Year 2024 coming to an end and some anxiety started building up in me because I still have so many posts and photos I want to share here.

This year, just like the year before, I found time and money to travel several times.

(A friend of mine used to say time and money are rarely together).

I was twice in Thailand, then there was Beijing and Portugal. Not to mention short road trips to mainland China and Hong Kong. Anyway.

Just sharing some photos and quick thoughts about my trip to Beijing with my kids.

Beijing

Why Beijing? Well, I thought I had to take my kids there because since we live in Macau – China – then it makes no sense to visit capital cities around the world and exclude Beijing.

So it was July, peak of the summer heat, and we headed to Beijing.

We arrived on a Saturday evening. Sunday morning we woke up early and our first stop was to attend mass in a Catholic Church.

Yes, not what you would expect to do in Beijing. But my son is a devoted catholic and he searched in advance for a Church nearby our hotel. It was walking distance.

Attending mass in Mandarin was a new experience to all of us. Quite interesting.

Sightseeing

I had everything programmed before our departure, day tours booked and paid in advance.

I had all e-vouchers saved in my phone.

Nowadays this is how it works and that’s the only way especially if you are travelling to a megacity like Beijing, where crowds are everywhere.

Book in advance, use your smartphone, or otherwise you risk going nowhere.

I decided for a light schedule. My kids were 13 and 8 at the time, so didn’t want to push them too hard.

Need to find a balance between sightseeing, fun things to do and relaxing at the hotel.

After all, they are kids.

Push them too hard and you get the usual rants, crying and yelling. So frequent nowadays when people travel with kids.

Well, to be honest this never happens to me – my kids behave quite well and I guess there is a reason for this.

Our schedule was simple: each day we would visit 1 spot only, either in the morning or afternoon.

Our hotel had good facilities, so in the remaining free time I would go to the swimming pool with my little girl while my son would go to the gym.

Or we could just go out to eat, walk around, explore the surroundings, or just go to the supermarket to get sodas and snacks then chill at the hotel room.

So this was a well balanced schedule and we all enjoyed it. We stayed for a week, so got to check many sites.

My kids are curious about things, and hopefully I’m a well informed person so I shared my views on things with them.

Historical, social and political stuff. There is so much to talk about when you visit a place with such rich background like Beijing, and so different from what we are used to. It certainly sparked their curiosity.

Card punching

We all know how people nowadays are obsessed with social media. But nothing beats China on this.

You have to be living in this side of the world to understand how crazy people are about this. They are totally addicted to their phones and social media.

People go to places now not because of their inherent value, but just for the opportunity to take a selfie.

Or “punch the card”, as they say here.

I know you are thinking “it’s the same everywhere now”, but you have to trust me when I tell you in China selfies and related behaviour are totally next level.

There is this fancy restaurant in Macau where you get a nice sunset view and once these 2 ladies ordered a pizza and spent over half an hour taking photos with the pizza and the sunset.

My girlfriend and I, we were sitting next to them and quite amused observing them taking so many photos, trying so many different angles, but never happy with the results.

As a result of this trend, you get so many low ball attractions these days. Who cares about history or the meaning of things.

Provided it looks cool or it will make YOU look cool in that selfie, then people will go and millions of photos will be uploaded in social media. Everybody will go to that place so you have to go there as well to take a selfie and show the whole world that you’ve been there. This is how it works.

Talking of which, we went to one of such places, which was a sort of theme park celebrating retro stuff.

This vintage thing is getting a lot of traction in China. You see it in many places now.

And why not? It’s relatively easy and cheap to find props and put them together in one place, then people will not miss the opportunity to visit for cool selfies.

Charge them an entrance fee and there you go, the volume of visitors you get in a city like Beijing will return your investment in no time.

This specific one we visited in Beijing was actually not bad, I saw things that took me back to my childhood. Like this TV above, we had a similar one back in the days (yes I’m this old).

It was raining outside so we spent some good time there and my kids enjoyed it.

Infrastructure

A note on Beijing’s infrastructure, which is top notch. We travelled from their relatively new Daxing airport, designed by Zaha Hadid.

It’s super efficient. And cool.

Just like every new building, transportation network and everything else supporting the operation of this mega city.

In China, the future is now. It’s amazing the way smartphones and technology are embedded in everyone’s daily routines.

You do everything with your smartphone. Government approvals, licensing, ordering your food, whatever. There is a QR code, there is an e-form and e-payment. Customer service? You talk to a bot. Yes, you don’t text messages, you talk. And I truly think the Chinese language, the way it’s structured, it’s totally suitable for verbal conversations with bots.

And oh, everything in China is processed fast, fast, fast.

When I think that back in 1995, I was a uni student in Portugal and there was this huge discussion on where to build the new Lisbon airport.

As of 2024 this discussion is still on. No, not a joke. And we still have no new airport in Lisbon.

Things are really different in China and we have to get up to speed to understand what’s happening. There is a reason why China has such prominent position in the world stage now.

This is what I teach my kids as well.