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Back in Beijing

Beijing, 2nd of June

This is the second time I'm coming to China's famous capital city as I spent the whole of 2004 teaching English in a college in a Beijing suburb. It was a great experience though at times extremely difficult. As you would expect, most of my problems revolved around the language or my almost complete lack of it! There is nothing worse than spending a whole evening walking around shops trying unsuccessfully to mime 'do you have a tin-opener?' to Chinese-speaking shop assistants. It was painful experiences like this that made me decide to come back to Beijing to learn pu tong hua, Mandarin. I have enrolled in a three-month Mandarin course at the Beijing Language and Culture University.

Getting through customs

The flight was terrible – I tried my best to sleep on the fei ji, plane, but it was of no use. I was dreading Beijing customs control but in fact it went very smoothly. The first time I came here just over a year ago there were huge queues of people and I was given hard stares and felt really uncomfortable. This time round there were smiles from custom officials, short queues and in no time at all I had collected my luggage and was ready to meet my two friends who had kindly agreed to pick me up from the airport. As with most international airports, Beijing's fei ji chang, airport, has signs in both Chinese and English, so finding my way through customs was not a problem.

Hot, but no sun

Coming out of the airport I was struck by two things. One was the weather – as soon as I stepped out I could feel the warmth of the sun hit me as it was 30 degrees! The other thing that struck me was that the sun was nowhere to be seen. There was a thick grey haze covering the city and I wasn't sure if it was mist or pollution - probably both.

Going shopping

My friends collected me in a taxi they had hired for the day and we all took a 40 minute drive from the airport to Wangfujin, Beijing's equivalent to Oxford street. Wangfujin is an impressive pedestrian-only shopping haven. The prices are comparable to London's West End – so most people here just window shop – but with the wonderful array of restaurants, both Chinese and Western style, the tidiness and pleasant ambiance of the place it's a firm favourite of foreigners and Beijingers alike. After dropping off my luggage in a hostel I had booked from London I went for a quick meal of delicious beef and noodles which cost about 25 Yuan, about £1.50. Finally succumbing to my jetlag I decided to call it an extremely long day and went back to the hostel for some long awaited kip!

Sent by: Chris

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