Seattle to Beijing

On August 23rd seventeen University of Washington students made their way to Sea-Tac Airport to try out the brand new Hainan Airlines’ direct flight from Seattle to Beijing. The students were embarking on a month-long exploration seminar to be hosted by the Guangxi Normal University in Guilin, Guangxi Province, China.
The majority of students in the group have finished their sophomore year at the UW and intended degrees range from Linguistics to Engineering, Psychology to Business. While at Guangxi Normal University, the UW students will participate in language classes ranging from 1st year Chinese to 4th year Chinese. University professors will host cultural lectures on Chinese calligraphy, painting, culinary arts, Taiji or Shadowboxing, and Environmental engineering projects, to name a few. Following each cultural lecture, UW students will visit a site within Guilin that reflects the lecture’s content. Weekend trips are planned for Yangshuo village, Longsheng and Ziyuan counties.

The flight from Seattle to Beijing was approximately ten and a half hours and students lauded the personal television screens and Hainan Airlines’ beautiful stewardesses, while finding the airplane’s lack of air control and sqwunched seating a trifle stuffy. Upon arrival in Beijing, the International Programs director from Beijing Institute of Technology met the students and escorted them to a hotel for the night. Hainan Airlines has not completely worked out relations with domestic partners in China or the United States and so connecting flights are still a little tricky. The Guilin leg of the flight would depart the following morning, Monday August 25th at nine in the morning.

Because of the Olympics, Beijing’s Institute of Technology (BIT), as well as many other Universities in Beijing was hosting visitors and athletes in their dormitories. BIT was hosting the Beach Volleyball participants, as well as the games themselves in their athletic facility. Therefore, the UW students were taken to the hotel set aside for hosting Yunnan Province leaders and officials while they visit the capital. The hotel was set within a double-gated compound on the edge of Beijing. The drive from the airport to the hotel afforded the first views of China for many of the students. It being Sunday, and there being a curfew due to the Olympic closing ceremonies, there were very few people in the streets and Beijing appeared, almost, empty. A strange sight for China veterans in the group.

After students had settled, two by two, into rooms at the hotel, the BIT director hosted a dinner in the hotel’s dining room. A ping-pong table was set up in the lobby and students were told they could order food and drink at any time if jetlag set in and cravings started up late at night or early in the morning. Dinner was a quiet affair as students adjusted to the time difference and their new environment. Afterwards, everyone returned to their rooms, showered, attempted watching the closing ceremonies on television, but most fell quickly asleep. The following morning doors were knocked on promptly at 5:50am and the bus to the airport arrived at 6:20am. The fear was that the day after the closing ceremonies would render the airport a chaotic mess and so the BIT director took precautions to help the UW students arrive with plenty of time to spare.

Checking into the Guilin flight proved effortless and students were through security with almost two hours to spare before boarding the airplane. Several students purchased Olympic souvenirs in one of the ubiquitous Olympic gear shops inside the airport. The group will return to Beijing for a two-day tour before returning to Seattle in September and most likely Olympic gear will be a good deal cheaper at that point.
The flight from Beijing to Guilin was a little under three hours and upon arriving in Guilin, Yu Laoshi, the program director and a UW professor was at the airport to meet the group. One member of the group had spent the summer in Beijing and he was already in Guilin. The remaining four members of the group would all arrive later that day on their own. The students had a quick group photo in front of the airport and then a bus took them to the International student dormitory on Guangxi Normal University’s campus.

Students were given a little while to settle into their rooms and then lunch was served in the dormitory’s canteen. The food was prepared home style and was delicious. It was the first sign to many that they had truly arrived in China. After lunch Yu Laoshi exchanged students’ money at the bank while students had photos taken for student IDs to be made. After the photos, Cai Laoshi, the Guangxi Normal University host of the UW students, took them on a small tour of campus. He showed them a fruit stand just outside one of the University’s gates and this has been a favorite spot for many of the students, morning and night. The students rested after the tour and had a grand banquet in their honor for the evening meal. After dinner, students returned to their rooms and prepared for their first day of Chinese class.