China Trip – 7th Stop Beijing
Saturday, 19 October 2013The final leg of my little China trip was to take the bus from Datong back to Beijing – where I started – and catch a flight to Bangkok (just for the night) and on to Denpasar in Bali to meet Maureen for the Ubud Writers Festival.
▲ At the Datong bus station I was reminded of my trip through China in 2005, entering China from Vietnam and ending up in Shanghai, which I got to by boat from Putuoshan. At every bus station there were lurid pictures of terrible bus crashes. Well no change, Datong’s bus station had a selection of the latest reasons to avoid bus travel in China. At least this illustration of ‘how it happened’ left out the crumpled bus photographs and the scattered bloody bodies. Good job they don’t show air crash photos at the airport departure gates.
◄ My visit to Beijing was a brief one, just time to pop into the new China office of Lonely Planet. Here I am with the genial Xiaojian Li who heads up Lonely Planet China, Koala Li they call him in Australia! Note the stylish fixie bike on the wall.
And then I dropped in to the new NBeerPub, which features more than 500 worldwide beers in the fridge cabinets, a boutique brew set up and, as you can see, a bar made up of Lonely Planet books. It’s the latest creation of Xiao Biar whose Pass By Bar was one of the most popular locals on Nanluoguxiang, now disappearing for a subway development. Xiao Biar rode in the Lonely Planet team in the Tour d’Afrique back in 2009. So did I! ▼
