On Dec. 23, 2011, Marc and I left San Francisco to visit my dad in Manila for a week and then another week in Beijing, China for some sightseeing.  Since we were both traveling on mileage tickets, we had to get what United had available.  For a Dec. 23 departure, all we could get was the United flight from SFO to Beijing and then it was Air China all the way.  I was quite excited to arrive in Beijing's most famous airport on Christmas Eve.  Little did I know the airport would be a ghost town that afternoon.  "Could the Chinese be celebrating Christmas with their families too?", I thought to myself.  Upon arrival in Beijing for a 4 hour layover, I could not help but notice the few passengers around the huge terminal where United had dropped us off.  It felt quite sad, to be honest.  The airport was so deserted.  Only a handful of duty free stores were open.  Anyway, this was what we saw that afternoon.

We saw this huge area rug in front of a two tier platform.  There must have been a ceremony of some sort earlier that day inside this terminal.

Luckily for us, the Executive Lounge for qualifying Star Alliance members was nearby and open.  We first thought of just grabbing some pretzels to eat and orange juice to drink, after all, this was the extent of the food available in such lounges inside SFO or Narita.  Little did we realize the lounge had a huge spread of food albeit all Chinese.  They had lamb, chicken, beef, chow mien, bread, yogurt, dim sum, you name it.  I had never seen such impressive array of food for airline passengers since Incheon and Saigon's international airport.  I was in hog heaven.  I was no longer worried where to get dinner that night given that there were no restaurants around inside the terminal we were in.

A few minutes after visiting the lounge, we went to the gate where we were supposed to get our connecting flight to Manila.  Much to my dismay, we still had to board a bus and we were taken to the middle of the tarmac where we had to board our plane.  The plane was small and very old looking.  In fact, I even saw a seat whose sides were chipped at the bottom.  I was quite disappointed with the airline.  Not a good sign for my very first time traveling with Air China.