Summer Olympics News

I booked a room through www.ctrip.com at the Beijing Nikko New Century Hotel, a five star hotel run by Japan Airlines, The hotel is located in the western part of the city between the third and the second ring road. Booking through ctrip, the hotel was only 788 Yuan ($100) per night.

As I got there on foot, finding the entrance was the first challenge. I walked around the whole hotel past construction workers who all stared at me wondering what the strange “laowai” (foreigner) with the bag in her hand was doing wandering all the way around the hotel. Once I got to the entrance, I found out that I could have gotten there so much easier had I taken the entrance from Xizhimen Road. In any case, this is something that won’t happen to you if you take a taxi.

The hotel looked okay from the outside, though of course not as nice as on the pictures I’d seen. The lobby was really plush, although it was almost a bit too much with all the gold ornaments, little lights on the ceiling, and the palm trees next to the counter selling mooncakes for the mid-autumn festival, which was two days ago.

Checking in in English was no problem. The fuwuyuan (universal term in the north of China referring to all service staff whether in a hotel, a restaurant, a shop or anywhere else) spoke English well enough to explain everything that was necessary and answer my questions. I had to carry my luggage upstairs myself, but I only had one bag, so I don’t know whether it would have been any different had I had more luggage.
As the elevator sped up to the 18th floor where my room was, I was getting more excited.

The more disappointed I was when I got to the room. Officially I had booked a deluxe room. I don’t know what exactly I had expected, but it had definitely been something else different from the smallish room with the gray carpet I was standing in. For a moment, I was thinking about setting up a tent and sleeping in the lobby. That is not to say that the room was horrible. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it. There was just nothing special about it, either. Later, I found out that Deluxe room was just a nicer name for standard room, i.e. all rooms that were not business rooms or executive suites were simply called “deluxe”. The room was very similar to other standard rooms I had stayed in and paid considerably less money for, that is except for the mini bar and the chocolate bar on my pillow. Not to forget the comb in the bathroom that was made out of real wood… Anyway, I was disappointed.

The service was not overwhelming, either. Again, there was nothing wrong with it, nobody was unfriendly to me, and the staff was able to help me when I had questions about where this and that restaurant was or on how to check out later, but nobody was overly enthusiastic, either.
There are a couple of things to say in favour of the hotel: There’s a Carrefour right across the street, which is very convenient if you need or want to do some grocery shopping or need anything else. The selection of restaurants nearby, on the other hand, is less impressive, but there is a variety of restaurants, cafes and bars in the hotel.
The hotel is located fairly close to Xizhimen subway station. You can take a taxi there or take a bus from Baishiqiao bus stop very close to the hotel. Xizhimen is two stops away. If you don’t cross the road, this is one of the very few places were you’ve got an extremely high chance that you’ll get on the right bus.
The view on Xizhimen Avenue at night was nice, too. But it didn’t make up for the small size of my room.

If I could do my own hotel rating, I would say that I stayed in a three star room in a four to five star hotel. You can tell it’s not the newest hotel, either. The room was only $100, and I know that there are more “discount five star hotels” like this in Beijing that are okay, but not what you would expect from an upper range hotel. Unless you want the services offered by a five star hotel, there’s no need to stay there. You can get similar or better rooms in cheaper hotels. It’s probably better either to spend the $200 or $300 and stay in a hotel like the St. Regis and get a real five star hotel (of which there are quite a few in Beijing, too) or to save the money and stay at a place that might have a less fancy lobby, but equally good rooms.

It’s always considerably cheaper to reserve a room online than to book at the hotel directly, so here are some websites that have got good offers.
http://english.ctrip.com : the Chinese classic in English; you can reserve all types of hotels except real budget places and dorm beds. You can also book discount flights here if you have to travel within China.
http://www.sinohotel.com : everything from no stars to five stars; you can also book dorm beds here
http://hotelguidechina.com : 3-5 star hotels, you can search hotels by area.

During my one-year stay in China as an exchange student, I was very careful not to have to go to the hospital, and, in fact, the only time I ever had to was when I accompanied someone else. Apart from that one time, I managed to stay away from hospitals and was very grateful for that. The horror stories circulating among students about Chinese hospitals certainly contributed to that. Even when I got a 104 degree fever in a malaria area over night, I preferred just taking the malaria medicine I’d brought along over going to the hospital – and I still think that was a good choice (I would have gone to the hospital had I been in Beijing though).

This time, things went differently. I had dinner at a fast food place near Beijing railway station. I’d been looking for a different place to go to, but there were not a lot of other restaurants around. I had no one to have dinner with that night and just wanted to grab a bite. It was a very typical fast food place with cafeteria tables and plastic bowls. A look into the menu told me it was pretty expensive, too. My experience in China so far has been that if an ordinary small restaurant has nothing special to offer and charges more than other places, the food is usually not very good, so I briefly though about getting up and leaving. But I didn’t feel like having to look for another place, so I stayed. I got Zha Jiang Mian, a famous Beijing dish which is usually very good and had always come as a vegetarian dish when I had ordered it so far. Apparently, it also exists with meat, and that was what I got: a pot of noodles with lots of ground meat on top. I ate them up quickly and left.

