Well, I gotta tell you... Air China has Air Canada beat on space, service, entertainment and even food! I was VERY impressed all round. You can't imagine the leg room - and that said, the Chinese people are not BIG people - in general. Which begs the question - why are we (Canadians AND Americans) being crammed into planes like sardines? Is the Flight Industry indirectly sending our growing... populations a message? Making the best of my middle seat, I bonded with my fellow passengers using my iPhone's Lonely Planet Mandarin Application... SO fun, we laughed and entertained each other with pronuciation games until it was time to watch movies. We had 11 hours to watch films and I must say, I was suprised that every other film was a Western one with Chinese subtitiles... How very accommodating. That said, I enjoyed the Chinese films even more - great storytelling!
Ooo... Here's something I could not predict half way through the flight - a film intermission. 27 Dresses was paused and a new DVD was loaded for an Inflight Yoga Stretch Break... WOW this was better than the "sit & be fit" classes I witnessed on Cruise Ships years ago. So great! Fifteen minutes later, we were back watching our silly rom-com, bizarre but appreciated.
Once we landed in Beijing I entered the largest airport I have been in to date - and I've been in a few... To give you some perspective, it is six times larger than Heathrow's new Terminal no. 5.
According to the website: A Guide to Beijing:
Terminal 1 & 2 operating at capacity and Beijing's air traffic growing at 20% a year, the 2008 Olympics demanded an immediate solution. This resulted in the US $4.6 billion Terminal 3.The Feng Shui compliant Terminal 3 is the creation of Britian's Norman Foster. With Chinese red columns and a muted gold roof it evokes traditional Chinese colors in a modern design. Looking at the airport from above, the raised scales on its back and long body it looks like a flying dragon!This structure opened March 2008, it took 3-1/2 years using 50,000 works, a half million tonnes of steel and two million tonnes of concrete. It extends for almost three kilometers. Ten thousand villagers had to be relocated from the area surrounding Terminal 3 to accommodate the newly generated traffic to the Capital of China...
And we get upset that some people's livelihood was affected by the business closures on Cambie Street due to the underground tunnel being built for the airport subway route motivated by our upcoming Winter Olympics in 2010. Hmm... Ironically a Canadian built shuttle train runs up the centre of the dragon airport, connecting it's three main sections.
I exit the terminal to encounter the same odor I found permiating the atmosphere in Paris a few years ago - a mix of 2nd hand smoke and exhaust... Everything inside seemed to be so new, fresh and squeeky clean but out here, waiting in a taxi line, I feel like I am being covered in soot. Once in town (about a 20 min. drive) I arrive at the office of the company I have been hired to begin my contract career... I look out the window from the 26th floor and wonder if the haze that I see is summer fog due to the 95% percent humidity or the polution that I hear so much about - I assume a bit of both...
This is going to be interesting... stay tuned. xo P.
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