Eastern Nostalgia

AFTER NOT BEING BACK IN THE EAST for nearly 8 months I had the opportunity to travel back to Hong Kong and Beijing again. Hong Kong was the same-old-same-old, but Beijing was just something out of a different world again and yes, I supposedly did live there for a year not so long ago…

First of all, I arrived at the newly built terminal which opened just 3 days before my arrival and WOW! The new airport is right next to the old one and covers more than 1 million square meters, making it larger than the Pentagon. Immigration was smooth, with friendly border guards greeting you in English and no real waiting at all. We had to take a train to the arrivals hall from where we landed but as I walked into the baggage hall, there my bags were, neatly rotating on the carousel and then the walk through customs was a breeze! It is not even comparable to the old terminal, which although also large and efficient, it just a drop in the ocean vs. the new Terminal 3.

If I may digress just for a second, just a week before the new Terminal 5 opened at Heathrow and what an absolute shambles that has been and continues to be. We actually watched the opening here on Sky and it certainly looks beautiful and spacious, but I think that is the only one small comparison which can be made. You will have all by now read the hundreds of news reports about the falling apart of the baggage handling systems and the PR disaster which has followed since. Some of my colleagues spent the entire week in Beijing without their baggage, and some have returned home still not knowing when they will ever receive these again. The latest is of course that BA has sent more than 20,000 bags to Italy by road freight and there they will be sorted and then couriered to customers’ place of residence. Have you ever heard of anything as ridiculous as this?! Of course every customer is now praying that their bags don’t get couriered back to them via Heathrow…

For the UK this has been a PR disaster, for BA and its reliance on business passengers this will still prove to be absolutely devastating as thousands of business travelers start avoiding using London as a hub into Europe.

Now, if this had to happen in China you can believe that a couple of officials in charge of the new airport would have been summarily shot. Terrible I know… All I can say is the new terminal had 3 successful test runs before the official opening and they have had no glitches at all thus far. Flying out is even smoother and man, let me not even begin to talk about the shopping!

Beijing itself has undergone quite a transformational change before the Olympics is about to hit it in August. Many of the construction projects are now complete. The train from the new terminal into the center of Beijing is not running yet, but the tracks are complete and this should be operational very soon. The buildings which were half complete when we left are now receiving their finishing touches and man these are just spectacular. The new Westin Hotel close to our offices in Chaoyang is just out of this world, not to even mention the new CCTV building, which displays some of the boldest architecture the world has ever seen. The standard systems for engineering gravity and lateral loads in buildings didn't apply to this building, which is formed by two leaning towers; each bent 90 degrees at the top and bottom to form a continuous loop. And then of course there is the Olympic stadium with its outer design looking like a bird’s nest. Trust the Chinese to really push the boundaries of architecture and design.

The only problem for me was that they have still not solved the pollution problem. I arrived in a deep cloud of smog and it only really cleared the next day when there was quite a lot of wind blowing for most of the day. The authorities are experimenting with alternate number plate driving, i.e. those ending with odd numbers on one day and those with even number on the next. They are also removing as many government vehicles as possible. We know the factories will be closed and no construction will occur during this period, but whether this will solve the pollution for the 2 weeks in August remains debatable.

I spent nearly a week back in Beijing and it was oddly nostalgic. I got to visit many of the shops we used to hang out in and saw some of my old friends again. There was an old familiarity in coming back to a place where we had once lived, but also a strange feeling that if I had to come back in 6 months again that even more would be changed. The progress is great for a new developing country but also slightly sad to know that soon this place will be as unfamiliar as any new city I will be visiting in the future.