First Impressions of a Future

Towards the end of the eight-hour BA flight (with movies on demand and tasty veggie meals), we flew over hundreds of miles of chocolate-coloured mountains, which seemed from above like a combination of millions of toblerone and a vast crumpled blanket. Breathtaking. We had a very short carousel wait for the packs we need and the cases of presents I lugged and were then out of the enormous Beijing terminal onto an equally outsized expressway to the city centre, replete with the obligatory “bad” drivers, including a police car straddling lanes as he spoke on his mobile. Before we reached the forest of fluted high rises, toasting rapid growth, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of greenery lining both airport transit tracks and the Olympic-sign-blazoned route to the heart of the world’s economic beast, even spying a mountain-biking group in full lycra get-up between the trees.

Not long after I spotted my first foreigner (also cycling), we were at “Convenient Hotel” waiting for our room (we got there before check-out time and the place was busy, as an angry rant from a turned-away almost-guest attested). I decided to wander down a smaller road and passed two street/communal toilets (many homes didn’t/still don’t have their own) before settling on a likely place for a haircut. As I smiled at the hairdresser, she offered “massa massa” but I gestured that I wanted my head shaved. This was gigglingly achieved and then the offer of a massage re-emerged as hands stroked my groin, lips were flexed and I was shown a bed behind a curtain. “Ni bai” (200) was the price but my refusal lead to a halving. Excuses were made but not understood and I got away with nothing more than a blush and an overpriced cut (about £2.50).

After a rest when the room became available, we ate tofu, noodles, mushrooms, spinach and slices of an unidentified root vegetable from an enormous hotpot bowl and I washed it down with Yanjing beer from the bottle, forgoing the use of the shrink-wrapped crockery. Then we taxied it to a bar area near a lake that translates as “back sea”, joined in ti zhenzu (keepy-uppie with a coloured and weighted shuttlecock) and people-watched in a few locations. One of the main points of discussion was the changes that have led to the sort of prices some of the places could charge and Jun put it down to the number of foreigners and the endemic corruption. With absolutely no evidence, I was inclined to believe that at least some of the young locals we saw enjoying their Saturday night had legitimately earned large amounts in the boom this country has enjoyed.

We got back and our forty-hour day was iced with the news that Watford had won their first away match of the season, 3-0 at Southampton. Tamas Priskin scored two and Richard Lee made a penalty-save double. Result!