practicing at half-time

Every day is a blue sky day

Is it the fact that more than 1M cars have been off the road for the last six weeks? Or that all construction work across Beijing has been halted? Perhaps its because some high polluting factories have been shut down? Or maybe simply because we are coming into autumn..and Beijing's best months.

Whatever the reason - and I'm sure its all of the above - we have enjoyed truly spectacular weather over the last few weeks. Normally August is horrible...grey, overcast skies all day and temperatures over 35C. This year we have had plenty of blue sky days with the occasional, wispy, clouds. We even could see STARS on some nights!

Last Sunday was one one of those perfect, wish they never end, days. A round of golf in the morning under glorious skies and a light breeze. Even though I lost - normally the cause of a grumpy rest of the day - it failed to dent my spirits.
Da Li Courtyard

Then onto my one of my favourite restaurants for a lazy lunch with friends. Da Li Courtyard is a small, hard to find, restaurant in a Beijing hutong (don't expect any help from their website...) near the Drum & Bell towers running out of a renovated courtyard home. The food is from Yunnan province in south west China - so more south east Asian flavours than classic Chinese - including spring rolls, grilled goats cheese and terrific grilled fish. There is no menu and no choice. You are served 8 or 9 dishes of whatever they have cooked that day which is great because you end up trying things you might never have ordered. This is especially true in China where our limited language skills mean that we often go with safe menu choices.

It was just a perfect lunch..every dish was wonderful and we drank delicious Grace Vineyards chardonnay - a Chinese wine (yes, they exist but most are called things like Great Wall or Dragon's Seal and aren't up to much).
Da Li Courtyard

You can't get those big red fire engines down Beijing's narrow hutongs...the fire brigade take a rest on Sunday afternoon in Nanluoguxiang

Beijing airport express

Beijing's airport express train line opened in early August. For 25RMB (2.5Euros) you can take the 30 minute journey from inside the airport to downtown and connect with the rest of Beijing's rapidly expanding subway system. It is one of three new subway lines opened in Beijing before the start of the Olympics.

Since the city terminal is only a 10 minute walk from our apartment we gave the train a go when we came back from London last month. All was smooth until we arrived at Dongzhimen station with three large suitcases and realised there were no lifts from the station concourse to street level. Questions to a staff member soon attracted a crowd of station staff, police and curious passers-by. Apparently there was a lift for disabled passengers but it only went up as far as a mezzanine level. Since we were not visibly disabled and, more importantly I think, it meant someone allowing us back through the ticket barrier - we couldn't use it. A kindly policeman offered to carry one of heavy bags up the stairs and eventually we made it home.

Surely no-one can design a airport train terminal without lift access?
Airport express train station at Beijing's new, Norman Foster designed, Terminal 3. The temperature under this glass canopy must have been 50C during August. It was like a sauna but with luggage.

Its all over..

So, after 17 days and a second spectacular ceremony, the 2008 Beijing Olympics came to an end last night.

Even though I don't think I watched 5 mins of the Athens 2004 Olympics but over the last two weeks we became Olympic junkies. It was impossible to be in Beijing and not be caught up in the excitement of the events and be amazed by the splendour of the venues.
Boris, Seb Coe, David Beckam and Gordo (in yellow square) watch the US win the men and women's 4 x 400 relay on the last night of the Beijing Olympics

Of course, seeing Britain enjoy such success was a big plus. What a result - we held on to third place in the medal table (non-US ranking system; most golds lead) for nearly the whole of the second week and just lost out to Russia by two golds in the last 24 hours.

The final event we went to was the last evening of the athletics where, along with Beckham, Seb, Gordon and Boris, we watched the USA sweep the men's and women's 400m relays and an amazing Belgian woman - Tia Hellebaut - jump 2.09m. Afterwards, I stood against a wall and measured the height. I just couldn't believe that anyone was capable of jumping this high off the ground totally unaided.

And how about the London 'teaser'? We presented the five great pillars of UK society - the London Bus, the privet hedge, rain, Led Zeppelin and David Beckham. How much did we pay Beckham to stand there smiling, waving and then kick a ball into the crowd? And what was story with Boris? Good for him to fly economy to Beijing but surely the mayoral budget runs to funding a suit with a jacket that buttons up and the has the right length sleeves? At least we, and the rest of the world, didn't have to look at Ken Livingston's smug grin as he waved the Olympic flag. London so deserves more than either of them.

Anyway, we have next four years ahead of us for the memory of last night to fade and for London to get ready. I'm sure we will do a great job and I am ready to volunteer!
I'm ready, and in training, to carry the torch for GB in 2012

A great Olympics weekend

Beijing August 16/17th, 2008

To the Water Cube for the morning's session - under a beautiful blue sky - to see Michael Phelps win his 7th gold in the men's 50m butterfly. A controversial finish and a winning margin of only .01 secs..but who doesn't want him to break Spitz's record?

The real highlight for us was watching GB swimmer Rebecca Aldington power her way to victory in the 800m freestyle beating the 19 year old world record. She hit the front from the beginning and just steadily pulled away from the field (is that what you call it in swimming? or only horse racing) just giving a little ground in the closing 50m but it was far too late for anyone to catch her.

