The chariot awaits its 14 hour non-stop hop from JFK to PEK. Seen the movie Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift? The protagonist flies to Japan; there's a perfect camera pan over the inside of the plane showing him surrounded by almost all Japanese. Same thing here, except the people are Chinese and I probably won't get to drive anything nicer than a bicycle in Beijing.
There was some confusion as to the route Air China takes to get to Beijing. Lissa and others thought I'd be going through Europe, while I thought the plane would go west, so I was in for a pretty rude surprise when the nose of the little plane icon on the GPS map screen turned north. As a result I caught some great shots of the polar ice cap. No polar bears or Santa though.
Zhong Gao was my acting compadre for the flight. He's a materials engineering student at Brown. While originally from China, Zhong is on his way to Mongolia where he will live in yurts, ride horses, and shoot bows - all for 10 bucks a day. We discussed everything from the intricacies of language to archery to sniping tactics... at which point an angry Westerner (I'll call white people this from now on) who was trying to sleep called us out on it.
Beijing International - notice the building has scales and undulates like a dragon skin would.
First steps on mainland China. The airport seems endless.
Didn't I totally call out that you'd go through the North Pole? =)
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