A friendly Olympic english speaking guide at the Tianjin airport helped us get a taxi to the Tianjin train station where I frantically looked up the words for fast,new, and Beijing south station. The train station was a bit intimidating with long lines and no English, but we managed to get tickets for the train leaving in half an hour. After a short wait, the automatic doors opened and we put our tickets in the machine subway style and found a gleaming new platform with 2 new trains. The ride was amazingly quiet, smooth, and fast speeds reaching 348km/hour.

It's hard to believe we're really here in Beijing. Nine years ago, we were climbing the Great Wall, and eating fried chicken at the Summer Palace awaiting our first meeting in Chengdu with our 9 month old daughter.