Melbourne University Beijing Most 2009 Architecture Studio

Look at all the worried faces. If this boy was found to have a body temperature exceeding 36 degrees then he will be taken to 7 days quarantine in a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and the people seated in the three rows in front and behind him will have the same terrible fate. Well this boy was in fact sitting right behind Alvin and I, which meant that potentially we would be stranded in that room… suffocating in our own air, and not allowed to have contact with the outside world for fear of contracting swine flu to them. We were all fully prepared, having fully loaded our hard drives with heaps and heaps of movies, and brought study materials to help kill time. We believed that if one of us were to go down, then some of us would have to keep that person company. Alvin and I were about to cost the Beijing group their freedom to travel and eat Beijing duck we had been so dearly wanting to eat.

So scary. The news broadcasted everywhere was scaring Victorians to reconsider flying to China, to be well prepared with face masks and to remain in a hotel in quarantine whether or not the person is healthy, because a person carrying swine flu may not show symptoms till after 7 days. Tissana showed us the best way to prevent swine flu. Do not expose yourself to germs!

So scary, right? Well, not really. At all! When the swine flu officers approached us on the plane everyone took out their cameras and decided that this newsworthy debacle would be quite funny and exciting. Having a man dressed like an astronaut point a four pointed red laser at your forehead is strangely amusing, it’s like living in a movie, but it’s real. And when the boy sitting behind us was found to have a high temperature, he just explained that he had sniffles in the morning but was feeling fine, then a doctor came along and took a look at his throat, then moved on. The swine flu astronauts made their way around the aircraft for an hour, and we started to panic that we’d miss our connecting flight in Shanghai. The aeroplane hostesses assured us that the connecting flight would await us, but when we got off there was no one waiting for us, except an airport full of stranded people. We were well looked after though, taken to Jining Hotel, had a satisfying dinner and went to sleep in Shanghai. Despite the minor setback, and not arriving in Beijing as early as we’d hoped, a diversion of our original plan was somewhat exciting and prepared out China trip to be a very fun one indeed!

Elodie was also very lucky. When the passports were being handed to the hotel, Elodie suddenly realised that she’d left her laptop bag on the bus. Amazingly she was appearing more amused than frantic, laughing amiably as she asked the hotel receptionist to ask the bus driver to retrieve her bag. I mean, a laptop isn’t worth THAT much, it only contains all the work we had prepared for, all the music and movies for those so-called quarantine days, all the computer programs like Autocad and Photoshop to make those architectural projects happen. Ah, no big deal right? Seriously I was panicking but Elodie was keeping her cool. Cool girl much?

Elodie and Tissana sure make a cool pair. Their neck pillows made some very cool crowns. The clever pair creatively entertained us at the Melbourne Airport.

Such a wonderful beginning. Such wonderful weather. See the firey red sunrise from Melbourne Airport. Leaving our home behind, we knew were in for the ride of a lifetime. HELLO CHINA!

Where would you like to go in Beijing, Tianjing, Xi’An, Shanghai, Suzhou and Nanjing?

Please vote if you’d like to go to the old or new part of Suzhou!

The old part has some ancient courtyard houses and temples (I’m personally quite sick of visiting temples). The new development has some nice modern architecture and shows a developing China.