Dining at Din Tai Fung in Beijing

Last week I took a week off from the Arcadia Chamber of Commerce to tag along with a handful of Hollywood executives on a promotional tour to three cities in two countries in five days — actually, I got within a few hundred yards of a third country on my final day.

by Scott Hettrick

The executives were promoting 3D TV and movies in Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul, South Korea. (Actually, they started in Tokyo but I joined them in Beijing.) My job was to follow them to the day-long seminars and presentations they did in each city with top government, academic, and film and TV officials, and post my observations on one of my other blogs at 3DHollywood.net.

It was a return trip for me to Beijing and Shanghai, where I had gone five years ago on a Chamber-organized trip. I enjoyed those cities again this time as I did last time, but this time I had another pleasure.

Entrance to Din Tai Fung restaurant in Beijing

I got to eat at the sister restaurant to Arcadia’s great Din Tai Fung dumpling house. The food at the Beijing chapter was equally great, although they didn’t have a couple of my favorite side dishes, green beans or garlic noodles. And the entrance was not nearly as elegant as either of the two side-by-side entrances of the restaurant here on Baldwin Avenue.

A couple things in the dining room were interesting to me: The red covers on the backs of the chairs in the photo at right were put on over our jackets by waitresses after we sat down, supposedly to protect against potential theft of things in your pockets. And the white cloth baskets next to some of our chairs are for customers to place their purses, wallets, etc. Very clever (see photo at right — click to enlarge).

A few other notes that may be of interest to Arcadians:

1. The elevator in my hotel in Shanghai (a 5-star hotel covered by the execs I was with) did not have a fourth floor. Just as many of our buildings here in the United States do not have a 13th floor. As we have learned here in Arcadia, many Chinese do not like the number four, though it puzzles me why we judge that to be a silly superstition when we do the same thing.

2. 
   

Upon my arrival in Seoul I quickly hopped in a taxi with a driver who didn’t speak English and had him take me to an IMAX theater a half-hour away from my hotel so I could see the new

James Bond 007 movie “Skyfall” (I needed to review it for my blog before it opens here in the States this Friday, Nov. 9.) I walked out of the theater at nearly 1:30 a.m. onto a dark street with a handful of local Won currency I had only been introduced to a couple hours earlier and hailed a cab driven by another person who spoke no English. I never once felt the least bit unsafe and made it through the whole movie-going process without any problems — I even managed to figure out how to buy a hot dog and Coke at the concession stand.

1. The next morning I found out our hotel was in the Gangnam section of Seoul — made famous by the recent Gangnam style music video. Turns out Gang (pronounced gong) is the name of the river running through the center of Seoul, and Nam means south. Apparently the Gangnam area of town is home to high-end shopping and known for art and fancy stuff.

2. 
   

We had a few hours to kill on our final day in Seoul before heading back to LAX. When I asked how far I was from the De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) at the famous border of South Korea with North Korea (kind of like the wall between the former East Berlin and West Berlin), I learned I was only 80 kilometers, or about an hour’s drive away. I arranged for a driver to take me there, though he could only drop me off prior to the military checkpoint guarded by armed soldiers because locals must apply for special permission at least two months in advance to get that close to the border of their political enemy.

Above: North Korea flag at a distance across the DMZ border.

(Above: diagram of tunnel. Right: walking in tunnel.)

In addition to marveling at the dead grass and brush in the no man’s land between the countries, I marveled at the flags of both countries flying high near the border of each land. I also got to walk down a very narrow tunnel that was secretly built by the North Koreans and discovered by the South Koreans in the 1970s, after which the North Koreans dynamited their end closed. The tunnel was long, narrow, and only about 5 1/2-feet tall at its highest point — photo above and at right.

Finally, once again I was reminded how much more clean and efficient Asian airports and airlines are than many of those here in the United States, especially LAX. We didn’t have a single delayed flight on Air China or Asiana Airlines, the food was plentiful and tasty, and security and customs officials at the airports were smiling, warm and friendly. And none of them made us take off our shoes, though I would have felt much better about it since the floors were much cleaner and the airports all modern and well decorated. Quite a contrast to my return through LAX, where we were herded through a ridiculous and long maze of old and not very clean halls, up and down stairs, and into long lines to wait for surly Customs agents who seemed content to chat and laugh at length with each other, oblivious to the lines of passengers waiting to get their approval to move on after stepping off a flight of 11 or 12 hours.

Oh, and the weather the whole way was great too. I keep hearing about how polluted the air is in Beijing. But this was my second trip in late October/early November and all I saw both times were blue skies. On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t draw any broad conclusions or comparisons based on visits of only a couple days every five years or so, but those countries sure know how to make a good first, and second impression on visitors.

— By Scott Hettrick