Janie and I embarked on our first big holiday together, to China, Hong Kong & Bali, 25 years ago as I write (in November 2018).
A long while in the planning, I got permission from Binder Hamlyn in August 1993 to take an exceptionally long vacation – four weeks, having accumulated a large backlog of leave, at which point Janie and I promptly booked the holiday and spent the next three months looking forward to it.
We booked this holiday through Kuoni Travel. Being somewhat unseasoned and relatively impecunious travellers at that time, the China portion of the trip was a group tour. In any case, in 1993 it would have been difficult to travel around China independently; it was fairly difficult even on a group tour.
Our excitement was curtailed when we got to the airport to discover that our flight had been delayed by 24 hours due to fog in Beijing.
My tour journal (see as written above, transcribed below) begins:
Excelsior Hotel 24 hour delay of flight – Beijing fog bound. We ate, swam, worked out in gym, ate, swam and ate…
What was the Excelsior Heathrow is now (November 2018) the Park Inn by Radisson Heathrow – if this link still works when you read this, you can decide for yourself whether you’d prefer 24 hours in that place or in Beijing.
I do also remember the tour group leaders, Sally and Chris, arranging a couple of briefing sessions at the hotel, to try to keep us all upbeat, to introduce us to each other and to explain how they were going to salvage what they could of our Beijing site-seeing, which was going to be reduced from two days to one very busy day. I took very few notes.
Departed for Beijing 9pm on 15th – arrived afternoon of 16th – straight to Holiday inn Beijing and out to dinner at rather ordinary restaurant next door.
I have one abiding memory of the flight. When we boarded, one gentleman, very red in the face, who looked like a travelling businessman rather than a holiday maker, elbowing people out of the way – flamboyantly ensuring that he got as much hand-luggage space as possible. He was probably an expert at manspreading too, although we were mercifully sitting a couple of rows away from him. Clearly he was a seasoned traveller and equally clearly not a very nice or polite bloke. Since that flight, Janie and I have always described that type of traveller’s behaviour as “like the man on the Beijing plane”.
Beijing Capital International Airport in 1993 was nothing like the place it is now or even like the place we experienced on our next visit, in 2010. In the early 1990’s, if I recall correctly, the runways and indeed the passenger walkways were more like the top of a great big outdoor wall…
…or perhaps I am getting my photographs muddled up. Perhaps that picture is from our visit to the great wall the next day.
Joking apart, the airport back then seemed very developing world and basic for a major international city. Also, it was extremely cold when we arrived in Beijing – an early season wave of arctic weather – hence snow on the wall.
My comment about the food at a “rather ordinary restaurant” next door to the Holiday Inn was an abiding theme on this holiday. The food was mostly not good and was very samey. There was an assumption that a British tour group would not be very interested in Chinese food beyond a few staple dishes of the pseudo-Chinese, sweet and sour balls variety. Every meal included copious plates of chips, just in case the “Chinese” food didn’t please people. To be fair, most of our fellow travellers were not particularly interested in the food and (unsurprisingly given the quality of food served) were not going to cultivate an interest in Asian cuisine on that touring holiday.
We were given some peking duck in Beijing – the next day it transpires…
…but that peking duck was of a far lesser quality than the stuff we were used to in good London Chinese restaurants – for example, the Park Inn – by which I mean May’s wonderful Chinese restaurant on Wellington Terrace, around the corner from my flat – not the Radisson hotel chain known as Park Inn. In the fullness of time shall write up May’s Park Inn for Ogblog. Strangely, though, on Googling it, I found one page – click here for link…
…or here for my 2018 scrape of that page… still listing May’s restaurant some 15-18 years after it closed. I wonder how many other restaurants on that listing still exist?
So it’s not just Beijing and China that have changed in the last 25 years – but I do think the changes there are more dramatic.
Anyway, the point is, evening of 16th November 1993, Janie and I had arrived in China and the touring was about to begin the next day.