Australian Youth Delegation to China part 1

I remember when I started this blog saying I'd aim for one update each week.

Well, yeah.

Anyway, a few months ago I was contacted by my Chinese lecturer, informing me that I'd been nominated by the university as part of 46 Australian uni students invited by Premier Wen Jiabao to visit China for a week. I happily agreed to it, but I wasn't expecting anything to actually eventuate. It never does.

Except this time, it did! And it was a fantastic trip. We left on the Monday 25th of September, first flying to Sydney, then straight to Beijing.

CCTV was at Sydney airport, you can see the video here.

Watched MI:3 (above average but not good) and Lucky Number Slevin (1st half good, 2nd half crap) on the way over.

We were welcomed at Beijing airport by a Chinese delegation which included Frank from the Foreign Department- very nice guy-, and some other government officials. The girl who I took the flight over with, who was from Beijing, was really impressed with this welcoming group.

Whilst in Beijing, we stayed at the Beijing Hotel. Not a very impressive name, but it was a very impressive hotel!

Here's me on the balcony having just arrived. I love the sensation that you get when you first arrive somewhere far away; that realisation of the distance between where you stand now and where you stood 12 hours ago, around the bend of the earth..




And here's the view onto Chang An Jie (the street the hotel was on, which I believe translates to Long Peace Street).

We went down to the lobby afterwards for drinks, where we also met some of the 'adults' on the trip; The Honourable Greg Hunt MP (member for Flinders), his assistant John Deller, Nick from QANTAS (QANTAS provided both the domestic and international airfaires for the trip, very generous! Thanks QANTAS), and Dr Amy Yeung from Curtain University. And it was also when I got to meet most of the other students on the trip, in particular my room-mate David, from QUT, team leader Henry from ANU, and Laurie, Thomas and Fiona from UNSW. Laurie was in room 008, and I happened to be in room 007...very cool.

It was decided that more drinks were needed, and that we should also go out and hit the streets of Beijing. The solution was to go and drink on the streets of Beijing. This proved to be a portent of things to come, as myself and a consistent group made sure that we didn't waste a single night whilst we were in China. As a result, I only got 5 hours sleep each night, and got sick, but it was worth it. If you're only a country for a week, you shouldn't waste time sleeping.

Nevertheless, it was a very busy schedule. The next morning, Tuesday, we went to visit Tsinghua University, which is one of the top in China. We had a forum there regarding volunteer work and the Olympics, which proved to be very interesting. All of the students at Tsinghua are really intelligent, which I suppose is only natural given how hard it is to enter the university.

I had to ride a bike for the first time in about 4 years, with Diana (a Tsinghua student) on the back! Whilst there were multiple occasions where we were both nearly killed by a car, or my own clumsiness, there was no accident.

The campus at Tsinghua was breathtaking. We were guided by Diana, Thinker and Frank, who were also in our discussion group at the forum. Here's us by one of the lakes.


After Tsinghua, we went to the Australian Embassy. This turned out to be very educational, as we were given an informative speech by one of the diplomats there, Andrew. Everyone at the embassy seemed really attuned to the current events in China (although I suppose I should have expected this from them). We had lunch there, and chatted with the guys who work there, then headed off to the Forbidden City. I'd been before, but it was still good to see.

Then it was back to the hotel to get changed for our trip to The Great Hall of the People.
This was particularly special. The Great Hall isn't open all the time for tourists, and when we went it was after visiting hours, so it was open just for us. It's very opulent inside, and the feeling of walking down those halls with so few people around was almost surreal.

Here's Thomas.


The room we were taken into was beautiful, as was the dinner. We met some other university students there, and Greg met some officials. I believe there was a Central Committee member present, which is no small thing.

We walked back to the hotel afterwards, via Tiananmen Square. They had a pretty cool Olympic and 3 Gorges garden on display, with many neons and flowers. Hard to describe, here's a picture from Thomas' site.

Out drinking that night, to a slightly better pub this time. Beers were 10 kuai, which didn't seem too bad. So in that first day: Tsinghua uni, Australian Embassy, Forbidden City, Great Hall of the People, pub afterwards. I believe we ended up quite late that night, but it was our last night in Beijing. Here's some photos from the the good times that night (taken by Fiona)...

Up again very early Wednesday, firstly to go to the City Planning Exhibition. Sounded dry, but turned out to be really cool, particularly this huge model of the city. My directors eye immediately saw the potential for it to be used to make a new Godzilla-like film...

It was then back to the hotel for a very important lunch with Mr Zhou Qiang, First Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China. I had to give a speech there, Chinese and English. Could have been better, but at least I managed to get a laugh when I translated the Telstra "Too Many Rabbits in China" joke for Mr Zhou, without causing any obvious offence.

After the lunch, we had to go pack our bags, and then it was off to the Great Wall. We only had 30 mins at there (!!!) but I managed to climb a bit with Sehee and Kayli, and take this photo.


Then it was off to the airport to take the evening flight to Guangzhou.

We'd only been in China for barely 2 days, yet already made really good friends and seen some great sights.

I'll post the next half soon.