Thomas Alleyne’s High School’s Part 1
ur 20 strong group of intrepid travellers set out on Wednesday 1st April 2009 headed on a trip of a lifetime to China – over the next 8 days, we were bound for Beijing, Qingdao and Shanghai! Departing from London Heathrow, we took our first flight to Amsterdam before connecting with our KLM transfer to Beijing – excited and in party mood (thanks to it being Briony’s birthday), we couldn’t wait to get there! On arrival in Beijing, we couldn’t believe how ‘foggy’ things looked, met by our guide Laura, we soon appreciated just how busy and hectic the next few days were going to be – the traffic was crazy, it made us grateful to drive in the UK, seriously, traffic lights meant absolutely nothing there! After checking into our hotel, our first evening gave us an opportunity to explore the local neighbourhood and we soon found we had our own bowling alley in our hotel!! Good times! An early start the next morning,
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took us to Tiananmen Square, where whilst we were learning about what this famous square meant and experienced, people wanted to learn about us! They kept taking photos of us! We couldn’t quite understand why, but Chinese people were
thrusting children to Briony, men with blue hats found Crosby particularly interesting and we were quite the attraction!
We then took our first business visit of the trip to the Yanjing Brewery, the 3rd largest brewery in China and also sponsors of the Olympic games! We couldn’t believe how massive the production plant was – it was a city within itself! After lunch and a coach drive back to Beijing centre, we moved on to our rickshaw tour of the hutongs; traditional alleys and homes that have been in some families for generations. We visited one home, where the owners made us welcome, we were offered some tea and told the history of their home and the meaning of each room surrounding where we sat. Whilst to us the living space looked small and a little run down, we were told that the family had been offered 4 million dollars to buy their home, but they had turned it down. Some of us couldn’t understand why, but were told by our guide that family honour and history meant much more than money. After being chased by what appeared local paparazzi (we were feeling quite the celebrities by now) we then went to experience a traditional tea ceremony where we got to try lots of different traditional
teas and even buy some to bring home. On our fourth day in Beijing, we were fortunate enough to get an extra visit the ‘Bird’s Nest’, which played host to the Olympic Games in 2008. We had hoped to go to see the water display at night, but this hadn’t worked out as planned, it was miles out of the city! Saturday 4th April was one of our favourite days – we got to visit and climb the Great Wall of China at Badaling – what an experience! We
couldn’t believe just how steep the climb was and how busy just this small section of the wall would be – you could see for miles! It truly is one of the great wonders of our world. We also enjoyed a little bargaining with the locals to purchase pandas for our ‘Panda Challenge’ set by the teachers – to come up with the most creative image of a panda whilst on our trip to China. To be continued in the next issue of The Voice
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