Category Archives: China

Smoggy Beijing

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On my way to the office I passed, as usual, a group of women and men “dancing” around in a big circle to some kind of modernized version of classic Chinese music. Or maybe it is Chinese variant of Country in US or “dansband” in Sweden.



It was a busy day so it was nice to get out of the office in the evening. At least that was what I thought until I got out. Outside it was quite smoggy and the sunset was anything but bright.



I went straight to yesterday’s dinner restaurant. I just stopped briefly to take a snapshot of a perfectly “natural” Beijing forest.



At the restaurant I had a quite tasty sweet and sour pork, though Chie’s is much better. I also had 5 spices rib. Quite hot and very tasty.



After dinner it was back to the hotel to relax with yet another movie. Reading a few pages in Game of Thrones – I am re-reading the George R R Martin books to recap before reading the new book A Dance with Dragons, as well as preparing for the Game of Thrones TV series.

Beijing

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Arrived in Beijing just passed noon and took a taxi to the hotel. Traffic jam! Just before turning off the airport express way it was obvious what had caused the traffic jam. A car on fire. Just like in the movies. First time in real life for me.

Worked at the office in the afternoon and went for dinner around 6 pm. Last time I visited Calle showed me a quite OK restaurant about 5 minutes walk from the hotel.



For dinner I tried their “famous” spicy bean dish and their mabu-dofu. The bean dish was really tasty but Chie’s mabu-dofu is a million times better than this one.

Afterwards I just went back to the hotel, took a hot bath and went to bed watching a movie on my iPad. I was still not feel 100% after last weekends cold so I skipped the gym as I otherwise would have visit.

Returning from Beijing

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I was scheduled on an early flight from Beijing so I got up even earlier and got into a taxi without having breakfast. The ride to the airport was smooth though a little bit slow. Checkin was quick and I passed security without problems. I had almost no time for buying some gifts in the tax free shops and then I had to board.

Once aboard the airplane I just relaxed listening to music and waiting for the departure. Then the announced it was delayed due to the heavy rain and thunder over Beijing 🙁 I was back in Tokyo much later than I expected and hoped for, no time to get to the office before I had to do volunteer work… Tonight we were preparing for this weekend’s flee market to collect money for Kobuchihama.

Grill Bar in Beijing

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Met up with some Swedish work colleagues after work today. Martin and Micke are working in Beijing while Christian were, like Calle and me, visiting.

Micke had made reservations on a Western style grill/bar not so far from the office. Though it was raining so we got a taxi ride there and it took 10 minutes or so, me sitting in Christian’s lap since it was 5 of us and room for only 4 passengers. It turned out we had to make a quite big detour to get there and that’s why it took 10 minutes by car, though it would have taken the same time to walk there.

We had a nice evening talking about our company and the recent events in the telecom industry and more. It was also nice to see Martin, Micke and Christian again. They have all been working in Tokyo a while back but now moved to Beijing (Martin and Micke) and back to Lund (Christian).

Afterwards Calle and I got into a taxi but he refused to drive us. It was then that we understood that we were not so far from our hotel as we thought we were. It was basically “just around the corner” 🙂 It took us 10-15 minutes to walk to the hotel, and we passed the Szechuan restaurant we visited when we arrived to Beijing.

Yunnan Restaurant

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After work today Calle and I joined with Liew and he took us to Beijing’s fashionable area. It was a bit tricky to get there because the Taxis seemed to not want to pick us up for some reason. We tried for 10-15 minutes outside our Beijing office, with several free taxis passing by without wanting to pick us up 🙁

So we walked to our hotel (15 minutes) and got rid of out bags. Then tool a taxi from the hotel instead. Once at the fashionable area we had a quick visit to a real (yes they have those too) Apple Store where I used the free Internet access 🙂



But our visit here was not for the Apple Store but for dinner. Liew had reserved a table at a Yunnan restaurant. It had a lot of awards for being the best Yunnan restaurant in the area. It was very yummy!