And then, all of a sudden, it was the evening of July 8th, and just as I finished packing my suitcase Mom called to remind me that AJ & I had to coordinate on who was carrying what, just in case one person's luggage got lost, and to even out the weight of what we were carrying[1]. Mom & Dad came to pick me up, and the next couple of hours were spent with two large suitcases spread open on AJ's living room floor as we finagled stuff back & forth between them, pausing occasionally to weigh each suitcase with the little handheld luggage scale I'd bought. Even Dulce got into the act, although she wasn't quite as helpful as she might've thought...
Eventually both suitcases felt about equal (and the scale showed both riiiight at the 55 pound international limit) so Mom & Dad took me and my suitcase back home and everyone went to bed for the night.
Correction: Mom & Dad went to bed. AJ was up until something like 4:30am reviewing her adoption paperwork, packing her carry-on bag, reviewing her adoption paperwork, checking ha few last details, and reviewing her adoption paperwork. Yours Truly finally finished packing his own carry-on around 2:30am, then re-checked his packing lists for the umpteenth time and did some re-packing until around 4:00am. Of course, that was when I decided to check out my new TSA-approved luggage locks for the first time and discovered that no, they definitely did not all use the same key... and all the keys looked identical so I dug up some permanent markers and carefully colored each key and lock pair (and several fingers) kelly green, navy blue, fuschia, and cornflower. Then I had to find just the right keychain... and double-check that I had all the components needed for my laptop... Holy cow, how do I pack my laptop!?!
I finally felt it was safe to go to bed around 5:45am... with pickup scheduled for 7:00am. I set multiple alarms and laid down for a quick nap that lasted 30 minutes (if that much).
We reached Dulles International Airport with time to spare so we found a place in the main terminal for one last "just the four of us" breakfast during which we all mused about how our lives were about to change and wondered what "the baby" would be like once we finally met her. AJ & I decided to check in a bit early so around 10:45am we had one last round of hugs and I set off toward Security with my sister. We were happily shocked to find our suitcases weighed 54.9 and 54.7 pounds, high-fived, and headed for the gate.
Sitting there waiting to board was like living in liminal space; we weren't waiting to get somewhere, we weren't going somewhere, we weren't sitting on the plane... the time we spent in those ugly plastic chairs felt like it was once-removed from everything that had led up to that point and everything that was going to happen. We were both amused by how many of the increasingly large crowd of people waiting with us matched specific tropes & stereotypes: family with prototypical disinterested teen, check; young Black dude dressed like a caricature of a ghetto pimp, check; "old hands" comparing notes on horrible air travel experiences, check; entrepreneur using laptop and/or cell phone until the last possible second, check; college student trying to return home to China minus some important paperwork, check; all overseen by a desk crew that seemed more harried by the moment even when not doing anything. One highlight was the announcement that our flight was expected to land in Beijing about 45 minutes early, welcome news when preparing for a flight scheduled to last fourteen hours and one minute (and we never figured out why United Airlines had that one little minute hanging off the end).
Washington Dulles International Airport -- which has since undergone a major redesign -- was very much a throwback to the glory days of 1960s futurist plans... so of course you had to go down a jetway to board not a plane, but an odd-shaped bus that was essentially a giant scissor lift. Once all the sardines were packed everyone had found a place to sit or stand, the entire bus dropped down to ground level, drove out to where our aircraft was parked, then rose back up to match the height of the main hatch so everyone could shuffle off. (A truly lovely experience, having to basically board, de-plane, then re-board every time. Ugh.)
We finally got to board the plane, and walked through the front doorway... walked back through First Class... walked back through Business Class... walked back through Economy Plus class... and walked back through Economy Class until we reached our seats in the absolute rearmost row on the plane. These were non-reclining bulkhead seats, about an inch closer to the next row forward than a standard row. We had been discussing the possibility of upgrading but AJ had nixed the possibility for the first outbound leg due to cost... so no more than 15 seconds after we'd squeezed into our seats, she turned toward me and fiercely hissed, "We are upgrading for the flight home!"
