Beijing

Spring has begun to arrive here: white and purple blossoms are out, though the trees are still bare. On first impressions, Beijing is a jaw-dropping place, not so much by its style than by its scale. Everything is everywhere: people, buildings that stretch up and sideways, more people, boulevards ten lanes wide, an airport that seems to be the size of Delaware.

The city center goes on forever -- think of Bangkok times 20. Many of the spots best known to tourists -- the Forbidden City, Tienanman Square, the Great Hall of the People -- are close to each other, but most of the rest require taxi or subway rides from one to the other.


It is about a mile from my hotel to Tienanmen Sq, and yesterday's weather was perfect: sunny, 75 degrees, just a hint of a breeze. The walk was a good one: I took one of the small alleyways (hutongs) instead of the main street, and that was a good choice: storefronts everywhere selling groceries, bric-a-brac, cooked [and decidedly unidentifiable] food, and plenty of people of all ages ambling along, a hotel with a seemingly ironic name, and who knows what all else.

Tienanmen Square defies description. When you talk about "scale," TS is at one end of some scale, and I have no clue what that scale might be. It is rectangular, a lot of football fields wide by many times more football fields long. It's mostly open except for a few monuments scattered here and there, a big building in the middle, megazillions of people hanging around, and, maybe above all, the slightly faded picture of Chairman Mao Zedong overlooking the scene. Other than the need to pass quickly through a security checkpoint to enter the Square, there's little or no visible security presence.

This is not a beautiful city on a macro level, not in the way that Paris is strikingly beautiful, or that the New York skyline or Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor are beautiful. But as you peel away the layers, it becomes more and more interesting. Not many older buildings have survived, and until recently those that were built were created for function, not for design. That has changed: like crocuses sprouting up in expanses of dead and matted grass, new and interesting buildings dot Beijing's cityscape.


I don't know how qualified I am to be an architecture critic (Art Vandelay was my classmate at Architecture School), but some of the buildings strike me as more successful than others. This is a new office building a block from my hotel, and I think it's a welcome sight. It looks sturdy and functional, fits in as if it has been there all the time, yet is has a certain panache that says "I'm a bit special." Not a bad place to work or to notice as a landmark while you're stuck in traffic.

I'm less enthused about the National Grand Theater, an enormous place that is more or less Beijing's Lincoln Center (3 huge performance spaces under a single titanium dome). It certainly catches your eye, but I don't know that the design is timeless: 50 years from now, will people marvel at it, as they do for the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower, or will they roll their eyes and hold their noses, as they do for the Pompidou Center?

I'm at the Grand Mercure Xidan hotel, a good but certainly not top-notch place. It was incredibly cheap ($45/night, prepaid, during a 50%-off sale that the Accor chain ran about a month ago). It's 5 minutes from the Xidan subway stop and walkable to the Tienanman area, so the location is excellent. Staff are pleasant and speak English unusually well; the clientele is overwhelmingly Western.






I am not staying at the Xinyu Wonderful Hotel, but my guess is that it’s got its merits and is extremely affordable.







Getting here from Boston was even more of a pain that expected, due to horrendous weather between Boston and NY on Friday. What should have been the simplest part of the trip - the shuttle from Boston to La Guardia -- turned out to be the most troublesome. Sparing you most of the details, I got to Logan at 3 and checked in for the 4pm shuttle. That one got canceled, and I flew to New York on the 5pm shuttle which boarded at 6.30 and arrived at 8.45. My suitcase, unfortunately, did not take that flight. Happy ending: suitcase showed up on the 8pm shuttle that got in only 30 mins after the 5pm shuttle, and we all made it over to JFK for the flight to Korea. Yeah, there are direct flights from NY to Beijing, but I routed through Korea so that I could start a round-the-world ticket there. Flight to Seoul and connecting flight to Beijing were long but uneventful. Trip in total took 33 hours (all times Boston time):

Leave Billerica: Friday, 2.30pm

Take off from Logan: Friday, 7.45pm

Arrive JFK: Friday, 10.00pm

Take off from JFK: Saturday, 1.15am

Arrive Seoul (Incheon): Saturday 3.45pm

Take off from Seoul: Sat., 7.30pm

Arrive Beijing airport: Sat, 9.30pm

Arrive Hotel: Sat, 11.30pm (which was Sunday morning at 11.30, Beijing time)


Slept a lot en route and took a short nap when I got here, then spent most of Sunday afternoon walking to and around Tienanman. Slept soundly Sunday night (I'm writing this on Monday am), and looking forward to a quiet morning before heading off to Chengdu later today.

Yes, I know, I know, this is far too brief a stop in Beijing. Next time I'll stay longer.