DPRK: Prelude in Beijing (Arrival)

The main trip was of course to DPRK, but at either end we had time in Beijing. Flying into North Korea is only possible from a few places. The UK isn't one of them. China is.
When I first visited Beijing, about twenty years ago, my initial impression was of greyness. Grey roads ran between grey buildings and grey dust covered the grey clothes of the grey people. Times have changed. Now the first impression is one that has been carefully designed and constructed specifically to leave visitors to the city gaping open-mouthed - the airport. Specifically Terminal three.

Of course we've all seen it on TV in the build up to the Chinese Olympics and during its construction. This one terminal is famously bigger than all five of London Heathrow's terminals together. It was, until Dubai overtook it, the largest passenger terminal building in the world. It looked impressive on television but that was nothing compared to the real thing. This place is designed to impress and it delivers. Vast cathedral-like spaces are filled with an impossible amount of light from walls of glass. Beamed domes with triangular skylights arch high above the gargantuan rooms. Uniformed staff look like toy soldiers in an aircraft hanger. The scale is immense and, as we arrived, it was, apart from the few disembarking passengers almost totally empty.


There was a bus ride from the plane to the terminal followed by a ten minute walk to passport control and then another walk to a railway station. A train journey of several minutes took us to baggage reclaim with another lengthy walk to conveyor belt 36. The buildings we pass by and through would not have been out of place in the glossiest of science fiction movies and the interiors were so pristine and gleaming they might have been polished only seconds before our arrival.
It was very, very impressive indeed.