Our Air Canada flight to China left Toronto on time at 1:00 pm from Toronto's Pearson Airport. It was a very full flight and thankfully, we were able to get our bulk head seats which made the 13 hour flight that much more comfortable. The flight path took us up over the North Pole and given that Beijing is in the northern region of China, the duration of the flight was just a bit longer than our flights to Israel, so the length of time is something that we have now gotten quite used to.
We arrived about 10 minutes early at the Beijing Capital Airport. Our first impression of the airport was that it was modern, spotlessly clean and very efficient. And there were people everywhere. It is the second busiest airport in the world after Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport.
We had been warned that local cab drivers may not know the city as well as they should and most do not speak or understand English. So we were armed with a printed card that Gary gave us with the Marriott Northeast address in Chinese to show the driver. We were told that even that might not be enough because he might not be able to read and also might confuse that Marriott with other branches of the same chain in this vast city and therefore as an added security measure, we should place a phone call to the Marriott desk and have them tell our driver exactly how to get there!
But lo and behold, our driver seemed to know from the card exactly where the Marriott was and we headed out to the airport expressway. There were tons of cars and traffic was moving quite slowly. The Marriott was 20 km. away and the entire trip took about 30 minutes at a cost of about $14.00 which was quite reasonable.
There are over 3 million cars in this city and over 65000 legal taxis, which are very closely monitored for cleanliness, safety and courteousness, catering to the enormous tourist trade. Tour books will warn you not to take rides with so called "black" taxis, which operate unlicensed and which charge you much more than legally permitted.
We checked in, and as we are here till Sunday morning, we unpacked, and then headed out to explore the local area. We decided to walk over to Chabad and Dini's restaurant for dinner.......more about that in our next posting, but first....those who have been following my posts know that I like to present a brief introduction and a few facts about the countries that we intend to visit. I get these facts and the pictures that accompany them from simple googling and a little cut and paste; and so a few general words about China.
I knew that China was a large country but never realized that it was close in size to Canada. To compare the two, China stretches some 5,026 kilometres east to west, while Canada's distance east to west is 5,514 km from the eastern tip of Newfoundland and Labrador to the western tip of the Yukon Territory where it borders with Alaska.
With an area of about 9.6 million km², the People's Republic of China is the 3rd largest country in total area behind Russia and Canada (9.98 million km²). China is actually very similar in size to the USA.
And while the time throughout the country of China is standard (always 12 hours ahead of Toronto), the country actually stretches across 4 or 5 time zones, the whole country uses the time zone that Beijing (the capital) is located in. This can be inconvenient for the people living in the far eastern and western portions of the country as the sun rises and sets too early or too late; for example at 6 AM, in one part of China there is total darkness, while in the opposite end of the country there is bright daylight.
China has 50,000 rivers, with a total length of 420,000 kilometers. The majority of rivers flow west to east into the Pacific Ocean; The Yangtze is the largest, rising in Tibet flowing thruy China and entering the Yellow Sea near Shanghai. It is 6,300 kilometers long making it the third longest river in the world, after the Amazon and the Nile.
Eleven of the 17 tallest mountain peaks are located on China's western borders. They include world's tallest peak Mt. Everest (8848m) in the Himalyas on the border with Nepal and the world's second tallest peak, K2 (8611m) on the border with Pakistan. From these towering heights in the west, the land descends in steps like a terrace.
China is bordered by seas and waters eastward, including the South China Sea, and is borderedon its 3 other sides by 14 countries; Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Laos, Mongolia, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Vietnam.
There are a lot of people in China. The population is over 1.36 billion people which means that over 19% of all the people in the world live in China. It is closely followed by India with 1.23 billion people. Therefore just two countries, China and India, make up 36% of the world's population or more than one out of every three people in the world.
Wonder if I will bump into anyone I know:-).....or WOW, what a place to play Jewish geography!
I was shocked by #3 on the list; the USA with 316 million people or 4% of the world's total. Canada ranks 37th with 35 million or less than half of 1% while Israel comes in at 97th with a population of 8 million; just over one tenth of one percent!
Now think about the impact that tiny Israel has on the world!
When one thinks of large cities in China, Beijing (22 million) and Shanghai (19 million) immediately come to mind. But I am sure that very few people can name the next 13 cities with populations between 7 and 14 million people; names like Chongqing (14.7 million in the urban area and perhaps over 30 million if you include the rural outlying areas of the city!), Tianjin, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Harbin, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Xi'An etc. The numbers are staggering!
Our quick walk tonight left us the impression that this is a very bustling city that is constantly in a state of added construction....and some of the construction is trendsetting modern....we hope to see more of that over the next few days that we are here. The contrast between the ultra modern (e.g.: the Stadium) and the ancient is startling.
I will post more interesting facts over the next few weeks and will try to include a posting on the history of the Jewish community in China.
In the meantime, here is an interesting tidbit....we are staying at the Marriott Northeast in Beijing over Shabbat, conveniently located in walking distance to one of the 2 Chabad centers in Beijing. Chabad's site, btw, lists 11 cities in China (including Hong Kong) that have Chabad centers....And if you go to the Marriott Northeast site and download their map of the local area, it not only shows local shopping malls, embassies and parks but also highlights in the upper right hand corner of the map the location of the Chabad House or in Chinese......北京犹太人中心
Amazing....what would travellers like us do without Chabad?
More to come....tomorrow, bright and early to the Great Wall....
All the best,
Fran and David....or in Chinese....弗朗西絲 - Frances; 大衛 - David
If you don't believe the Chinese characters spell out our names...go ahead....prove us wrong:-)
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