Beijing airport

This seemed nothing special, I remarked to myself. In fact it seems rather dated. I wonder how it will cope with the impending Olympics? We passed quickly customs without incident ( we were invited to vote on the custom officer’s performance using an electronic device and I bought a prepaid SIM card – with the help of James’ Chinese. We had a five hour wait ahead of us, and the plan was to “escape” the terminal and see a bit of the area from a taxi , or preferably get into Beijing city and back. But this was not to be. We first had to find domestic departures, for our last leg to Jinan.


What fun! A new country, hordes of people, countless signs in Chinese, and conflicting advice from various officials we approached. We met a cockney soccer player lad in the lift as we all struggled with our luggage trolleys: he was only wanting to get out of the building. He’s been going up and down and was lost – he may still be there! “They won’t go without me”, he weakly reassured himself, “as I have all their kit”.

It seems we were in the wrong building. “Take a shuttle bus to Terminal 3”. So we got back into the lift again, nodded at the soccer lad who was starting to mutter gibberish, and after several false starts found ourselves being whisked through the yellow tinted atmosphere to a modern marvel : Beijing Airport Terminal 3.


Commenced only five years ago, and finished on time within budget, this building is a testament to dogged determination, political will, intense labour and bold, brilliant architecture. This is where the Olympic visitors will be arriving and leaving – their first and last impression of a proud, emerging nation, with the fasting growing economy in the world.

It was a pleasure to be in extended transit in this brand new building, although it was almost deserted. And even more enjoyable as we welcomed the company of a 24 year old student from Jinan, the city we were soon to call home. “Luke” is studying his masters in UK and returning to visit his family. His English was excellent and he helped us enormously. He is the face of the new generation of young Chinese who are dispensing with older systems and embracing selected western values. James, of course, practised his Chinese on him, and was appropriately guided.

Our pathetic efforts of trying to find the taxi rank, let alone secure a taxi to take us on a one hour “excursion” ended in our giving up, and having a cup of (very expensive, relatively) coffee. We said goodbye to Luke at the luggage carousel at Jinan, but hope to catch up with him again. He has a fine mind.