Beijing Trip

This trip of mine was the shortest ever trip, but had to be the most eventful.

We were in Beijing for less than 24 hours, and were basically there for one meeting. Yet, the time of the meeting was only confirmed 16 hours before we were due to fly, and I must have made at least 4 changes to our return flight because we didn’t know what time the meeting was.

The day before we left was spent on the phone the entire day, trying to fix our return flight. Flights were full, and after one long day at work I thought I had things fixed, only to have to change them back to the original flights that we had.

While in Beijing, we saw a man who had been arrested. There was a huge crowd in front of the building that we were going into, and this man was lying flat on the ground. I kept wondering if he was dead or had fainted, and it was only till he was hauled upright that I saw the handcuffs and that his t-shirt had been pulled over his head.

Then, there was a group of silent protestors sitting in front of the hotel we were staying at. They were protesting against the owner of the building across the street for inadequate resettlement compensation, and the hotel had the misfortune to be 5% owned by that person. Why they were protesting here, and not across the road, is a mystery. Most interesting, however, was that these protestors weren’t even those affected by resettlement. They were actually paid to protest, much like professional mourners are hired to mourn. There were even children there; perhaps their inclusion results in a higher salary.

We were on Beijing soil for about 16 hours for this trip. Our outbound flight was delayed at Changi Airport, and rather bad turbulence at some part of the journey – apparently because of a bad storm - meant that we landed more than half an hour behind schedule. On the way out, we ended up sitting for 4 hours in the plane before we could take off, as the air space was closed due to bad weather south of Beijing. I don’t usually watch that many things on planes, but on this trip alone I saw:

• Eric Khoo’s My Magic
• Royston Tan’s 15
• The Secret of Moonacre – not great but quite entertaining and had some famous actors too.
• A German film Lila, Lila – it was kinda interesting. For some reason so-so European films tend to be more enjoyable than so-so American ones.
• Future Cities: Helsinki – it’s the only city to have a masterplan for underground development, and is a great example of ingenious use of subterranean space.
• Future Cities: Rome – there’s an unspoken rule that buildings in Rome cannot be taller than Saint Peter’s Basilica
• A documentary on kimono – silk kimono are hand-painted, and there’re those silk woven ones where patterns are woven into the fabric in a very pain-staking process.
• A documentary on China – about how it hires university graduates to serve as village cadres for three years in the countryside in an attempt to improve living conditions in rural areas.

Many have complained about the inflight entertainment choices for this month, but I was quite happy. I think that I don’t watch many movies helps, as there’s always some Hollywood movie I can catch when flying, as well as a range of European films that I never get to see in Singapore. I really do think that SIA has a good selection of TV programmes on a range of topics (drama, comedy, lifestyle, luxury, travel, documentaries, etc) – I enjoy those more than movies actually. 

I also found out that I’ve attained KrisFlyer Elite SIlver status (although Gold is out of reach), and even managed to sit, very briefly, in First Class (spacious with a nice big telly).