April 8 - To Beijing or not

I’ve been remiss in staying up to date on my blog and I’ve no excuses.  Since we left Naha, Okinawa we’ve been at sea for three days heading basically northwest to get to the port for the city of Tianjin, China.  My cruise itinerary showed the stop here as “Tianjin (Beijing) overnight.” Sounds straightforward enough doesn’t it?  Maybe not.  As it turns out, we’re docked at a place that’s the port for Tianjin which is about an hour away and Beijing is about three and a half hours away.  Where we are is actually the largest man-made port in mainland China and the second largest port after Shanghai.  Basically, we aren’t close to anything of interest really.  I should mention that all day yesterday and all night we were traveling through lots of fog so we were continuously blowing our foghorn.  My Bridge Officer friend told me that we were passing through an area with lots of traffic, both cargo ships and fishing vessels.  He also said there were lots of fishing nets to try and dodge.

I’ve spent the last several days hacking away and feeling generally not up to par.  I’m not alone as many of my shipmates are doing the same.  We’ve all been told the same thing – allergic reaction to dust and smog.  No medical degree here, but I think just maybe we’ve all been passing around a cold.  I was booked on the overnight tour to the Great Wall and Beijing and I gave a lot of thought to whether I should take it.  Every place it was going  I have visited already albeit a long time ago.  I don’t think the Forbidden City, Great Wall and Temple of Heaven will have changed in the interim though.  After weighing lots of factors I decided I would skip the tour.  The biggest negative for that decision that I could think of was that I wouldn’t get to take photos.  The biggest positive for deciding not to go was that I wouldn’t run the chance of some overly officious Chinese hearing me cough a lot and deciding that I needed to go and be checked at a Chinese medical facility.  So here I am on the ship looking at this vast port.  I did go ashore for a face-to-face immigration inspection.  While in the terminal I saw signs to a quarantine area which made me think I probably made the right decision.

All is not lost though.  I am going on a tour tomorrow to the city of Tianjin to see what is one of the largest Confucian temples in China and the “Ancient Culture Street” which represents life as it was in China in times past.  (Sounds a little like a Chinese Colonial Williamsburg.)  I have friends doing the overnight so perhaps I can steal some photos from them.  

Meanwhile today for the first day in several I don’t feel the nonstop urge to cough. As I look outside I can’t see a speck of sunshine despite the fact that the official weather report says that it’s supposed to be a clear day.  Could that be pollution out there?  If it is, Dr. Tim will be seeing lots more patients in the next couple of days.