beijing beijing

just doesn't sound the same as new york new york does it? ahh never mind..

fulfiling trip to beijing it was! managed to see my dad after 7 whole months and he showed us the progress he made in china. brought us to meet his many business partners and even showed us around his offices. it's a kind of work/holiday trip.. not exactly completely relax but not exactly working at the same time.

so we landed in beijing on sat at about 630am. on my way out of the plane (we were going out onto the tarmac), a stewardess told me to wear more clothes ("chuan duo yi dian yi fu, wai mian len") but i thought nah there's nothing my strong singaporean body can't handle. turns out, i was bloody wrong. there's many things my singaporean body can't handle.. least of all is the suddenly drop to a freezing 2 degrees in temperature. needless to say, i froze out on the tarmac, was shaking non-stop when the shuttle finally brought us to the airport.

so i met up dad and uncle anthony at the airport and we made our way to the hotel. so starts out trip.. first day we (well mainly my sis) went around shopping. the rest of us just tagged along. you know how girls gets when overseas and the prices are cheap.

this is the backlanes behind the hotel.. we stayed at the days inn joiest. it's a nice, upscale kind of place.

there's just so much to explore in beijing. it's a city so rich in culture and history, i felt i could have easily spent 6 months there and still not covered all the spots. it's like a clash of the old and new there.. you've got old chinese-style buildings in the foreground and then tall sky-scrappers in the background as a testament to the modernisation of china.

but i prefer the old buildings of course.. that's where all the history is. so the we spent saturday and sunday basically shopping around and getting climatised to the cold cold weather. on monday, we met miss lee. she's one of my dad's business partners and apparently one very influential business woman in beijing. she had offered her place when she heard we were coming up to beijing so we had to "show face" and move in to stay with her.

downside: she's a very domineering woman so our schedule for the next whole week was practically dictated by her.

upside: she planned everything for us, plus she put her driver at our disposal. thumbs up!

her place is huge.. there's a garage but it's not big enough to fit all her 3 cars so the driver usually takes one car home. there's a garden where she put the rocks she bought from the excavation site of peking man. plus she has 2 dogs, one of which is a police guard dog.. freaking huge goliath of a dog.

the lady in the picture? yeah that's miss lee.. along with hou zi, the huge dog (yes, dogs in china have chinese names and they listen to commands in chinese as well..). it's sitting down and it's already about half my height.. granted i'm not that tall but still...

there's an ongoing deal to bring kbox into beijing. the place is already ready for business. it's just that they haven't attained the go-ahead license from the chinese government. so miss lee was pulled in by the top shot of kbox to help with the marketing and branding of the joint in china. in turn, miss lee roped in my dad to help out as well. we went down to kbox a couple of times.. and the difference between kbox beijing and kbox singapore? check this out.. kbox beijing is 3 storeys high, with 98 fully furnished rooms and they employ about 200 staff (including kitchen staff, etc). each room has a dedicated staff member to cater to the customer's every whimp. plus they provide buffet meals via the in-house kitchen (yes they have a whole kitchen inside) that comes along with the ktv sessions. it's a sort of upscale ktv joint..

anyway we met with the managing director of kbox beijing to discuss certain issues. and he introduced us to his partners from singapore and malaysia (also from kbox). during one of the sessions, miss lee had the director/chairman of the beijing property arm of the chinese government to meet with us. also, it was during one of these sessions where i finally sang the song "ni zhe me she de wo nan guo" with my dad!

during the course of week, in between meetings with business partners and dinners and lunches, we managed to squeeze the time to visit the many places of historical interest that beijing has to offer. i'll let the pictures do the talking here..

the ju yong pass of the great wall.. i climbed all the way up to the end of the wall here.. took me nearly 2+ hours to complete. totally shagged out after that....

the forbidden city.. miss lee used her government connections to allow us to enter without charge. this is a magnificent place.. the attention to detail was superb.

the summer palace.. where the emperors of the ming and qing dynasty came to relax and enjoy themselves. it's a huge place, much larger than the forbidden city. the whole lake in the background constitutes just part of the summer palace..

the temple of heaven.. where the ming and qing emperors would come to pray for bountiful crops every year. it's a giant compound, where the ceremony is intricate and and the implications are deep. just imagine there would be hundreds of officials congratualting the emperor upon completing the ceremony. and yeah, the congratulating is in itself one of the ceremonies..

special mention: this goes out to the chauffeur who drove us around during the week we spent in beijing. his name is xiao wu. he's one the most humble persons i've met in my life. he worked overtime almost every single day during the week we were there but never once did he complained or showed an unhappy face. he was always willingly to explain to us the sights and sounds as we travelled around beijing. he even walked us about the forbidden city and bothered to explain everything (giving us an insight into the history of the place) and ensured we were safe. he never once asked for anything during meals times except maybe a hot drink and he would always walk ahead of us to ensure that the car would be prep-ed and ready by the time we reached. thanks again xiao wu, you are more than just a chauffeur to us, you are a friend. and one that we are proud to call.

well that pretty much wraps it up for my beijing trip. i've got a lot more photos so maybe i'll upload it to my flickr account. check them out there yeah. =)