beijing airport

Beijing Capital International Airport is bigger and hotter than I would have expected. The ceilings are arched and white, planks of wood criss-crossing over something orange behind them. When we landed at five-something AM the first morning, it was also nearly empty. Beijing Capital is the most highly-trafficked international airport in Asia. ...Maybe because of this, someday, they will decide to invest in air conditioning. 

It took five minutes, maybe a little longer, maybe closer to ten minutes, to walk from the plane to immigration. While I was there the officer helping me talked with the officer at the other booth about something that amused them both. I’d just spent twelve horrible hours not sleeping at all but being the couch cushion for the little boy in the seat next to me; whatever they said didn’t amuse me. I don’t like flying. 

I do like airports. After you pass through immigration you walk through this wide part with a bunch of banners in different languages welcoming you to Beijing, then go down escalators to wait for a train that will take you to customs and baggage claim. I can’t remember exactly what it’s like when you get off the train. I think I may have walked straight to baggage claim and then strait out into whatever the part of the airport is called where people can wait to pick you up. 

I have a few impressions of what happened next: it was too hot in the airport, I needed to shower, and I got accosted by a taxi driver immediately after claiming my baggage. Several others asked me if I needed a ride while I walked the gamut. We’d been told someone from the travel agency would be waiting for us when we go there. There was nobody there. I went and stood with a couple people I recognized as part of the same group. Around us a man got into a loud verbal argument with someone a little passive until a girl maybe my age went up and pushed him around until he quieted down. Couldn’t tell if they were siblings or just star-connected strangers. 

Other than the fact that all signs were in Chinese and that announcements were made in Chinese first and in English second, I kept waiting for it to feel real. I think because when I was in Europe, the weather was so immediately different from what I’ve ever experienced, it really did feel like the other side of the world. It was just hot in Beijing, heat that I’ve felt and hated, too, at home. 

I watched people gather each other, walk aimlessly through the airport’s lower levels. Everything shines in airports. It’s all cleaner than you think it would be. Whiter, too. Feels a little like you’re all passing through some giant animal’s body, just for a time, until you exit into the world full of weather and dirt. 

The view from outside the airport is different. There was this small, shiny, pancake-shaped building across from our bus. It turned out to be a small introduction to a city full of strangely-shaped or strangely-decorated buildings. My first thoughts of Beijing were that I was waiting for it to feel real, but it’s a vigorous city, robustly itself, populated in part by one of the most technologically advanced generations in the world and in part by older men and women with traditional haircuts and who still wear those little black fabric shoes. People ride bikes and electric scooters right into traffic. People walk right into traffic. There’s more greenery—shrubs, trees, parks—than I had imagined. The city is larger than I ever thought. Its people are friendly and interested. Chatty. I wonder how long Beijing will sustain the traditions of its long history; how long it should; how people like me affect what happens there; will we continue to be a pest to the kite-sellers from whom we will not buy…