4A Beijing Residency
Again with the eyes springing open, this time at 630am. No gym for me this morning, we need to leave at 8 and the buffet is calling. I met Justin downstairs and we systematically demolished a few plates. It’s the beginning of a week long holiday here in China and it seems to be the day for weddings. I got packed into the lift with a huge wedding party and while I was waiting out the front I got to see a super awkward groom carrying his bride into a big black Mercedes covered in roses. She stepped out of her hotel slippers and he managed to shovel her in to the backseat backwards while a cleaner came along and actually swept her slippers away with a broom. I watched with a whole bunch of German construction workers providing an odd backdrop for the photographer. We battled our way through the traffic and got to Shenyang station remarkably quickly. The station was packed, every seat on every train sold out a couple of weeks ago and China is on the move today. The countryside from the train was blanketed in a thick cloud of smog all the way to Beijing, we passed endless fields of corn with broke out into blocks of high rise apartments disappearing into the haze. Every now and then we passed small villages of identical concrete houses, then back to corn fields, aquaculture ponds, a massive solar field, power lines criss crossing the fields, huge factories and back to rows and rows of concrete high rise buildings. We got back to Beijing and weaved our way through the swarms of people to an extremely long taxi line. Justin and I said our super quick goodbyes and headed to a different area 30 minutes away where he was meeting Tianzhou Chen later on. We ate duck and beans and met with Jojo who had the coolest pink plastic pistol shaped phone cover. I jumped in a taxi and headed back to Shen’s house. It was nice to see Yenzu and the others, this place is a sanctuary in China. Yenzu was cooking a feast and we all had a lovely dinner catching up on our recent outings and getting more amazing stories from Romaine. After dinner I hung out chatting with Romaine for a while about life, the world and the private lives of Australian Prime Ministers. Shen came back tonight and I think I’ll just hang out for a bit and go to sleep.