Travel Memories: Beijing, Beijing, China

At one point I thought I may not even make it to Beijing, given the debacle we had flying in there. What was supposed to be a 2-hour flight from Shanghai saw us on the plane for 7 hours – 5 of which were spent sitting on the tarmac at Shanghai airport with no idea as to why we weren’t taking off. We were among the few non-Chinese passengers onboard, and announcements were largely only in Chinese (and what English ones there were did little to enlighten us as to what was going on).

Two meal services came and went, and we were still staring out the window at the rain and all the other planes taking off. Finally deciding to go up and ask the pilot himself what was going on, we were told there was a spot of very bad weather just out of Shanghai on our route to Beijing, so the pilots were waiting for that to pass. I am always happy to give safety priority over convenience, but it would have been nice to have been kept informed!

Anyway, 5 hours later than scheduled, we were jetting our way northwards, arriving into the similarly rain-drenched Chinese capital well after dark. Fortunately, there was still enough time to arrange our daytrip to the Great Wall the following day, and I could then finally ensconce myself and take a moment to think about the place I had just landed in. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).