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Saturday, March 29, 2008

[[ 北京我来了！ ]]

旅行开始了!

And here we go...Flight CA958 from Singapore to Beijing.

This is going to be my premier trip to China and I really don't know what's in store for me. But just as the airplane taxied out to Changi Airport's runway before takeoff, in one way or another, I knew without a doubt that this voyage would be a significant experience for me.

再见新加坡!

(Goodbye, Singapore!)

A few days before I left, Abah & Ma gave me an "early" birthday present of this really good book translated from the Arabic edition by the author, 'Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni. So the book accompanied me throughout my journey & though I was on my own, just reading it made me feel I wasn't alone. :-)

The average journey from Singapore to Beijing usually takes about 6 hours or so. I, on the other hand, took a little bit more time to reach my destination due to an hour transit in Xiamen International Airport.

But the transit was a good one for it gave me a platform to kick-start speaking with the locals. And the first place I started my conversational skills?

---- 女洗手间.

Yes, literally! That's just how it started and just to share, did you know I was offered "local" sweets simply because the lady said my Mandarin was good??!? Well, I don't consider my 汉语(Chinese) perfect but that comment boosted my confidence for if a local could understand, then I guess it should be alright. I guess... :-) And yes..NO ONE, not even the immigration officers spoke English..*gulp*

During transit, that was when I made "the call" to the boyfriend (who obviously sounded half-awake), quickly told him the flight number and the estimated time of arrival to Beijing. Double excitement creeps in..

1307h - back onboard CA958. During my journey from Singapore, I had the whole row to myself. But from Xiamen, I had a lady who joined in and during our 2hour-plus trip to Beijing, I had myself a new friend. I've asked her to speak to me in Mandarin & she's asked me to speak to her in English...so it was like a 50-50 kind of deal that we had and we called each other "language partners" since then, exchanging email addresses and she giving me her Beijing number, just in case. :-)

我们在北京! (We're at Beijing!)

Excitement creeped into me the minute I reached Terminal 3. This is because Terminal 3 of 北京首都国际机场(Běijīng Shǒudū Guójì Jīchǎng) was officially opened on March 27. Yes, so that means it was only 2 days old when I set foot into it.

Super new! Super nice!

The Airport is located 20km northeast of Beijing city center, an exclave of Chaoyang District. It's also known to be the busiest airport in the People's Republic of China, being the 2nd-busiest airport in Asia (after Tokyo International Airport) in 2004.

I touched down at 1604h, and when I stepped outside, Beijing weather was at 11°c. There was partly cloudy skies and strong winds as well. So glad, my boyfriend had a 师傅(shifu) to wait for us. Huggs, huggs & more huggs...it was quite a long ride and it was funny to hear the boyfriend speak in Mandarin, and though we talked a bit here and there, I think the cab driver had the impression that we knew the whole Chinese vocabulary! And I must highlight, his 国语(guoyu) of the Beijing dialect was so strong that it was uncomprehensible.

Along the way, I saw my favourite furniture store!

5:30pm - After I've settled down, gave my parents a "I've arrived" and "the trip was...." phonecall. Because I rarely had enough sleep, I'm just going to steal a couple of hours and see what dinner shall be..for now....

Labels: 1st trip to China

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This is not the end.
This is not even the beginning of the end.
It is, instead, the end of the beginning..
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