I'm at the Beijing airport with the INFS group waiting for our plane for Yichang, Hubei. There was an amazing thunderstorm earlier today that seriously backed up the air traffic and resulted in a 7 hour delay in our flight – the good news is that the flight isn't being canceled (that would have been a real mess as we are the group that are to lead the training!) So, folks are playing cards, chatting, reading dissertations or books, watching movies & writing blogs to kill time.

<--- Poor Chinese to English translations are everywhere in China

I am glad to be heading out of Beijing. It's a big, bustling city with lots of history, but everything seems too commercialized to me. Everywhere I go, people and places are oriented towards money… I understand that fascination and drive, but I also tire of it. I have a feeling things will be somewhat similar in Yichang though at a far smaller scale, since Yichang is located by the convergence of the Three Gorges. We shall see!

Lots of older folks made good use of the open spaces to exercise, but few younger Chinese people do so. --->

My time in Beijing the past few days will probably be considered a little dull by most people's standards. I spent a fair amount of time at Tian Tan (Temple of Heaven), exploring the gardens and also running around it all in this morning when the sun isn't bad, which was probably one of the better things I did while here. My other activities mostly involved shopping & the like, which I didn't really enjoy very much except that things are comparatively cheaper here. My Aunt Huiling and I spent a few hours on Saturday at Panjiayuan which is a large market with lots of curios and supposed antiques for sale, before we went to check out a section of town that still had lots of hutongs (old style courtyard homes), and then walked to Houhai, which reminded me of Singapore's Clark and Boat Quays.

<--- Scorpions and seahorses on a stick anyone? @ Wangfujing

Other places I was able to walk around in where Wangfujing, Chacheng (Tea city, where I drank an incredible amount of tea!), Sanlitun (the bar and expat district where most things are imported and expensive), Chongwenmen and Tiananmen. It is impossible to escape people in Beijing, they are everywhere, everywhere, everywhere! I took the subway yesterday around 6pm, which was a bit of a mistake, but at least I know what it's like to commute to work during rush hour in Beijing now! By the way, the subway in Beijing is quite good – much like Singapore's MRT, I was rather impressed. I didn't make any effort to do anything else that touristy since I had seen most of the other historical sights in Beijing before, and knew I didn't have the energy to go into the Forbidden City again (it's enormous and can take a full day), or the Summer Palace. I mostly wanted to get a sense of the new Beijing and my feeling is that it has lost much of its previous personality and is moving towards a sterile city, much like Singapore. I think Westerners will still be intrigued by Beijing, but for East Asians, it's not that different from other East Asian cities.

Ok, will end here…. more from Yichang in a few days.

~ Shuwen
p.s.: Sending this from Yichang....finally made it in > 12 hours from leaving the institute!