In the subway station, my stomach was beginning to feel funny. I ignored it. “You’ll be fine.” I told myself. Nothing serious had ever happened to me because of eating Chinese food – and I’d eaten lots of things I would never put into my mouth in Germany. If anything, I thought, this is la duzi – diarrhea. La duzi is something you will probably get sooner or later if you are in China. It usually goes away after a day or two; it’s annoying, but nothing to worry about. On the bus, which was cramming full as usual, it finally began to dawn on me that this time I would not be fine. I got off two stations early, just about in time before my stomach decided to revolt. I rushed into the nearest restaurant and right into the gents’ room, as the ladies’ room was occupied. There’s something comical about squatting in the less than hygienic restroom of a really plush restaurant, having stomach problems and la duzi at the same time while crowds of angry men are banging on the door demanding to be let in.

I did feel a bit better afterwards and took a taxi home. “You’ll be fine.” I told myself. I was wrong again. I spent the next four hours at home in the bathroom. When my roommate got back very late at night, I told her what had happened. “Off to the hospital,” she said. I was not happy about going, but by that time, I was feeling so miserable that I didn’t really care any longer. Plus I was beginning to be really dehydrated as my stomach refused to take anything in, and I didn‘t know for how much longer this would continue. Unfortunately for me, the taxi driver who took us knew a lot about meat poisoning and how very dangerous it was, and was more than willing to share that information. I just remember hunching over my plastic bag in the back of the car and saying “Let’s talk about something else now, shall we,” every once in a while, but he just ignored me.

The hospital we went to was crowded and not the cleanest place I’d ever been to, but after all the horror stories I’d heard about Chinese hospitals, I had expected something worse. The syringes were new, although the nurse doing the blood test was very reluctant to tell me at first. “Does it make a difference?” She just snapped. I decided there was no point in telling her that yes, it made a big difference. The other people at the hospital were nicer, though not much more specific. “You’ve got bacteria in your blood,” I was told once the results came back. “We need to take one more blood sample amd do more testing now, and you’ll get an infusion in the meantime.” I tried to extract some more concrete information from them, but they just told me I‘d probably have to be re-examined again in a couple of days. I can’t say I cared much at that point in time.

After they took my blood sample, I spent the next three hours getting my infusion lying on a bed designed for patients having their ECG done. It was the only bed not occupied, and I did feel bad since there were quite a few patients much sicker than I was who did not have a bed. Every now and then I had to get up to make room for people who got their ECG done. Finally, at four o’clock in the morning, I got the results of my blood test: the form of meat poisoning I had was harmless, and I would be okay soon. Still not very specific, but much better news than what I’d been told before. I had to go back to the hospital for the next three days to get more medicine, which I did at a smaller and much nicer hospital closer to my home. I am still eating meat, but I’ve been more careful and have been staying away from ground meat altogether, as spoilt ground meat apparently is one of the major sources of food poisoning.

There is still a very high chance that the worst problem you will ever encounter in China is diarrhea. You should be sure to bring some medicine for that. In case you do have to go to the hospital while in Beijing, you have several options. You can either go to one of the regular Chinese hospital, which vary in quality of their service, or to one of the hospitals for foreigners, which are less crowded, cleaner, (and considerably more expensive), but might take you a lot longer to get there. I remember having to ride in the ambulance for 45 minutes when I accompanied a friend to one of those places. Make sure to have enough cash on you or to bring someone who can pay, as otherwise you will probably not be treated.

I also found the section on medical information of the website of the US embassy quite useful. You can get the names and addresses of a couple of major hospitals in Beijing here, as well as the number of an emergency

I went to Tian’anmen Square one last time before leaving China. I’d read about the decorations for National Day on October 1 in the newspaper and seen the first preparations myself. National Day celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 and is accompanied by a week of vacation, during which the entire population of China goes travelling, or so it seems. Students go home for the holidays while Beijing fills up with tourists from all over the country. It is a time notorious for the impossibility to get train tickets anywhere. The only option for those who do not wish to spend hours or days in a queue and then fight over the last few tickets, or for those who despite all efforts leave empty-handed, is taking a plane.

On my last day in Beijing, National Day was noticeably drawing closer. I had trouble getting into the cram-full subway train, and only managed to squeeze myself inside thanks to the crowds of people behind me who kept pushing.

The decorations on the square had been finished the day before. On one side of the square was a miniature Potala Palace, a miniature Three Gorges Damn, and a train representing the railway from Qinghai to Tibet, which has just been newly opened on July 1 this year.

Right in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes hung the portrait of Sun Yat-sen, inofficial father of the nation and first president of the Republic of China, established in 1912 and not to be confused with the People’s Republic whose anniversary is celebrated… Nonetheless, Sun Yat-sen’s gets his place on Tiananmen Square every year.

On the other side were the Olympics mascots sitting in the middle of the flower arrangements – probably the biggest attraction judging by the number of people taking photos – as well as a rather smallish and much less impressive replica of the “Bird’s Nest”, one of the major Olympic venues. Since last year nobody knew yet what the Olympics mascots would look like, this the first year they were displayed for National Day.

Tian’anmen Square was filled with people, mostly from the countryside, taking pictures in front of the giant Olympic mascots and the other decorations. For most people coming to Beiing is something that they don’t do every year. It might even be a once in a lifetime experience for some, so everyone is really excited.

I was in for another photo session. There were only a few foreigners around that day, and as soon as people noticed I was willing to have my picture taken, more and more came up to ask. I’ve gotten into the habit of asking everyone who wants to take a picture with me whether I could also have a picture taken with them with my camera in return. Most people are very surprised that a foreigner wants to take their picture, but nobody minds, so by the end of the day, I had a nice photo collection on my camera as well as lots of new cell phone numbers, i.e. lots of new friends. I’m still in touch with some of them.

I had to go back to the place where I stayed fairly early though, since my flight was going that night. So I got back onto the subway, which was slightly less crowded by then, and went home to get ready to pack.