Arrival in Beijing

I’ve arrived in Beijing, China after a 1 day delay with our flight here. My classmate, Alex, and I are here doing some research for the University of Minnesota- Morris, who wants to develop some international partnerships for the energy initiatives it is working on, including a wind turbine for electricity and a biomass gasifier for heating the school with corn stalks.

I’m still a bit jet-lagged, which was not helped by our fiasco yesterday. We got on the wrong bus and ended up in Dongying, 6 hours in the opposite direction from our desired location, Yingkuo. So we just ate dinner and took the next bus back, arriving at 3 in the morning with a few hours of bus sleep in us. It made for a tough day, but I saw some a region of China that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

In Beijing, we are staying near the Hutongs, a traditional neighborhood with narrow streets on which most cars don’t drive. This is where Alex and his wife, Claudia, lived when they were in Beijing. The air here is a little tough; the pollution hits you right away, but I’m getting used to it. I’m not exactly getting used to the public squat toilets, which I now try to avoid if possible. The ones in Beijing are OK and even flush, but when we left the city, they were more simple and pretty smelly.

The taxis here are all Volkswagon Jettas and Hyundai Elantras and the limos are Audi A6’s and (this one’s for you, Dad) Buick Regals. That’s right- Buick is a luxury brand here.

Beijing is huge, with over 15 million people. For frame of reference, New York city is 8 million and Minnesota is 5 million. So there are blocks and blocks of big residential buildings like this. They all seem to have porches on each unit, which most people use for drying clothes.

We’ll be heading to the Great Wall this weekend and taking an overnight train to Shanghai Sunday night. After a week in Shanghai we’ll return to Beijing.