If Changchun was a up and coming albeit a little rustic city, Beijing in my view was a busy, smog-ridden, bustling city that was all stone, glass and concrete! I was already aware prior to the trip of the serious air pollution in the city. When stopping in Beijing for the transfer to Changchun on a domestic flight on the first day, the city was blanketed with a fierce smog that made it impossible to see anything from the air. But upon leaving the airport and getting picked up on Day 3, I was still unprepared for the thick layer of gray dust in my view everywhere I turned!
The strange thing though is that the smog Beijing experiences isn’t as bad as over here, smell wise, when the yearly Indonesian forest fires take place. There’s a somewhat acrid smell in the air, but nothing quite like the burning charcoal we experience every August to November here.
I spent just one day in the city though. We were picked up by the visitation company at the airport and dropped off at Novotel Peace Beijing hotel to settle in and for us to find lunch; then it was off for a mid-afternoon business meeting that stretched into dinner. The hotel was pretty decent and along Jin Yu Hu Tong road, and within easy walking distance of Tiananmen Square – but there was no time for us to go by. We did have a lot of Peking Duck though for lunch and dinner – and there was so much of it that by the end of the day, I was pretty much sick of it, delicious as it was!
Early on the next day, we took off back to the airport and headed to the third city – Shanghai. Next post to come.=)
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