Dao le
I made it to Beijing, and if you can read this, it means that posting to this site from the slow dialup connection in the Beijing Normal University Zhuanjialou (Foreign Experts building) works. The flight went pretty smoothly, although I didn’t feel that well through most of it. I ended up sleeping most of the way on the flight to Japan and getting fairly dehydrated, but I drank water assiduously there and felt pretty good by the time I arrived.
All three main airports that I went through (Detroit, Tokyo, Beijing) have new terminals in the last 5 years or so, and all worked smoothly. Detroit is probably the best, although bad as it used to be, the improvement in Beijing is certainly the largest. It used to resemble a train station, but now it’s a very airy modern building.
I thought that the health screening might be more stringent than in the past, and I suppose it was. There is a new health form to fill out and this time the place where you turn it in was manned, although they didn’t seem to be screening people. I’ll take that as a good sign that they’re not too worried about a recurrence of SARS.
I’m staying in the Zhuanjialou (Foreign Experts Building), and a graduate student Yan Ming and a friend of Shu Hua’s picked me up in the friend’s van. At least some of the increased security from last Spring persists—we weren’t able to drive into the gate closest to the building, but this being China (a trait it shares with the US), we were able to drive in the next gate without difficulty.
Good night, everyone.