We were squished into those seats for just a few minutes when a flight attendant came over and said, "We have a couple of open seats available, would you be more comfortable there?" while pointing to some normal seats up near the wing. Never mind leaving our stuff in an overhead bin about 50 feet away, we practically teleported to the new row with a sigh of relief. (I was a good big brother and let lil' sis have the window seat.)
Our plane, a Boeing 777/300 labeled UA897, officially pushed back at 12:19hrs. At that point in time, AJ & I had roughly 99,000 air miles between us, but this would be our longest flight ever and would result in the biggest life change ever for every member of the family. We taxied for what felt like forever and a half while the cabin crew tried to interest everyone in the safety equipment, waited our turn for the runway, and then swung around; the engines spooled up, there was the familiar pusssshhhhhh in our lower backs...
...and we were on our way, at long last, to China.
Sleep-deprived as I might be, I was still too excited to fall asleep. I tried writing in my journal, bopped along to some of the 80's Europop on one of the entertainment channels (resulting in my being stared at by a teenager on the other side of the plane), and tried to figure out why the seatback entertainment console would stutter badly or go completely blank any time there was an announcement on the PA system. (I had to rent Ratatouille and the remake of Clash of the Titans after returning home to be able to see them all the way through without interruption.) I even enjoyed the dinner, and finally passed out for a nap.
When I woke up, I passed some time fiddling with the settings on the entertainment system, watching a wingtip of the little airplane icon on the map brush against the north pole and using the alternating English/Chinese displays like flash cards to learn the symbols for things like airspeed, wind, altitude, and so on[2]. Because we were flying "forward" in time across the International Date Line, the plane's night was short and we were treated to excellent sunlit views of pack ice along the northern shore of Siberia.
Some time later, we passed into Chinese airspace and I enjoyed watching the rugged landscape passing beneath us, steep mountainsides with long lines of snow reaching down into deep valleys with wild-looking rivers, eventually giving way to endless miles of relatively flat land from horizon to horizon. The only sign that humans might be down there was an occasional ruler-straight road running for miles from nowhere to nowhere. I felt kinda dumb when I realized "all those lakes down there" were really the shadows of the scattered puffy clouds between me and the ground.
AJ suddenly asked, "What's that?" and pointed toward a white speck in the sky what seemed to be pacing us... and growing steadily larger. It quickly resolved itself into another large airliner, and it just kept. getting. closer. AJ got off a few shots with her camera as her brother nervously tried to figure out how long it would be before the other plane's flight path intersected ours... but right around the time we could clearly make out the China Southern Airways logo on the other plane's tail, its pilot decided a mid-air collision would mess up his potential for future pay raises and he gently banked away, disappearing into the distance almost as quickly as he'd approached.
When I looked back down, the landscape had totally changed, and I could finally see signs of human presence, including entire towns. It was also obvious that we had been steadily descending, and all of a sudden everything outside the window vanished as we flew into a cloud layer.
I was hoping for an aerial view of Beijing, but as we dropped lower the clouds got greyer and thicker, and soon rain was streaming past over the side of the plane. The flight got bumpier, there was the usual last-minute push to get everyone ready for landing, the slats & flaps on the wing (intermittently just barely visible through the cruddy weather) began moving, and we heard & felt the landing gear deploy. Then, just moments before touching down, we were zipping over a sea of buildings with blue & red plastic roofs and set down on the runway with a decidedly solid THUMP.
We were in China!
As usual, everyone stood up in an attempt to deplane faster, so AJ and I had to sit & wait for several minutes so we could move toward the back of the plane (against traffic) to retrieve our bags from the overhead bins by our original seats. We waited so long, in fact, that by the time we were actually moving forward toward the exit all the other passengers were gone and the cleaning crew had begun preparing the plane for its next flight.
And I had my first "welcome to China" moment.
