The end of our adventure had arrived with a 05:00 start. At the airport our luggage was checked in to be transferred for the flight to London as well, and we were waiting at the gate by 07:00.

When we reached Beijing and got through passport control and security we found the flight to London had been delayed by 50 minutes, so would instead be departing at 14:20 China time. The announcements in Beijing airport are repeated so many times that even a last boarding call gets repeated a dozen times over a period of 20 minutes. Whilst waiting we did some last minute souvenir shopping to use up some of the remaining yuan. One of the items I bought was a chopsticks set, though I intended on leaving it a few months before eating any more Chinese food. We then sat and waited for our flight to be called so we could start the final leg of the journey home.

At last our adventure in China had come to an end. We had seen and experienced much over the previous two weeks and it was now time to rest and to reflect back on this time. China was not the most exciting of trips that I’d been on but it had been rich in culture, history and would be memorable for the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army, and both types of Pandas that we’d seen.