I planned to write about my trip to Beijing as soon as I returned to Cebu, but life, as they say, had other plans.
Now it all seems like a distant memory, although it has only been a little over a month since I said goodbye to the Chinese capital, where I spent almost two weeks as a guest of Renmin University of China to learn about how Chinese media and social media work.
I was joined by journalists from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Timor L’Este, Sri Lanka, India, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Mongolia. All in all, participants of the program totaled 15, one each from the countries I mentioned, including the Philippines. It was the first of its kind, organized with the help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I have to thank Madame Zhang Zhen, the Chinese consul general, who encouraged me to go even though I had already turned down two previous offers to go to the mainland. It was an opportunity I should not miss, she told me. And I am more than glad that I went.
I have been to Europe and other parts of Asia. I went to college in the US where I stayed for at least five years. I had been to 24 countries before I turned 21. Back then, I considered myself a globetrotter. But in the last 20 years, I have hardly left this neck of the woods. My last trip to Manila was in 2017, although I go home to Davao at least twice a year. Other than that, it’s my walk from Urgello to P. del Rosario every day. I mean, that’s literally my world.
So imagine how I felt when I stepped out of the jet bridge at the Beijing Capital International Airport. To say I was overblown by the immensity of everything would be an understatement. I was dumbstruck, not only because of the sight that greeted me — sky-high ceilings, what looked to be endless wide hallways — but also because the walk to immigration left me almost out of breath. Not because it drained me physically, but because I was anxious about meeting with Chinese immigration.
You see, I was grilled and held up for almost half an hour at the immigration in Mactan hours earlier because the officer could not find a record of me. He asked for my itinerary, my invitation and whatnot. I tried very hard to keep my composure while I explained to him that I was going on a sponsored trip. I guess he was just doing his job, but I thought he could have used some common sense that could have saved both of us some time. The visa was there. The emailed invite was there. I showed him my roundtrip ticket. I couldn’t tell him where I was staying in Beijing because I had no idea and that someone was going to meet me at the airport. Finally, it dawned on him that I was going on some sort of a media exchange program, so he asked if I was a member of the media and asked for my ID. I was tempted to say something glib, but I just wanted to be out of there, so I showed him my press ID. Even then he made an effort to scrutinize my press ID.
Compare that to my experience in Beijing. The immigration officer looked at my passport and asked for my invite, which I readily showed him. Before you know it, I was doing the fingerprint scanning and had my photo taken. The whole thing took less than five minutes. Tops. Then I was ushered in.
I was officially in the People’s Republic of China after more than 12 hours on the plane, in transit in Hong Kong, and a delayed flight to Beijing.
The first order of the night — it was past 9 p.m., after all — was to buy a Chinese SIM so I could contact Ruby from the Ministry. The service desk was conveniently located next to the baggage carousel. By the time I collected my suitcase, I had already contacted Ruby and told her I had arrived. She said somebody was waiting for me outside and sent me the driver’s picture. Lo and behold, he was right there, waving a tiny Philippine flag when I emerged from customs.
We brisk-walked to the carpark. The ride was an electric car, my very first. I sat next to the driver, crunched up because I couldn’t figure out how to adjust the seat. I tried to tell him my problem, but he spoke no English and I spoke no Mandarin. It took him 10 minutes into the drive to notice my predicament. Before long, I was enjoying a nighttime view of Beijing.
First impression: Very wide highways. Lots of nice-looking cars. Towering streetlights. And what seemed to be tall apartment blocks wherever I looked. I thought I was back in Kuwait, where I graduated from high school at the Universal American School, heading for Salmiya from our house in Salwa.
To those who have been to Kuwait, or any of the Gulf countries, you know what I mean.
The ride took more than half an hour — and we were going more than 80 kilometers per hour, or so it would seem — before we finally arrived at my destination: the Renmin University of China campus. It’s in the Haidian District, although if you ask me to pinpoint it on the map I would draw a blank. Let me just say this: Beijing, the city, is humongous. I think the entire city, with its suburbs, is bigger than all of Central Cebu. And that includes both the eastern and western seaboards.
The driver dropped me off outside a tall building which would be my home for the next week or so. I later learned it housed many international students. After checking in, I found myself inside my very own “suite,” and it was so darn cold, around 10 degrees Centigrade (it was 29 when I left Cebu that morning), and I had no idea how to turn the heater on.
So on my very first night in Beijing, I lay wide awake. Tossing and turning, I kept checking the time on my cellphone. I was dead tired, but I guess the adrenaline that took me all the way to my campus suite from Cebu was still pumping. I ended up sleeping for only two hours, wrapped in all the blankets I could find and still wearing the pants, sweatshirt and socks I had worn that day.
When I woke up, the first thing I did was look outside the window. The sky was azure blue.
-- To be continued