From Coach to Dumplings

Day 69 – From Charlotte to Chicago, Chicago to Beijing, today’s flight was the longest we have ever taken. It was also the largest plane we have traveled on.

We were ushered to the very back of the United 747 jet, through business class and preferred coach, in a march designed to make every passenger jealous so they’ll spend money and upgrade next time. Their plan worked. If you haven’t seen the business class seat, here it is:

The seat folds out to a 6 foot bed and includes on demand movies and whole array of top notch food and drink.

Needless to say, our seats didn’t include any of that. I was totally mad that we didn’t have little movie screens on our seats. My two European flights and my Hawaiian flight all included little screens with on demand movies. I just assumed this flight would also, so I was totally unprepared. Luckily, I had the newest episodes of Sons of Anarchy, Grey’s Anatomy, Pan Am and Diggnation on my iPad, but that 3 ½ hours was not nearly enough to stop the boredom.

Sleeping was near impossible. Even after one beer, two glasses of wine and two Tylenol PMs, I still couldn’t pass out for more than 20 minutes at a time. Luckily I had the window seat, which gave me a place to rest my head. I doubt Elizabeth will let me have that “luxury” on the way home. All to say, I now have a new business goal – make enough money to fly business class.

I mentioned drinking one beer on the plane. This was my first taste of China:

We finally landed in Beijing and after standing in line for about 30 minutes to get through customs and exchanging some cash, we were greeted at the exit by a smiling Jason Diefenthaler (our Sunday school classmate who now lives in Beijing). Jason got us in a cab where he started talking Mandarin to the driver. DANG! Jason knows Mandarin! Thank God because we would be pretty helpless.

We got stuck in Beijing rush hour for awhile and finally made it to his condo where I immediately took a shower before heading out for dinner.

Before traveling anywhere, I first prepare by watching Anthoney Bourdain’s “No Reservations.” Bejing was one of the first places he traveled, calling it the “culinary capital of the world.” Much of the episode concentrated on dumplings, so I knew that was where we needed to start.

Kamala and Jason treated us to dinner at Bao Yuan Jiao Zi.

We ate eggplant…

Some amazing potato string stack that I couldn’t get enough of…

And of course the dumplings – beef and celery, leek and egg, and corn, cumber and pork.

If not for the extreme exhaustion, this would have been one of the best dining experiences ever. The food was so amazing, but the entire time I couldn’t stop thinking about bed.

Before hitting the bed, we swung by the grocery store where we picked up some breakfast essentials.

Then it was time for bed. I cannot wait for our first full day in Beijing.

- Wesley Donehue

PS – I blog every day, but seeing as how I am now a day ahead of you, this blog might get a little screwy. We’ll see how it goes.