Instead of the usual tie-and-jacket supervisor, this cleaning crew was accompanied by a small, attractive young woman... wearing a black jumpsuit and sporting a large pistol on her hip, several magazines of ammunition on her belt, and a semi-automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. I nodded an apologetic hello as she maneuvered out of our way and we pushed past, and got back a look that was polite but left absolutely no doubt over who was in charge at the moment. A couple of her male counterparts ignored us as the cabin crew gave us the usual thanksforflyingwithusbye and we wobbled our way down the jetway into the terminal proper.
Beijing's Terminal 3 was built to both accomodate and impress crowds coming to the 2008 Olympic Games, and our immediate impression of the place was big and wow. We both wanted to take some photos but weren't sure it was allowed (we had already decided together to be extra-cautious long before my encounter with Miss Automatic Weapons of 2010 on the plane). The one lone passenger zig-zagging along the defined path in front of us stopped for a moment and took a picture, and we waited -- no shouting, no guards, no nuthin', so we decided we'd wait until we got to a convenient place to stop for a moment and take some photos there. (We were already out of breath from the long walk and just wanted to catch up to the rest of our plane before stopping.)
Shortly afterwards, we reached the first thing I had been quietly worrying about: the temperature sensors that China had installed during the SARS outbreak. I had read that anyone registering with an unusually high body temperature would be politely pulled aside for a quick going-over by medical staff and just as politely(?) put on the next plane back where they came from if they showed any signs of being sick. Not a big deal for most people, but I've always run a little hot and was already a bit overheated from hauling 25+ pounds of carry-on, etc. for what felt like miles so by the time we reached the sensors I was practically dying inside. I rember walking past thinking, "I'm cool, it's cool in here, I'm cool, think cold thoughts, I'm cool..." and absolutely nothing happened. (To be honest, I will never know if the stupid things were even turned on.)
We finally caught up to the lines through Customs, and after catching her breath for a moment AJ pulled her camera out of her carry-on. She took it out of its case, lifted it up.... and an armed, uniformed guard was running toward us calling out, "NO PEECTURE! NO PEECTURE!" while waving his arms like a crazed gymnast. I steeled myself for the phone call home explaining we would be spending a few months in a Chinese jail, but the guard (with neither smile nor malice) explained we were in the security zone and no pictures were allowed there, then nodded politely and left when AJ made a big show of turning the camera off, zipping it into its case, and returning it to her carry-on.
We each ended up at a different customs kiosk, and I thought the guy working in mine was just slow until I realized he was pulling up all kinds of information about me on his computer and comparing it to what was printed in my passport. I then realized he was openly glaring at me as I shoulder-surfed to look at his screen... After a few extra moments of pointed delay, he stamped my passport with perhaps a tad more force than was necessary, handed it back, and nodded for me to get moving... which I did immediately, if not sooner.
Another hike got us to the rubber-tired train that wound in & out of the terminal. We took a short standing ride, and then yet another hike got us to baggage claim. After nervously watching one seriously damaged box, bag, or suitcase after another emerge onto the carousel, our miraculously intact suitcases showed up and we were soon standing in the middle of the hallway wondering what the heck to do next. We exchanged about $20 for Yuan[3] and spent a few moments admiring the unfamiliar bills, then hiked to the arrivals hallway...
...and experienced Chinese crowds for the first time.
The terminal was large, stretching out of sight along a gentle curve in either direction, and everywhere 
we looked there were people. People sitting on chairs, stting on planters, sitting on the floor, walking back and forth, standing in clumps, queueing up at counters, waving bouquets of flowers at arriving passengers... lots and lots of people, and not a single one of 'em was the tour guide we were looking for.
We quickly figured out what had happened: our plane landed 48 minutes early (thus giving us a lucky flight time of 13:13), so our guide probably hadn't even reached the airport yet. AJ spotted an open area on one of the big concrete planters in the middle of the lobby, and we camped out there & people-watched for a while. Eventually we began taking turns, one of us making a sweep of the crowd up against the rail by the arrivals doorway while the other sat with our luggage, and on my 3rd trip I recognized the logo of AJ's adoption agency on the little flag a young woman in the crowd was waving at the arriving passengers.
