Beijing: Thursday: Arrival

Checking-in at Shanghai's Hongqiao airport, I saw a security measure I'd never seen before. Security guards ran a swab on about a dozen people's various items of clothing and carry-on items. Security kept these people in a separate, roped-off area while the swab got tested for chemicals, which took about thirty seconds, then released the whole group when the test came back clean. Then it's time for another group of about a dozen people and another swab. It's a nice compromise between efficiency (analyzing batches of people at once) and specificity (being able to easily identify the infiltrator), as the vast majority of swabs will come back clean.

On the plane, I ate oranges I brought. I didn't expect to be fed on the one-and-a-half hour flight. Nevertheless, the airline provided a sizable snack (a roll (with anonymous meat), fruit, raisins (from California!), and peanuts (overly salty), but I didn't particularly like most of it and was glad I had the oranges.

Upon landing in Beijing, I took a shuttle for ten minutes to meet some co-workers who landed at a different terminal. (Some terminals in the airport are quite a drive apart!) We then took a taxi to the hotel, during which time we were introduced to a Beijing-rush-hour traffic jam. The hotel didn't have my reservation, one item among many that showed this company event was poorly planned. After spending much time sorting it out with the help of some bilingual co-workers, I ended up getting myself placed in the room with the extra person on this trip (the person who happened to be assigned as only one person to a two-person room).

A big group of coworkers walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. I have nothing more to say about the dinner because, despite the number of dishes, I wasn't enthusiastic about any of them. (No, it wasn't the style of cooking; it was simply the quality.)

My hotel room had a cool feature. I'm sad I forgot to take a movie of it. The wall separating the bathtub from the bedroom has a large window with wooden blinds. At the touch of a button, they angled open or closed, or slide up or down. A bit creepy if you were in the room with someone you don't know well, but nevertheless very cool to watch.