Luxury apartments overlooking Olympic Green. rumour is that Bill Gates bought here

A number of countries have set up hospitality venues for sponsors to entertain their guests as well as to provide relaxation facilities for athletes, their families and visiting nationals. We visited a couple - Holland Heineken House (guess the sponsor) - a vast beer hall sort of place set in the grounds of the Beijing Agricultural College where we seemed to be the only people not dressed head to toe in orange and the UK's 'London House' - a showpiece organised by the Major of London's office to highlight London as a tourist destination and, of course, venue for the 2012 games. The setting was the elegant surroundings of a private members dining club - Shi Cha Hai - situated on the bank of Hou Hai lake. Apparently, the originally planned venue of Ritan Park had been commandeered as one of the officially approved 'protest zones' during the games. Guests walked round an exhibition of London history whilst snacking on mini-pork pies and pate.

In the evening we were at the Birds Nest. The building is just spectacular, with great views from everywhere. We saw the 100m final and the incredible - seemingly casual - run from the Jamaican Usain Bolt.

Home on the subway. Beijing opened 3 new subway lines just the week before the games started with one coming straight into the Olympic Green and a short walk from the national stadium and the water cube. The subway was free and they managed to move tens of thousands of spectators through the station and onto trains smoothly and efficiently with virtually no waiting.

Entering Olympic Green subway station

Sunday was a recovery day for us but we had been bitten by the Olympic bug and watched, transfixed, on TV as Michael Phelps made Olympic history by winning his 8th gold medal. By now, Tac was receiving regular update emails from team GB informing her of our medal progress. She saw that two British cyclists were racing for gold and silver in the individual pursuit later that afternoon so - with no tickets, but armed with cash - we jumped in a cab and headed across town to the veladrome. I had never seen track cycling before. It's really exciting and spooky at the same time. The sleek, skin tight suits; the aerodynamic pointy helmets and the bikes with solid wheels. It's something straight out of a sci-fi movie. Only the ray guns are missing. We saw Rebecca Romero win gold for GB and her team mate Wendy Houvenaghel take the silver. It was great to see 2 Union Jacks raised during the medal ceremony.


The highlight at the Laoshan Velodrome, however, was the men's team pursuit. Two teams of 4 riders each chase each other round the track. It's so elegant, so visually appealing - you can't take your eyes off it. The British team set a new world record in their semi-final heat and went on to win the gold the following day.

Incredible, by Sunday night team GB was 3rd in the medal table! Enjoy it while you can.

Overall, the organisation of the Olympics seem superb. Getting in and out of the Olympic Green wasn't too bad - usual security checks - but we were through it all in about 20 minutes on both occasions. The facilities are excellent and the thousands of volunteers in their in their blue and white Olympic shirts and hats are doing a terrific job in helping people get through with minimum fuss. The volunteers in the velodrome were spectacular - the most helpful and friendly we saw anywhere. They even lined up and sang as the spectators left the the venue at the end of the evening. Only the food selection has been disappointing. Lots of food and drink sales areas but a pretty limited selection to be had. The Bird's Nest has beer-only sales points and we got to know them well.

Beijing is looking wonderful right now. Flags line all the main roads; huge Olympic banners cover the half-finished buildings sitting in the middle of construction sites abandoned for two months during the games; and no construction noise or dust. The streets are relatively clear of traffic, cabs are still easy to find and the weather has been great. I hope the many visitors and press appreciate the effort that has gone into these events - not just the substantial money thrown at it by the government - but the hard work and dedication that ordinary people of Beijing have put in to make these games a success for the participants.

Olympic medal count

Apparently the IOC doesn't officially sanction any sort of medal tally...presumably because the Olympics are about participation and not just a nationalistic sporting land grab. But, of course, Olympic media coverage the world over features medal tables.

Not surprisingly, even this simple statistics gathering exercise is open to interpretation. The US media ranks based on total medal count; the Chinese and many others across the world rank based on gold medals won. This conveniently allows for two countries to claim top spot.

Beijing's cab drivers - we are ready!

They have been studiously listening to their 'English for cab driver' tapes for months. They know how to say 'don't leave anything on the back seat' and 'we don't accept tips'. Now in the final step of preparation, Beijing's army of cab drivers has been issued with a smart uniform of yellow shirt, blue trousers and blue and yellow striped tie. At last, they can also proclaim - 'we are ready' - to face the swarms of foreign tourists arriving in Beijing for the Olympic Games. But why the tie? Its 35C out there - give them a break. At least they don't have to wear peaked chauffeur caps.

Dinner at the Great Wall

To the Great Wall for the annual ANZA charity dinner. The Ju Yong Guan pass is a beautiful section of the wall about 60k outside of Beijing. They have built a small museum there and a reception area where our dinner was held.

The scenery was dramatic and wonderful; we drank and ate and danced with the wall climbing steeply behind us; a short rain shower cleared the skies and we saw stars for the first time in months. Definitely the place to throw a party.

