Beijing to Zhuhai (Macau)

I'm sorry I haven't been updating much. It's been difficult to get onto the internet and even to have time to write anything! I'll be trying to keep things more up to date here as well as to add some posts about what has happened. I'm going to try to back-date them to keep things in order, so keep an eye out for them.Yesterday, I left Beijing at about 2:30 on a flight that was supposed to leave at 8:20. That was fun.First impressions: The plane flew in over a large crab fishery, I think and the airstrip was surrounded by water, farmland, and small shacks. The trip from the airport showed a mixture of relatively shabby-looking houses, piles of rubble, and skyscrapers under construction. The city has the appearance of a rural area that is rapidly being re-created into a business center and suburb of Macau. Closer to the center, the transformation seems pretty much complete. The air in Zhuhai is much cleaner than the air in Beijing, but It's hard to be worse. Instead, here it's hotter and extremely humid. Also, lots of mosquitoes.The plan for today is to get into Macau (which involves passing through immigration every time) ,have a look around, and eat lots of food. For those who don't know, Macau is a former Portugese colony that only recently (1999, I think) was returned to the Chinese, so it should have a very interesting blend of the two cultures.

Arrival in Shanghai

As far as I can tell, I managed to pack everything I planned on bringing (more on this later). That's a minor success in and of itself. I was given a ticket for the business/first class lounge (Alitalia's) so I hung out in there for a while before the flight. I was starving, so I was pretty happy to find that not only did they have fancy little sandwiches, but there was wine and prosecco as well!The flight was delayed by half an hour, so boarding started at 4:30pm (NY time). It took until 6:15 for the plane to actually take off. Once airborne, I was treated to a selection of short videos for a while, including:

• A view of the airplane and the outside from a camera on the tail
• Safety info
• World Expo advertisements
• videos of women with strange constructions on their heads singing, apparently trying to out-Gaga Lady Gaga
• a montage of three white tourists having a great time while catching what seemed like every sight in China (of course including the Expo) and being terrible at eating soup dumplings.

None of this had any dubbing or subtitles in English. Eventually the movies began. 14 hours is a very long time, by the way.Some interesting English translations spotted:

• "Shanghai China. More discovery. More experience."
• "Duty makes better city. Duty makes better life."

A bit of sad news: remember the comment about not forgetting anything? I think I didn't but don't know because my luggage was left behind in New York, apparently along with an entire pallet of luggage that just never got loaded. There were lots of unhappy people. By this time tomorrow though, I should be all set.Plans for tomorrow? Sleep, then most likely exploring the Expo.

Packing

Welcome to my travel blog, in which I'll try to chronicle my month-long trip to China! I'm packing to leave tomorrow and decided to set this up now so I can give people a link. I'm not sure yet whether I'll be able to get to this blog through the Great Firewall, or whether I'll have time to post (and how often that will happen), but I'll try to keep this up to date. If I can do it easily, I'll try to include pictures as well. Some useful tools I came across for making sure I can blog and reach Facebook and twitter (@invisiblejules):

• Cornell has a VPN service, available to students and faculty (and hopefully, alumni) with a valid NetID: CIT VPN
• And, in case that doesn't work, a paid option: StrongVPN

Hopefully I won't be too exhausted/lazy to keep this up!

- Julian