Short trip to Beijing

One week on the job and I already have the first business trip behind me. I had a meeting in Beijing on Monday morning, which gave me the opportunity to spend the Sunday in the city. In the morning and early afternoon I checked out the Beijing Capital Museum, a brand new museum with a collection of Chinese art that was produced in and around the city in the course of many dynasties. The museum shows a fine collection of ancient Chinese arts and crafts, as well as an interesting display of the history of Beijing. My personal favourites were the porcelain collection and the section on Beijing folklore. For those who know the Shanghai museum and have liked it, this new museum is definitely worth a visit.


After the museum visit, I met up with Shiqi’s uncle, who is living in Beijing. He gave me an excellent guided tour over the TsingHua university campus; a beautiful place where the old world and the new, tradition and modern life meet in good harmony.

In the evening, we went to a vegetarian restaurant with the whole family. The restaurant served wonderful food and the atmosphere of meeting again was very nice. A lovely day.

Being in Beijing, you sometimes wonder how long China will still differ from the rest of the world. I have seen almost more foreigners than Chinese, and if it wasn’t for the Chinese characters on billboards, you can almost forget that you are in China. On the way back from Beijing to Fuzhou, though, I was happy to notice that I was most definitely still in China. The process boarding the plain was abolutely chaotic, because everyone brought far too much luggage, and nobody was queueing up. This, the plain was packed with people and luggage (no living animals, though). During the flight, the Chinese were chatting busily. And when the plain landed, they made a contest out of unfastening their seat belts and turning on their mobile phones: “Wei?! ... Wei?!” Typically China, I would say.