A Very Cold trip in Beijing

Our flight from Heathrow was delayed by nearly 2 hours due to the fog and allowing the waiting incoming flights to come in before our take off. 10 hours later we arrived at Beijing


We arrived in Beijing to a warm reception from our hosts who met us at the airport and whisked us off to our hotel but the weather was less than warm being a chilly minus 2. The next few days were spent in meetings with the Police and Army of the PRC and two outings.
We had a convivial time and some interesting meals, especially those in the country. We were accompanied by a colleague of mine this time who had not been to China before and it was all a bit of a shock to him!! I must say to his credit that he was brave and tried a number of unusual food items despite some initial misgivings. He even quickly learnt the use of chopsticks by necissity due to the lack of western "eating irons" in the country.



.


The Army camp was located a few hours North of Beijing, beyond the Great Wall, and getting near to Inner Mongolia. Hence the coldness was nearing that of Siberia not too many miles Northwest of us!!
The writer and his companion took shelter from the bitter wind in an army bunker!

Overall the trip was very successful despite some shortcomings on the client side and we now expect to return again in the summer.