Building across the road

We have enjoyed open views - west, towards the Drum Tower - across downtown Beijing from our apartment for the last year. Partly because of a large, tree filled, empty lot across the street. But we knew to expect the worst when the trees were all cut down a few months ago. One morning we awoke to find the bulldozers and cranes had moved in and the building work had begun. Not sure what they are building - offices and apartments are the favourites here - but I'm sure we'll find out soon. Building work is a 24 x 7 activity in Beijing so the lot is being transformed daily before our eyes. The huts in the foreground are the on-site accommodation for the out-of-town migrant workers that make up the majority of Beijing's construction workers.

Looks like we will be in for a spring and summer of dust, noise and scaffolding. And what about the view?

Terminal 3 opens at Beijing Capital airport

To the new, Norman Foster designed, Terminal 3 at Beijing Capital airport to pick up Rebecca and Claire. Only a few airlines have moved into the terminal this month and the British Airways light from London was the only one arriving at the international section of the terminal this morning.

The terminal building is spectacular. At 3.5km long, it is reputed to be bigger than all five terminals at Heathrow put together. It was eerie walking round this gleaming, shining building with virtually nobody there. This week, on the 26th, all the other international airlines and a number of the big domestic carriers move in. The serene atmosphere we enjoyed this week will be shattered, never to return. I'm sure that it will be mayhem there for a while.

A Hong Kong weekend

To Hong Kong for a weekend with Alan, Sandy and Aidan. We stayed at their house in Discovery Bay, an idyllic resort-like community across the water from Hong Kong island and away from the hustle and bustle the city. No cars are allowed here - only community buses and a small number of hard-to-acquire and expensive white golf carts. Local life revolves around the Discovery Bay piazza and its busy restaurants, bars and shops perched between the marina and beach. Temperatures jumped to 23C over the weekend, signalling the end of winter, and out came the shorts and shades as Discovery Bay residents sipped their iced lattes and read Sunday papers at the piazza. All that was missing was Patrick McGoohan in his stripey Prisoner jacket and 'Rover', that white bouncy thing, to stop the residents doing a runner to Kowloon

Alan's attempt to leave Discovery Bay thwarted again..

We visited Mong Kok - a heaving suburb north of Kowloon - to see their flower and bird markets. We loved the bird market; set in a peaceful garden setting with stalls selling all variety and sizes of birds (and crickets, grasshoppers and other insect pets & bird food) along with those beautifully styled bird cages. The Chinese love their birds - we often see old men taking their birds in their cages for walks round our neighbourhood.

Next stop was an afternoon at the ultra-modern Sha Tin racetrack. Racing is serious business in Hong Kong with two racetracks in the city - the older, more famous Happy Valley on Hong Kong island and Sha Tin in the new territories. Together, these two tracks take in more than $10B in bets every year - only a little less than all 170 tracks combined across the USA. Unfortunately, not a successful afternoon financially but sitting in the sunshine, drinking a beer and watching racing is hard to beat.

Tac & Alan picking winners at Sha Tin

On Sunday, to Maxim's at the Hong Kong city hall building for their world famous dim sum. This restaurant is totally packed out with waiting times of around an hour over the weekend. The waiters push big trolleys or carry trays around the room each loaded with different dim sum dishes. Diners pick their food as is goes by, a sort of we-bring-the-food-to-you buffet. Great meat dumplings and a must visit when in HK.

Everything is negotiable in China..

From China Daily's ChinaScene column of 'news' from across the country. Where do they get this stuff from? Surely it must be made up.

Water Cube opens for business

Like some spectacular alien spaceship the Olympic 'Water Cube' landed in Beijing last week and opened its doors to the public for the first time, hosting Olympic trial swimming and diving events.

We went to see the finals of the men's 10m platform and the women's 3m synchronised. Not that we are great diving enthusiasts - I have traumatic memories of standing on top of the 5m platform at Richmond pool as a kid but not being able to work up the courage to jump - but we really wanted to see the inside of the Cube.

To me all the dives looked great - I struggled to understand what made it a 9.5 or a 4.5 - something to do with the straightness of entry and lack of splash. The full house, mainly Chinese, audience on the other hand were clearly knowledgeable - the volume of their clapping in direct correlation to the diver's score. Maybe because China is a good diving country - in fact they won the gold in all the week's events except the men's 10m which went to Sacha Klein from Germany.

We did get the opportunity for some nationalistic cheering. Thomas Daley -the 13 year old GB diving prodigy competed and led the field for the first two rounds. He never really recovered from a poor third dive but still managed to come 6th overall. This result allowed him to qualify for the Beijing Olympics in August and, apparently, he will be the youngest Olympic diver ever (14 on May 21st). His diminutive figure can just about be seen here making his last and qualifying dive. Good luck Thomas!

The synchronised was incredible - so graceful and elegant - how do they manage to dive in perfect unison?

Chinese new year finishes with Lantern Festival

Traditionally, the last night of the Chinese new year celebrations, Lantern Festival is another opportunity to set the skies and streets alight with thousands of fireworks.

Fireworks light up the Beijing Drum Tower

We went out for a great dinner - My Humble House - a beautifully designed Chinese fusion restaurant in the Oriental Plaza complex and then for a walk to Tiananmen Square to see what was happening. We though there would celebrations going on but even though there were plenty of people out and about the square was shut off and nobody allowed on. That is a rare sight in itself.

Coming home, the streets and pavements were a sea of red firecracker fragments as families and friends set off huge boxes of fireworks on street corners. One child was happily sitting on top of a giant, ready to be used, box of fireworks which, his mother told us with great pride, contained 100 rockets.
View across to an empty Tienanmen Sq with Great Hall of the People in the background on Lantern Festival

Umm, yummy

It was Heather's birthday today and we gathered in the conference room to celebrate and eat cake. Usually, these enormous cakes are brightly decorated affairs with lashings of whipped cream but today we had a plain, sweet, sponge with a strange looking grey/brown mesh-like filling..reminded me of bits of used Brillo pad. Not too tempting but I accepted a small portion for the sake of politeness. The first forkful reached my mouth just as someone explained that the filling was meat. A meat cake? I couldn't swallow. Brillo pad would have been better.