Beijing — Bikes at Tsinghua University

3 June 2010

We flew from Hong Kong to Beijing on Monday. After a two-day workshop at Tsinghua University on "semivolatile compounds in the indoor environment," Ingrid and I said goodbye to China. We left the hotel at 8:30 AM Thursday, local time, and because of the date line magic touched down in San Francisco just before 9:00 AM Thursday, local time!



I only had a bit of free time with my camera. These photos were shot either on Wednesday before the workshop and during a lunchtime walk or on Thursday in the early morning. All were taken on the Tsinghua University campus.



The Tsinghua University campus is a large campus in the Haidian district in the northeast side of the city. Cars are allowed on the campus, but the traffic there is dominated by bicycles of all types. The young man in the yellow shirt is LIU Cong, who is a PhD student working with Professor ZHANG Yinping, the organizer of the workshop. Cong was the captain of the brigade of graduate students who took care of all of the delegates and the logistics at the meeting.



We were booked into a lovely hotel just outside the east gate. The taxi ride from the airport should take about a half hour. Generally, taxi drivers don't speak English, so you need to have your address printed out in Chinese characters to show the driver. Cong had sent me a copy of the address we needed, which I had printed. From Hong Kong, we were traveling with two Swedish colleagues, Jan and Carl-Gustaf (CG). Unfortunately, CG had laid over in Beijing on his way to Hong Kong and in doing so had used up his single-entry visa into China. Consequently, he was not allowed to board the plane with us and instead had to get an emergency visa in Hong Kong and then pay a high price for a ticket on a later flight. Since Jan was currently staying in Beijing (as a visiting professor) and knew his way around, I gave CG the paper with the hotel address.



At the Beijing airport, we got settled into a taxi and Jan told the driver that we wanted to go to Tsing Hua. Off we headed. But, after about 20 minutes, when we should have turned onto the 4th Ring Road, the driver kept heading toward the city center. Fortunately, Jan recognized the error. After trying without success to explain to the driver his mistake, Jan took out a business card with one side printed in Chinese characters and handed that to the driver. "Ahhhh. Tsing HUA!" he said, with a strong emphasis on the second syllable. Who knows where we were headed! But -- after an hour in the taxi instead of 30 minutes -- we did make it to our destination safely!