Beijing Impressions

Friday morning Mia and I arrived in Beijing. Although Mia has been back a few times already since our move to Valencia, for me it is the first time since my departure from China in September 2008.

We’re only going to stay for a week and the main purpose of our visit is to secure an apartment, so we have an address to give to the moving company in August, which enables them to move our stuff faster to Beijing.

Both of us never had taken the airport express train to the city, so we decided to try that out and apart from the double security checks (they need to scan everything you have with you) it is super convenient. We took it to Sanyuanqiao where we changed to the number 10 subway to Hujialou, 4 stops to the South along the eastern 3rd Ring Road.

I think the subway system post-Olympics has made Beijing public transport way more convenient than it used to be and they still charge you only RMB 2 per ride; that is about €0.25! The airport express understandably is a bit more expensive at RMB 25 (€3) per person.

We have checked into a nice apartment-style hotel room, conveniently located just South of Sanlitun with a small kitchen and a desk and highspeed internet. For only RMB 298 per night a bargain I think.

Internet in China comes with the usual frustrations which are no access to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and what not. We didn’t bother to install a VPN on our laptop, so this time we just have to do without the social media, but obviously once we move back Witopia will have another happy client!
Apart from those little nuisances the connection speeds here are FAST and many places have free wifi.

One of the things that immediately caught my attention are that it seems that the general level of service has greatly improved. Service is professional and comes with a smile from the staff at subway stations to shop assistants to waiting staff in restaurants to real estate agents. To some extent these people even speak English if needed/wanted.
Only most taxi drivers are still morons, guess that will never change…

And apart from the fact that most taxi drivers are indeed morons, it is so great to be able to use them to go anywhere you want (as long as you know where you’re going)! There has been a tiny change in the standard taxi fees where an additional RMB 1 tax is charged once the destination is more than 3km from the pick-up point; it seems this surcharge is for gasoline, fair enough I think.

Beijing also seems to have cleaner air than before. Although we arrived in the typical Beijing fog (combination of humidity steam and pollution) the last two days we have woken up to clear blue skies and a temperature of – in my eyes lovely – 34 degrees Celsius.

The eternal gridlocks on the Beijing roads seem to have improved too. From our apartment window I have a clear view onto the East Third Ring Road and traffic on this Monday morning is going through at normal speeds in both directions, pretty amazing difference from 2 years ago!

Before we left for China I had been pretty worried about my Chinese. Small talk never has been a problem as I have “practiced” that enough with the Chinese shop owners and restaurant staff in Valencia, but an intelligent conversation is a different thing altogether! And you can imagine that I was amazed at how much immediately came back to me!
Most of Mia’s friends can speak some English, but my parents in law don’t speak a word, so you can understand my initial worries on our first visit immediately on Friday evening! Well those worries turned out to be not necessary at all. It was great seeing them again, we had a great home-cooked meal and great conversations throughout the evening.

Funny is that I noticed that Spanish and Chinese fill the same part of my brain and sometimes words like tambien and todo pop up instead of their Mandarin equivalents. Chinese clearly is taking up most part of this side of my brain and it seems very likely that I will quickly forget most of the Spanish I learned over the past two years (which is not an awful lot to begin with, hahaha!).

And then the gorgeous Chinese food! Needless to say that we have been on a splurge, eating all the beautiful things that we haven’t been able to eat for so long! Mia’s mum made jiaozi (dumplings) for our home-coming meal and they were delicious! Saturday night we went to Haidilao to have Sichuan style hotpot and it was yummie and spicy! This restaurant also boosts an exceptional high service level: while waiting for a table (yup, it’s a popular place) we were offered all kinds of snacks and women can even get a manicure while waiting for a table. Also the staff took care of our friend’s 3 year old in a special kids corner, so the adults could concentrate on their own food

Mia fixed her Xinjiang food craving by ordering some to our room for lunch, yesterday’s lunch with Mia’s parents we went to Xiaowangfu in Ritan Park and had some of their specialties including Beijing Duck and last night we went to my Cantonese favorite 24-hour restaurant Jindingxuan to have all kinds of dimsum and other delicacies I have been craving.

Prices of food in restaurants have gone up a bit since we left, but are still very reasonable and for what you get it is definitely way better value for money than the food anywhere in Valencia!

This afternoon we will start our hunt for a suitable apartment and although there is a limited choice in our price range, I am confident we will find something that suits our wishes!