The long flight from New York City to Beijing took us over the top of the world, or very close to it, Something to do with the great circle route we took (I don’t know, I’m not a pilot) resulted in it being broad daylight for the entire 13 hours that we were in the air for. Naturally, we wanted to sleep, so the window shades stayed down for most of the flight, except for the occasional peek out at the stark whiteness below us. It wasn’t until we began to make our initial descent into Beijing that we fully opened up the shades, and so this was our very first view of China.