Beijing

Lizzie and Ingrid tagged along on my business trip to Beijing with me last week and we extended thru the weekend for a mini family vacation. We had a blast wandering the city and seeing the sights. We toured Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City as well as the Houhai and Sanlitun Lakes but otherwise had a relaxing time of just wandering the city at our own pace.

It has been well publicized that the city's residents have undergone a State-funded western charm school of sorts, learning such things as not loogeying on the street and not cutting in line, so they show well in front of the foreign Olympic crowds. We couldn't have been treated more kindly by the people, mostly because we had a little blue eyed baby in tow. It's amusing to see the typical austere Chinese man who otherwise would never recognize Lizzie nor my existence suddenly reduced to a cooing, baby babbling softy as he tries to coax a smile from Ing. She is indeed a little ambassador.






Beijing is in final preparation mode for the Olympics. Teams of volunteers are still being trained, paint is being applied to fences and guardrails and spectator bleachers are being assembled. I was last in Beijing in '05 so I was aware of the amount of building development that was ongoing but what took me completely by surprise was the amount of landscaping and 'beautification' that has gone on to give the city a sense of curb appeal. Hedgerows were perfectly clipped, sod has been rolled out where before it was just dirt, and there were beautiful potted plants everywhere. A city I remember as brown and dusty has morphed into a beautiful garden! Beijing has dressed up nicely for the big dance and hopefully they keep it that way post-Games.

The air quality is still a day to day issue -- it was grimy one day as seen in the photo below of the wacky CCTV Tower that's still in development, but we were lucky to have blue(ish) skies during the rest of our trip. A city that sees 2,000 new cars hitting the road every day (!) has now moved to an every other day system where the last number on your license plate (odd or even) dictates whether you can drive into the city. And all construction in the city has now been halted for the next 2 months to reduce particulate in the air. My driver during the week shared his stories of growing up in a Beijing that had blue skies everyday and he was very much looking forward to the same conditions in the coming weeks.

In another 3 weeks the city will be a madhouse and though Beijing is a neat city, we'll be happily camped out at home watching the Games from the couch.