True Guff (more or less): June 2008

When we got to Hong Kong and settled in, the first thing we did was travel to Kowloon to look for travel agencies that could book us a tour of Beijing. Since I'll be here for 3 weeks and travelling with my mom it would be good to take a tour of at least one other destination in China (other than Hong Kong).

Asian companies are kinda funny. We located a building that contained at least 5 travel agencies all on 2 floors. Why companies would choose to locate in an area that is in such close proximity is perplexing. You realize later that all companies do this because everything (or just about everything) is a commodity here. Here in Hong Kong the customer rules. The customer will shop for the best price. Price being principally the single most important factor in most transactions. Since an offering is never unique you can well find a better price somewhere else. To me this is kind of strange since time itself is limited. Why would I spend alot of time on something that might only be worth at least 5% (up to 45%) of the value of the commodity? The problem is in location. Here in Hong Kong an address (a street address) doesn't mean a whole lot. I searched for a book store at 299 Castle Peak Rd in Tsuen Wan. It is shop 46A-47A in a shopping centre called Tsuen Nam Plaza (?). I couldn't find it. I walked back and forth on Castle Peak Rd and couldn't find it. How do people find anything here? After spending almost 3 weeks here in Hong Kong I realized that people in most cases don't have a favourite shop and buy exclusively from them. And if your wandering around looking for a good price, what you find may be the best price at that moment, but you won't find that shop again after you make a comparison with someone else's price. That is why shopkeepers are all so pushy to make a sale. They know that once the customer leaves they are gone. So if you like something and you ask them what the price is ... you have consented to the protocol of full negotiation for the product. They get angry if your "just looking" and you ask them the price. And I can see why given what I wrote earlier. They wouldn't be able to make a living if every price for every commodity was somehow published openly for people to compare prices.

We woke up at 4 on Tuesday May 27th and got on a taxi to take us to a bus terminal to grab a bus to take us to the Airport. There are many ways of getting to the airport the bus being relatively cheap. We grabbed the N31 bus at 5 AM arriving at the airport around 5:50 AM ($20 HK). We boarded the plane at 8:15 AM and it took off at around 8:45 AM.

The plane trip took 3 hours and for most of the trip we flew above a haze of smog. I could be wrong but it didn't look like clouds as there was no definition in the view. As we neared Beijing the plane descended below the smog and we could see farmland. It was nice. Good ol' acres of squares lining the terrain. As we neared Beijing I could see buildings and markets and people quite clearly. I was amazed at how close the roads and people were to my vantage point. I wondered how close we were flying as I could distinctly see a road across my view and a bicycle riding up to the intersection. I was thinking this must be how someone arriving in the old Hong Kong airport must have been like. We landed fine and exited the plane onto the airstrip proper where there were waiting buses to take us to the terminal. We got to a terminal and then jumped onto a subway-like train which transported us to another terminal. Here we went through immigration and then jumped onto a waiting bus which started our tour.

Our first stop was to a shopping centre in Beijing. It was a building of 3-4 levels each selling different merchandise. The shops in the centre were organized like many Chinese shops are organized with square units each side by side with at least 2 retail reps waiting to serve you. We were there to grab some food. After a brief lunch the real tour began.

Over 5 days we visited countless sites full of history. These include: Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Ming Tombs, Great Wall, Beijing Hutong, Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, etc. Each one containing artefacts from it's long history as the capital of China. Our first stop being the Forbidden Palace you realize that this isn't an ordinary modern city. The scope is so different from modern cities. In Beijing, roads were not built for pedestrians. In the centre of Beijing was the emperor's palace and all the roads encircle it. Meaning major roads are rings which form squared circles around the palace as it's centre. Each ring is numbered and there are at least 6 rings. Ring 1 being the palace itself and Ring 2 being the first ring outside the palace. Ring 2 is a single road which contains 3-5 lanes in one direction (at most 6-10 lanes in total). The road has 3 lanes dedicated for cars and trucks and 2 lanes dedicated for bicycles and motorbikes. If the road described above also has what is like a collector's lane which allows a vehicle to exit the road (onto a collector) to make a right turn. All the major roads have these collectors. And all of these roads require you to exit through the collector to make a left turn. I'm not describing it very well here but it's similar to the pedestrian walking routes throughout the city of Hong Kong. If you've been to HK you know that pedestrians don't have the right of way. And since land is so scarce walking across the street means that you have to walk up a staircase onto a bridge which lets you cross the road. In like manner our bus in Beijing was required to exit the road onto the collector, turn right, make a U-turn, and then reenter the main road again. Logistically allowing cars to make right turns would slow traffic down to a crawl.

More later.

True Guff (more or less)

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Beijing - May 27 - May 31 - Pg1

End of the trip - Flying back on Friday

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