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)