Day 1: Flight To Beijing

From David Rotter, Scheck & Siress prosthetist:

Flight to Beijing: No problems sleeping thanks to a previous week’s grueling schedule. I made a new friend on the flight by the name of Louis.

Louis lives in Aurora but was born in Beijing. He explained a lot of the history of Beijing to me. Beijing is an ancient city constructed in successive circles. The oldest circle begins at the center which is the Forbidden City, home of the emperors of China, which was ruled by emperors for millennia before the revolution of 1911.

Louis also helped me with some key words in Mandarin (the national dialect). Although I have my Berlitz book, Mandarin is different than English in many ways. One of the key distinguishing factors is the use of tones in the pronunciation of words. As an example cited in the book, the same word can mean four different things depending on how you emphasize the vowels.

Louis was nice enough to write the name and address of my hotel in Chinese characters so that I could show that to the cab driver when I arrived.