It is about a 3.5 hour flight from Taipei to Beijing. Our flight was uneventful, but when we arrived we disembarked onto the tarmac, which I thought was a little strange. In retrospect they must have wanted to get us down and out of the plane asap, because before we even cleared customs it started raining and there was lightning. By the time we got out the flight status boards were full of delays and cancellations, so we just barely made it. Lucky!
Yanmei has a friend, Amy, here who is letting us stay in her spare apartment. As I understand it, it is an investment property, and there is no one living here, so she is letting us use it for free, which is great. It is a pretty nice one bedroom apartment on the 15th floor of a 20 story building. There are several other similar buildings in the complex.
Since I am a foreigner and I'm not staying in a designated hotel, I have to register where I'm staying with the local police within 24 hours of my arrival. Amy said she would come back in the morning to take us to the police station.
Yanmei and I went out to a local restaurant to have dinner. There was a TV playing a Chinese war movie based in ancient times. I kept glancing at it because I felt like the actors were familiar. Finally I recognized they were Jackie Chan and John Cusack. Cusack was the leader of a Roman legion that somehow got to China, and Chan was the leader of the Chinese army. Seems like an interesting premise, I wonder if it will be released in the US, or if it has been I've never heard of it. The name of the movie is DragonBlade, I will have to look it up when I get home. I didn't get to see how it ended.
Anyway, the next morning Amy came back and took us to the police station to register. There was a door there that had an English translation on it “Propaganda Office”. I wanted to take a picture of that, but I thought it might be frowned on, and since I was in a police station I skipped taking the picture. The registration went smoothly, although I couldn't understand anything that was said. It is so nice to have a native speaker to help me.
After that Amy dropped us off at the subway, and we took it to Peking University, Yanmei's alma matter. We met four of Yanmei's friends that she'd met at UC Berkeley. Three of them were visiting scholars, and the other still lives in the Bay Area, and just happened to be visiting Beijing at the same time as us.
After lunch we toured Peking University. It was familiar to me because last time we were here we toured it, but then it was frozen in January, now everything was green and in bloom. For Yanmei it was nostalgic. Lots of new construction she says. Also the school anniversary is coming up on May 4th, so she's planning on going to that and hoping to see some old classmates.
By the way the weather is quite pleasant here so far other than the storm when we arrived. I regret packing my jeans, I haven't worn them once, and it looks like I won't need them.
-David
P.S. Internet access is slow here, so I'll be limiting the number of photos I upload for now.
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