Having been given all our guides' names in advance, I did the only intelligent thing a traveler who's never been to the country before and who doesn't speak a word of the local language could do: I walked up to the woman from behind, tapped her on the shoulder, and when she turned around asked, "Are you Linda?"
Amazingly, she was indeed Linda, and the three of us took a few minutes to get acquainted. Linda told us one of the other two families in our group was supposed to have also arrived but was still missing, so I rejoined AJ on the planter and enjoyed watching the structured chaos around us. I had just decided that a bouquet of flowers was a required item for greeting travelers when the S family finally came through the Arrivals doors. They apologized for the wait, explaining that the stroller that had boarded the plane with them in the U.S. had not deplaned with them in China but they had finally given up on it and decided to buy a new one when it was needed. (Note: I don't think they ever got that stroller back.)
Linda got all of us -- me, AJ, Mr. & Mrs. S with their daughter, (adopted from China a few years earlier), and a large collection of assorted luggage -- into a chartered minivan and we set off for the Henan Plaza Hotel in downtown Beijing.
By this point, sleep deprivation was beginning to play hob with my senses, so my first memories of Beijing are a little fuzzy. (I also later discovered that almost every photo I took for the rest of that day was crooked because I couldn't hold my camera level.) There seemed to be a lot of toll booths, and most roads had decorative cast-iron fences in the medians that were planted with large rose bushes. As we drove along an elevated highway, the rush hour traffic was jammed up tight so I had plenty of time to watch the passing scene. Aside from some oddly phrased billboards (Dude, why are so many Chinese billboards printed in English?), my impression of the city was "big" -- big traffic, big roads, big buildings marching off into the foggy distance. I was also happily surprised to see a fairly modern city, without any of the obvious Coomunist Bloc slab architecture I'd seen in some books. We stopped for a few moments next to the famous CCTV tower -- which hung overhead in seeming defiance of gravity -- and Linda noted that the rusty, crumbly-looking metal framework next to it was another very modern building that was supposed to have opened around the same time, but the construction crew celebrated its completion with thoroughly illegal fireworks that had burned the thing to the ground, leaving just the fire-damaged frame tnat no one knew what to do with. I remember storing her comment that this was a typically Beijing kind of thing in memory for future reference while forcing myself to stay awake long a few minutes longer.
Our "quick trip" to the hotel in rush hour had just begun to cause the theme to Gilligan's Island to play in my head when Linda pointed out that if anyone wanted Peking Duck for dinner, one of the very best restaurants in the city was in that arcade over there... and over here on this side of the street is your hotel!
I turned to look and I saw... Oh, no.
Scaffolding.
Bamboo scaffolding.
Steel and bamboo scaffolding.
Plastic netting over construction debris. Dirty hanging tarpulins. Chunks of broken-up concrete and asphalt.
Hanging over everything was a banner touting how wonderful the hotel would be once renovations were complete... but I could clearly see what had been the back wall of the lovely lobby shown on their website, because the entire front of the building was gone. Before I could fully absorb the sight, our bus rolled through the construction debris, squeezed through a gate, and pulled up to the back door.
Inside was a relatively small but beautifully decorated "lobby" complete with a service desk staffed by a small army of uniformed women. Linda explained how important it was that we keep our passports with us at all times, then took them and handed them to an older woman who seemed to be the boss of the desk staff. She disappeared into a back room with the whole stack for a few minutes, then came out and they were all redistributed. AJ was busy getting us checked in and I was nervously watching our luggage disappear around a corner without us when I remembered I was supposed to pick up a PandaPhone -- a rented cell phone we wanted to have available for emergencies.
