National Geographic KIDS has a 12-year-old correspondent in Beijing who's blogging the Olympics. David is an American kid who's been living in China since he was two, and moved to Beijing about a year ago. He recently wrote a post about taking public transportation that we thought might interest IT readers:
The other day, I had a dentist's appointment on an even day, but the car we had had an odd number license plate, which meant that I couldn't go into town with the car. (China has started an odd-even license plate rotation to cut down on pollution.) So this meant that I had to use public transportation, which I did. Since I had a couple of hours, some money, and a camera, I decided to snap some pictures with my dad and pick up some Olympic tickets for my aunt and cousins... Once you get on the subway, you can get to the Olympic subway line, and from there, you can go to most of the venues. We decided to go down to where there was a connection to the Airport Express Train. Tickets were ¥25 ($3.50) and the train ride was about 20 minutes. We went inside the airport and went up to Burger King (the only one in all of Beijing!) and got two sundaes before snapping some pictures of the new Terminal 3 (the largest airport terminal in the world. It was also built for the Olympics). Then we took the elevator down to the second floor. For dinner, we went to a Middle Eastern restaurant close to the new American Embassy, which President Bush will open on the morning of August 8th. My dental place is also close to the embassy. After dinner, we took a taxi and went home.
For more Beijing dispatches from David, check out "You Are Here: Beijing" on the NatGeo KIDS site. He'll be blogging the Olympic canoeing events next week.
Photo by David's dad
What an interesting article from David - and excellent for a 12 year old. Didn't know that China had an odds/even car rotation system to cut transport pollution.
Will be following David's posts in future.
Harish.
Posted by: Adventure Holidays | August 11, 2008 at 05:22 AM
Thanks for sharing your day with us! We lived overseas until our boys were seven, so I can relate to your post.
Now, my boys are riding their bikes from Alaska to Argentina so we don't have to deal with gas issues at all! Today was a big day for us - we finished pedaling the Alaska Highway, all 1422 miles of it!!
You can read about our adventures at www.familyonbikes.org
Posted by: familyonbikes | August 13, 2008 at 02:00 AM
We have taken our kids on public transportation in our own city and in others (including international ones) since they were babies. They are quite comfortable taking the rail, subway, buses, etc.
Not only does it save us time & money, but it is a great learning experience and adventure for us.
We offer tips on using public transit with babies and kids (along with a little humor) on:
www.parentzing.net
Happy travels and it's great for David and other kids like him.
Posted by: ParentZing! Editor-in-Chief | August 13, 2008 at 01:31 PM