I’m back – with a long list of stuff to catch up on, not the least of which is the “news”. Following current events via CCTV in China is an interesting experience. To put it in the words of my hosts – “America news – bad, China news – good!”
(Checking Drudge however, I see the world is still coming to an end.)
I didn’t do any tourist spots this time, but I have a few photos to share. (Click to enlarge)
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Beijing, very typical street shots.
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Some trucks are so heavily laden, the tires travel flattened on the bottom. This one wasn’t too bad. With 1,200 new cars hitting the roads every day, the traffic was much more congested than when I was last there 2 years ago. |
I didn’t see as many building cranes as during my last vist. While there’s still lots of construction going on, in the area near the Beijing International Equestrian Club where the dog show was held, there are several unfinished and abandoned commercial projects visible from the freeway.
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Beijing airport. Air quality the last couple of days I was there was poor.
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Not that there was much to look forward to getting home – this was the scene at Edmonton airport. Ugh. |
Thanks once again to the guest bloggers who stepped up while I was gone. Things should be pretty much back to normal by this evening.
Welcome back . . . how was the Show?
Small and boring. I went over to bring my dog Focus home.
Did you stay in hotels, or in a private home? What did you eat? Did you go out? Did you get around by taxi, bus, or rent-a-car? Was your dog as happy to see you as we are?
Just trying to rub in the jet lag.
Normal?
Private home, mostly pizza and what chinese I can stomach. No, we were too busy, and drove around by private car. Yes, the dog is happy to be home, to say the least! He’s been looking for me ever since I left him there.
I was in Bejing in the early ’80s. Strange experience driving down a 5 lane expressway, practically deserted, being the only modern vehicle. Lots of single axle carts attached to motor cycles loaded to the hilt. Biggest trucks were 5 ton single axle dump trucks (Russian design). Stopped at a rail crossing on the way to the Great Wall and the van got showered with cinders as a steam powered locomotive went by! The beer was decent.
“Yes, the dog is happy to be home….He’s been looking for me ever since I left him there.”
Sorta like SDA regulars and your guest bloggers, in other words.
Welcome back, Kate! There ain’t nothing like the real thing.
Kate re visibility at Beiging Airport—-just prior to the Olympics there was a pic of smog inside the terminal….
CT
I’m not terribly welcome in the PRC….
In the 80’s most CCCP rail was steam….but diesels were appearing…
I was startled by recent travelors returning from the PRC without seeing the steam locomotives.
I was reflecting on those pics of the PRC putting Main Battle Tanks on the roads to break the ice last winter. A tank on ice seems to me to be a land-scud…..but then I recall driving a Farmall M with steel half-tracks on the road in an ice-storm…..great recovery vehicle….
You flew on Polar Bear airlines? (just assuming from the graphic in the last photo)
What’s their motto? “A Big Dead One Every Mile”
Is the market now going to be flooded with with cheap Chinese copies of your dog?
Lucky dog 🙂 Welcome home Kate.
Syncro
Welcome back, Kate!
To put it in the words of my hosts – “America news – bad, China news – good!”
When you have time and energy, Kate, could you elaborate on that?
Are you still in the EIA/Leduc area? I’ll buy you lunch.
Not much to elaborate on – coverage of the US focused on negative stories, coverage of China could be summed up by “the government gets results!”
Welcom home, Kate: I’m a newbie blogger, and am enjoying the company who contribute to your blog. We’re all pretty much atuned, politically, and it is nice to know that I am not alone in my perspective of the world. Tell me, Kate, while in China did you catch wind of Beijing Maurice Strong; ‘coz I believe we did right here in Canada. It was in an FP Comment Page column by National Post’s Michael Cocoran on a really weird interview with Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel. It seems Daniel is lobbying for a Carbon Tax and Cap’nTrade for this country. Since when have Oil Patch outfits been asking for such taxes? I thought they opposed it for being a job-killer. But, hold on there! Daniel wants the Carbon Tax not to charged against the oil industry. He wants it to be paid by all of us Canadians smucks with all such revenue GOING TO oilsands operations and to his Enbridge pipeline plans, which include building a Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast. That will give the oil-poor Asian market access to Oilsands oil. Get this, Daniel is quoted as saying that Canada “has too much hydr-carbons”. And, presumably, too much money. Our oil, gas and cash needs to be redistributed to poor Asia, he seems to be saying. This is insane. It’s free market turned on its ear. It’s socialism out of control, and it’s a policy promoted by the Oil Patch? Smells more like a Mo Strong/Power Corps/Desmarais family plot whose graduates include Jean Chretien and Bob Rae. It’s a One World Goverment plan, it seems to me. And this guy, Daniel, has the audacity to pitch it to The National Post? Or, am I wrong? Am I an over-the-top paranoid Albertan? Help me out with this, Kate. When you have time.
Five years ago I spent the winter in Thailand and we had the English service of CCTV on cable in my hotel room, as well as CNN and BBC World. I found CCTV to be a lot less biased than the other two. At times, watching CNN and BBC I felt like throwing something through the screen. Later on, probably by popular demand, the cable service dropped CNN and BBC and replaced them by Fox News, which was a great relief to me.
Glad your back OK, normal service to be resumed!
OK we can all wait a while, catch up on some sleep first.
Your guests did a fine job ..
Welcome back to winter Kate.
Wecome back Kate, hope you’re resting up well.
Thanks for those pictures. Always enjoy seeing the pictures of someone’s travel snapshots, it’s like seeing what they were seeing right at the moment, not being produced just captured and here you captured well.
Kate
does Focus now bark in Chinese????:-))))
welcome back!!
Nice to have you back, Kate.
David Miller would just swoon over those Beijing street shots – no cars!!
so ah…..or is it ah so ?…hell, i dunno…
so………….reading between the lines…putting the ‘inside’ story together…the hidden story..the seamy underbelly kinda story am i right your Focus was left in China as stud?
i suppose there were yuan attached to the poor fella’s stay…he was left there missing you…bereft and bereaving….my mind thinks on the lines of ‘white slaving’….and so on…but it ain’t exactly that is it…
i guess what i’m saying is that YOU profited from the sexual labour of a poor defenceless innocent aminal…
i’m appalled of course…you seemed such a nice lady…with a decent God-fearin blog…
and NOW you’re pimpi(oops)… introducing schnauzers with an epicanthal fold into the gene pool!…it seems mercenary and irresponsible….
JMO
Re: heavy trucks
That’s probably the reason China is one of the world leaders in the development of road pavement technology.
No, really.
i guess what i’m saying is that YOU profited from the sexual labour of a poor defenceless innocent aminal…
I know this was tongue in cheek, but actually, no. He was living for two years with his co-owner, his return was planned before I took him there. What wasn’t planned is that he’d become desperately ill while there, so we have a few weeks (months?) of work ahead of us trying to figure out what’s wrong, and then save him.