Here's how it went: I tap AJ on the shoulder, then ask the Young Lady #1 behind the desk if a phone has been delivered for me. Young Lady #1 turns and asks Young Lady #2 to help me because her English is better. I again ask Young Lady #2 if a cell phone was delivered for me. Young Lady #2 turns to Young Lady #3 at the opposite end of the counter and fires off something in high-speed Mandarin, and Young Lady #3 looks questioningly at me. I begin to ask her if a cell phone was delivered for me when she turns to Young Guy #1 who's standing at the concierge stand behind me. I turn to face Young Guy #1 and he asks me what I am looking for in broken English. I explain again and Young Guy #1 nods and calls something out to Young Guy #2, who's standing in the doorway. As I turn to face Young Guy #2, he shakes his head and calls out to Young Lady #3 at the service desk, so I compete my 360-degree rotation to face her. She glances at Young Lady #1, then thankfully tells me that no, no phone has been delivered for me, but because traffic is so bad (an understatement, that!) I should check again tomorrow. My pirouette complete, I take one of the key cards from AJ and we all go trooping over to the elevators.
The elevator opened onto a tastefully decorated hallway, and I began to think the place wasn't so bad after all, never mind the construction. I commented that I hoped the dining room didn't require more formal dress and AJ's immediate response was, "They better!" (Did I mention my sister is dangerous when hungry?) Moments after entering our room, Young Guy #3 showed up with our suitcases and disappeared before we could think of tipping him. I turned on a lamp and discovered that our room phone incorporated a small TV screen -- and a light sensor set up so that every time we turned on a light in the darkened room, the TV would play a commercial for some extreme high-end couture jewelry company that showed an attractive young woman undressing and then vanishing in a puff of smoke when she realized she'd taken off her necklace... not exactly what I'd expected to find in a Communist country, no matter how high-class the hotel!
I figured out the instructions for using the room's Internet connection and we made the first of many Skype calls home to Mom & Dad to let them know we had reached Beijing safely... smelly, rumpled, exhausted, and confused... but safely. Tired as we were, we were both even hungrier; crossing the busy street outside to the duck restaurant sounded far too daunting so we decided to try the hotel restaurant. (If they don't like how we're dressed, they'll tell us, right?) As we left the room, I walked a few feet to the end of the hall to get a closer look at a reproduction of the famous "flying horse" sculpture. I was busy admiring it when I realized it had been repeatedly used as both ashtray and spitoon, possibly very recently, so I hustled to join AJ at the elevators. We quickly discovered there were both "formal" and "informal" dining rooms so we made our way to the latter.
The group of beautifully-attired hostesses at the entrance to the formal dining room graciously waved us down the hall toward the regular dining room, and as soon as we got there it was obvious that the actual restaurant was -- had been! -- in the construction zone, and that this was originally a large event hall with one wall now hung ceiling to floor with tarpulins, an obviously makeshift office area in one corner, and a folding table covered with all kinds of fancy boxes & stuff serving as a "gift shop" until the renovation was completed. There were just a few patrons scatterred around (including one family that was obviously well-momeyed), and we were directed to a table that had no one else sitting nearby. We opened our menus -- surprise, no English! -- and found a beautifully photographed center insert showing all kinds of special dishes based on sea cucumbers[4]. A few panicked minutes later, those were still pretty much the only dishes either of us could identify despite the presence of many color photos of the other dishes available.
One of the waitresses noticed our dilemma, came over to the table, and the three of us used a combination of charades, broken English, even more broken Chinese, and a lot of nodding to pick out some dishes we thought we'd like. Our food & drink arrived quickly, looking and smelling wonderful... and that's when we both realized just how tired we both were.
Both of us were familiar with using chopsticks, and after dropping mine a few times I finally got my fingers coordinated enough to begin enjoying the food. AJ was not so lucky. Time after time, she would pick up a tasty-looking morsel and lift it toward her mouth, only to have it either fall back onto her plate or (more commonly) squirt out from between her chopsticks and ricochet off the table like an errant bullet. Too tired to be embarrassed, we ignored the group of waitresses on the other side of the room trying vainly to stop giggling at us and were ourselves slowly dissolving into laughter when our waitress again suddenly materialized and, smiling widely, silently handed AJ a fork.
