In 1850 it took three to six months to sail from the US to China.  In 1937 the Pan Am Clipper Transpacific service could get you to China in five to seven days.  On October the 9th, 2010 we made it from Dallas to Beijing (Peking) door to door in twenty hours.  At that trajectory, how long will it take in another generation or two?  Hell, I’m still trying to figure out how the international date line thing works, and I have to refer to my iPhone to calculate if it’s 11:00 am in New York, what time is it in Shanghai.

Suffice it to say, good old AA got us there in fine fettle even though for the fourth consecutive international flight, we had ground delays caused by mechanical problems.  Maybe sailing was better.  We were surprised in Chicago by a lovely AA representative who met us at the gate.  If you know O’Hare, you know that it’s a long slog from one end to the other, and she got us to the International Flagship Lounge by electric cart in short order.  Free food (very mediocre), free booze (always good), and fellow Ranger fans to watch them lose game three.

We cacooned ourselves into the Boeing 777 seats and hunkered for the next fourteen hours.  Uneventful and uncomfortable.  We got off to a bad start with a rude drunk sitting behind us trying to quaff a bottle of duty free brandy and talking too loudly to anyone who would listen.  The head stewardess (yes, I know you’re not supposed to call them that) put the quash on him shortly by taking his bottle away, chastising him appropriately, and cutting him off for the rest of the flight.  There is justice in the world after all.

We arrived bleary eyed at the new Beijing International Airport, built especially for the 2008 Olympics, at about 1:00 am Monday.  I’m still trying to figure out where Sunday went.  We were met at the gate by a young Chinese lady, let’s call her Suzy, who talked to us non-stop until she handed us off to our appointed handler on land side.  She actually had Bill, our handler, sign a chit to prove that we had, indeed, been handed over.  Suzy was very nice, and a delightful example of the New China.  Enthusiastic, energetic, full of promise, but we could only understand every third word she spoke.  We nodded thoughtfully and replied with the only two words of Mandarin that I know, xie, xie.  I think it means thank you, but it could mean “have you seen my my mother-in-law”.

Bill, our handler and guide, was to be with us for the next three days, and we couldn’t have asked for better.  We were whisked to our hotel (the only whisking we would do in Beijing’s monumental traffic lash-ups for the duration of our stay) and arrived about 1:45 am. It was a smooth check-in to our suite at the Peninsula, and we competed to see who could unpack and hit the slats first.  Of course, I did.  I popped a greenie (sleeping pill that is) only to realize that it was just now barely north of noon time in Dallas.  I stared at the ceiling until it was time to get up and prepare for a day of touring the capital city of the Middle Kingdom.  Such is life in the fast lane of international tourism.

Actually I was looking forward to breakfast.  In fact, I looked forward to it from about 2:30 to 5:30 when the restaurant finally opened.  John Lee, a friend and recent traveler to China, had heightened my expectations by proclaiming the breakfast buffet at the Peninsula to be among, if not the best, of all he had personally grazed at.  High praise I thought.  It had a range of breakfast delicacies from throughout Asia.  Korean congee with all the fixings, smoked fish and rice from Japan, dim sum and noodles from China, a huge array of mysterious fruits, salamis and cheese for the Euros, and even local granola and yogurt for those of a healthy bent.  Then there was the runny scrambled eggs, rubbery pancakes, faux sausage, and really bad, cardboard like bacon.  Guess what every American in the room had to eat.  Yeah, you got it.  I mused out loud to S., “who would travel half round the world only to eat a bad version of what they ate every day in Des Moines or Dallas”.  Yes, you are right.  S. had the scrambled eggs and bacon.  Actually, it looked pretty good.

So, we’re off.  The Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, The Great Wall, Tianamen Square, the Temple of Heaven.  Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with the details.  Heck, you can look it up on Wikipedia as well as I can.  I will, however, tell you what I think about what I see.

More later.