2006-08-28

I’m now in Beijing.
That should be a simple statement of fact, but the thought still gives me a rush of adrenaline every time it passes through my mind.
I’m now in Beijing.

The plane trip was an experience in itself.
Some highlights:
- have you guys ever flown with a Fokker 70 (I think that was the model number)? It’s the tiniest plane I’ve ever seen. Seventeen rows. Seventeen!
- German is easy to understand when read and – sometimes – heard, but six years’ worth of German studies and I can hardly say a thing. I was able to say “I can speak a little German”, and that almost made me skip. To think, I was if not fluent, then at least able to communicate quite well within my scope of German knowledge once upon a time. For shame.
- It wasn’t until I reached the boarding queue for Beijing at Vienna Airport, that I truly realized I was going to China. So many fancily dressed Chinese (middle-aged men on business trips with accompanying wives), but oh how Chinese they were! Walking onboard it felt like entering an apartment courtyard where people all know each other and spend their entire days’ talking and playing cards or mahjong.
- Austria Air is pretty good at feeding people. Dinner, breakfast, snacks and plenty of water in between. Why is it that air plane refreshments always include tomato juice, when you don’t see anywhere else, let alone people drinking it?
- Watched “Take the Lead”, a feel-good dance movie with Antonio Banderas and a bunch of NY kids in Harlem. He teaches ballroom dancing at a fancy upper-class dance academy, they’re stuck in detention in a crappy NY public school. He makes them learn ballroom dancing in detention and after the initial reluctance they love it. Naturally, they’re good at it as well. Ballroom dancing is loads of fun, and this movie only confirmed it. I want to learn how to swing now. Oh and also: the final tango scene with one girl and two guys – hot hot hot. The girl’s gorgeous, and so are the dance steps. Wow.
- The obligatory forms for entering China are very, very similar to those for entering the States. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed similarities between these two countries before, and I have a feeling it won’t be the last.

And the most ethereally magical thing ever: I saw a rainbow. And it was round.
Can you imagine? Above the clouds, and against a background of a strikingly blue sky and fluffy whiteness is a luminous ring of rainbow. I had heard about such phenomenon, but to actually be able to see it… I’m so lucky. It was beautiful – quite small at first, a small compact glowing ring, that grew larger and larger. After ten minutes, it was large and already less round because of the changing clouds in the background, and after fifteen, it had broken up into smaller pieces. My only wish is that I could’ve shared this wonderful thing with someone, but skipping up and down in my seat proclaiming that round rainbows abounded probably wouldn’t have been very popular. After all, nobody wants a crazy person seated next to them =P

As soon as I landed in Beijing I was on my feet, impatient to get to my relatives waiting to pick me up. Walking through customs was interesting, I saw quite a few Chinese in the line for “Foreigners” in front of me, so at least I didn’t feel so alone. I was the only one smiling though, everyone else looked bored. Pffft.
Meeting my relatives went smoothly, turned out they’d been waiting at the airport over an hour. That was my first introduction to native Chinese society and culture – two people, whom I’d met once at the most, had agreed to take time off work, wait more than an hour for me and would let me stay at their house for the foreseeable future. All because we were related.
When we got to their place, I realized that picking me up at the airport was really their minimum effort. I got a room to myself and new bed sheets – bed sheets that had been a wedding gift for them. Can you imagine? I was absolutely blown away. They’d only been married for a month, and now they were letting me stay with them, and they kept telling me I could stay there all year if I wanted! And meant it too!

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It would take too long to say all the nice things they’ve done for me in the span of such a short time, but suffice to say I could probably only pay them back if I took them sightseeing in Sweden for a month, me paying for everything. I haven’t been allowed to pay for anything when we’re out together, and we have been out together almost the entire time since I arrived. My first day, one of them took me sightseeing in the neighbourhood, and went wherever I wanted to go. Yesterday they showed me their workplace and today one of them has been with me all day, spending time, effort and money on stuff I have to do, like register at the police station and things like that. When I have more time (and a place to live), I’ll try to explain all this more adequately, but with so much to write about right now, I’ll save the compare and contrast essays for later.