Official trip to Beijing, China

I am working as a Software Engineer in Samsung India Softwares, Bangalore. So as part of my work, I got a chance to go to Beijing, China for Inter-Operatibility Testing(referred as IOT) of the Application I was working on.It was to be a short trip of 15 days.
We were a group of 4 people from Samsung.

We reached Beijing from Bangalore via Bangkok on a Thai Air Flight. Listening songs on iPod was the only thing I did during that time. I was very apprehensive of going to Beijing as I had heard that there was no Vegetarian food available. My fears increased when a fellow passenger told me that even "Veg Rice" is fried in Pig Oil :(( there.

Anyways we hired a Taxi to the Hotel we booked.It was very cold outside. Temperature was around -5 degrees. Beijing was all glittering in lights and there was sound of crackers bursting here and there. We came to know that it was because of Chinese New Year which had just passed.

After reaching the Hotel, we just crashed onto our beds as we had to be in China Mobile's Office at 9:30 a.m. sharp for kick-off meeting.After a great difficulty(why don't these Chinese learn English), we managed to reached there just in time. There we met representatives from Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola.

And from Next Day, it was all IOT work, work and work. Don't worry I am not going to those details. The only new thing that happened during that time was that we changed our hotel to a place nearby office. And, of course, I forgot to tell about lunch and dinner.

Luckily, we found out that McD was nearby, but unluckily (for me only), it did not serve Vegetarian burgers. So I used to remove the chicken cutlet from my McChicken and had to eat the remaining part. Dinner was better as we used to prepare rice and MTR's ready-made daals.

When the weekend started approaching, we started making plans of sight-seeing. The main attraction there was THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA, which was some 80 kms from Beijing. The other attractions were Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, Lama Temple and Wang Fu Jing Street.

On Saturday morning, we hired a taxi to The Great Wall after 10 minutes of bargaining.
When we reached there, it was very cold and icy winds were flowing.
We had to purchase gloves and caps as there was no other way we could have survived in that weather.After purchasing tickets, we went towards the Great Wall.There was a heavy crowd.
After seeing the wall for the first time, my first reaction was "WOW".
We went to the "Badaling" pass. This portion of the Great Wall is 7.8 meters (25.6 ft) high and 5 meters (16.4 ft) wide and is made of stone and bricks from the hills.

The Great Wall of China


It was tiring journey going upto the end of that portion of wall in that weather. But all of us managed it.
We were all very delighted to be there. This structure was simply fabulous and wonderful.
With Teammates at Great Wall(I am at extreme right)

In the way, we met some more Indians who had come to see the Great Wall.
After climbing down from The Great Wall, we purchased some souvenirs.

After that we returned to the Hotel.

We went in search of a bar that night and were told about an area called "Sanlitun"(Our pronunciation was Sanli"TUUUUNN" ;) ) where we would find many bars.
After traveling in 2 Metros and a taxi, finally we reached there. There were around 30-40 bars on the street. People outside were almost dragging us to their respective bars. Then after roaming around for an hour, we settled for one of them.
There we drank and enjoyed the songs/dances being played till 11.Then we came back.

On Sunday Morning, we went to the Tiananmen Square. This place is widely known for the Tiananmen Square Protests in 1989.

Tiananmen Square

It was huge area in the middle of the city. Anyways Police was not allowing us to go near it. So it was kind of frustrating.

Then we headed for The Forbidden City. Forbidden refers to the fact that no-one could enter or leave the palace without the emperor's permission some 500 years ago. It occupied a huge area and was quite big. At some places, renovation work was going on. After roaming inside for 2 hours, we got bored of of it. So we all headed for the Lunch.

After that, we caught a Metro to Lama Temple. It is a famous Tibetan Buddhism Temple. For the first time, we saw roads with potholes and mud in Beijing. We inferred that may be because of Tibetan area, it was under-developed by Chinese. The temple was also big and had little temples surrounding that. Snaps were not allowed inside the premises. Big Statues of Buddha were placed everywhere inside. I felt a kind of spirituality in that temple. Also some small bronze statues of Shiva, Saraswati etc. were there, which showed the similarity of Hinduism and Buddhism. After spending close to 2 hours there, we headed for Wang Fu Jing(a famous street in Beijing).

The street was very crowded. Here one can purchase all those cheap quality electronic stuff. But some Posh Malls were also there. The thing I like worst was the roadside eateries that were serving fried cockroaches, beetles, scorpions etc. I just could not stand the filthy smell there and disappeared from that place at once.

Chinese Delicacies

Then we went to some small shops there and began our window shopping. We had some fun while bargaining for the goods. We came back to hotel at around 10 p.m.

This was the only weekend that I got to spend in Beijing and we covered most of the famous places in Beijing.

From next week onwards, work started again and fortunately the IOT was successful. So it was a fruitful trip both on professional and personal front.

I returned back to Bangalore on 17th March, 2007 only to hear the news that India was losing to Bangladesh in WC'07 group match :( .