The surprisingly good dinner finally done, we got up to leave and suddenly realized neither of us knew any of the guidelines over tipping... and our information packet was upstairs in our room. We decided to leave the American standard 15% tip on the table and headed for the elevators.
Not quite halfway down the hall, there was a commotion behind us and we turned to find our waitress literally running down the hall toward us, waving the cash we'd left in the air. After a few moments of total communications failure, she motioned for us to stay put and ran back into the restaurant, then came trotting out with another waitress a moment later. Waitress #2 explained that Waitress #1 didn't have the English skills to explain and had asked her to translate -- and that she wanted to return the money we had accidentally dropped. Flustered, we explained that back home it was customary to leave a tip for good service and both waitresses immediately started saying, "No no no!" Waitress #2 said, "It is honor enough to serve you!" and insisted we take our money back. As soon as we did, Waitress #1 thanked us, said goodnight, and trotted back into the dining room. Waitress #2 thanked us again, then asked if she could accompany us to the elevator "So I can practice my English some more." We agreed, and we chit-chatted until the elevator opened up -- and she was still standing there waving goodnight as the doors slid shut between us.
(There is no way anyone will ever convince me she didn't accompany us just to keep us out of any more trouble, not to practice her English.)
AJ began getting ready for bed while I (for the first of many times during the trip) uploaded the day's photos from my camera onto my laptop. I washed up while Andrea got into her bed, then had one more "welcome to China" moment to close out the day.
After figuring out which of the dozen-plus switches built into the nightstand between our beds turned which light on or off, I happily jumped into my bed... and almost immediately rolled back out, cussing loudly. I had forgotten Linda's throwaway comment earlier in the evening about how in Chinese culture, the better the hotel, the harder the beds... and we were staying in a very good hotel. (Later in the trip, I would comment that our beds were a good example of an expert stonecutter's craft.) Nursing an already-growing bruise on my hip -- and ignoring my sister's laughter -- I carefully climbed slowly into my bed, reached over, and turned out the lights.
We were finally in China, and it was all gonna work out... I thought I would spend a few minutes reviewing the day, but to be honest I don't think it took more than 30 seconds for me to pass out, and for the first time in over 48 hours we both finally got some sleep. 
[1] We were actually traveling light in terms of stuff for Miri; with sizes unknown, AJ was bringing only a few pieces of baby/toddler clothing in a few different sizes and zero diapers -- with anything missing to be bought in China once we knew what size to buy. We did bring some bottles, dry formula mix, a couple of bibs, etc. -- but what was taking up a fair amount of space (aside from our clothing) was the required gifts for the orphanage representatives we would be meeting.
[2] By this point I had been attempting to learn Mandarin Chinese for at least two years, but was never able to get much beyond "He is cooking food," "They are eating food," She is drinking tea," and "The boy is running." My original goal was to learn enough to be able to tell apart signs reading Men's Room and Stay Out, Yankee Running Dog! but to this day can only recognize a handful of characters. Oh, and I no longer remember "airspeed," "wind speed," "altitude," or "temperature." And don't get me started on the multi-syllabic monster that means "bicycle"...!!
[3] The official name of the currency of the People's Republic of China is "Renminbi," which translates roughly as "people's money," but just about everyone in the world calls them "Yuan," which is a unit of currency. Thus you will carry Renminbi in the form of Yuan notes and Yuan coins... It makes more sense in real life than in text, don't sweat it.
[4] Sea Cucumbers are not vegetables; they are arguably one of the grossest animals to live in the oceans of the world. They're not much more than a squishy, slimy tube with a primitive mouth at one end and an anus at the other. Their primary defense is to eject their stomach out their mouth to distract predators -- not the contents of their stomach, the actual stomach itself in its entirety. (They then grow a new one.) Take my word for it, they look even less appetizing than they sound.
No comments:
Post a Comment