Wenchuan earthquake

I was in a meeting in our Chengdu office, 100k from the epicentre, when the Wenchuan earthquake hit. We immediately knew what it was..the building started shaking and people ran for the doors. I was trying to remember what you were meant to do in an earthquake. I remembered something about standing in a doorway or getting under a desk - but couldn't remember if that was for a earthquake or a tornado.

We started to evacuate the building. The ground was still shaking but you could walk without difficulty and, for no reason I can explain, I never thought the building was going to collapse. We were in a low rise - top floor of a 5 storey building. I walked out onto the roof terrace and looked across the city. Everything seemed ok - no columns of smoke, no signs of collapsed buildings - but the ground was still shaking - it had been at least 5 minutes by now. I walked down the emergency stairs to see the streets full of people. Everyone was very anxious - they were all trying to phone their families and no calls were going through. The shaking finally stopped.

All the buildings around us in the Chengdu hi-tech zone were still standing. We told the staff to go home and find their families. I went back into the office to collect my briefcase and someone dropped me off at the hotel, a few minutes away. But they weren't letting anyone in - they were worried about aftershocks - so I sat down on a bench in front of the lobby and fired up the laptop to see if I could get a wireless connection to the internet through the hotel. Stupid thing to do in hindsight..sitting in front of a 28 floor glass building waiting for a possible aftershock.

The BBC and CNN websites were showing the first news reports. Four reported dead. After about an hour it went up to 100. A crowd of young Chinese gathered round me and we looked at the news websites together. Still the hotel wouldn't let us in. They moved everyone to an outdoor garden a hundred metres away. They brought out tables and chairs and bottles of water. They were preparing for a long wait.

I sat down at a table with a couple of Americans in town on business and a Chinese couple who lived in Chengdu and had come to visit friends in the neighbourhood. They were waiting for the traffic to calm down before heading home. We chatted and exchanged stories. Their daughter was attending an international school and they were planning on her going to university in England. He brought some beers from his car and we talked and joked - me struggling in Mandarin and him in English.

By now there were at least 500 people in the garden. Some were playing cards, others eating and drinking. At the table next to us was a family in fluffy hotel bath robes - presumably enjoying a swim when the quake struck. Occasionally, the ground shook with a mild tremor. Everyone would stop and wait. It would pass and we would carry on. It was a bizarre situation. Sitting outside in the warm evening air, drinking beer, eating hotel-supplied pot noodles - there was a real buzz in the air that I can't explain. A mix of tension and excitement - after all we had experienced the earthquake, we were safe.

It would be at least 24 hours before the reports started coming out of Wenchuan and the true scale of the devastation and horrific loss of life started to become clear. While I had been sitting in that garden getting irritated that they wouldn't let us back into the hotel, tens of thousands had died in the mountains nearby.

I saw a map of the earthquake zone later that week on the BBC web site. The fault line ran northeast/southwest through the epicentre. Chengdu - a city of 10m people - was just 100kms to the west of the fault line. I realised then just how lucky I had been and, unbelievable as it was, how much worse this tragedy could have been.

Beijing noodles

Pulling noodles

Beijingers love their noodles and they don't come much better than at 'Noodle Loft' where the chefs pull, stretch and even slice individual noodle strands off a block using a single chopstick. My favourite are the short, wheat noodles with tomato and egg.
Stretching noodles

Slicing noodles

Building across the street II

Mid March

Mid May
Two months on and work progresses. The foundations are now dug and the concrete poured. Fleets of trucks line up at sunset to fill up with earth and take it off to some place where, presumably, they need earth.. The generators run through the night emitting a low buzz that is just loud enough to disturb your sleep. Rumour is that all building works will stop mid July for two months to reduce pollution during the Olympics which should bring some relief.

Legation Quarter

Built following the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Beijing's Legation Quarter was established by foreign powers who forced the Qing government to accept the creation of a 'state-within-a-state'.

This 200 acre compound - just a kilometre or so south of the Forbidden City - was out of bounds to the Chinese and housed British, French, Russian and Japanese legations, amongst others, as well as banks, hotels and other trappings required to provide a home-from-home for the 500 or so foreign business and government personnel living there.

Today, because of its central location, much of the Legation Quarter has been taken over by Chinese government departments. The Supreme Court of China building is here as well as the office of the Major of Beijing. The original buildings can only be viewed at a distance through guarded gates. One of the remaining, accessible, buildings is St. Michael's church which still houses an active Christian community and opened at the end of 80's for regular services.

During our walk along the pleasant streets of the quarter, full of mature trees and gardens, we came across the Beijing Police Museum, a four storey building - originally the Bank of New York - tracing the history and heroics of Beijing's finest. Entry was a modest 5RMB (50€ cents), but for an additional 15RMB (1.5€) you got a smiling policeman key ring, a lapel badge and a go at the police laser shooting range - a full Dirty Harry experience with video clips of villains jumping out from behind buildings and firing at you. This was a opportunity we couldn't miss!

Are you feeling lucky, punk?