A Day that will Live In Infamy
Though we be well-seasoned travelers in some regard, our first trip to Chna was a humbling experience. The children all agree though, the worst that could happen probably has to us already and as such we can probably take comfort in knowing it possibly cannot get any worse.
The day started innocently enough. I worked a 3 hour shift, seeing five patients at my new job as a vision therapist. I was excited at the prospect of already being packed and ready to go and not having to do much else for the trip. I expected that the kids were all likewise, with their chores done and the prospect of overseas travel such a glimmering promise of adventure on the horizon that they were all ppressed, polished and packed, perching excitedly on the edges of their freshly-made beds and feet barely touching the surface of their newly-groomed bedroom carpets.
Came home and Doe was in her bathing suit, rearranging her hair and saying that she was going to spend the afternoon on the boat with her boyfriend, Grizzly (names changed to protect the innocent, remember). When I balked at the prospect she reminded me in her downtrodden and empathy-inspiring fashion that this trip was indeed consuming the rest of her summer vacation and she would not see him again before they all went back to school in the fall, where he would be a few steps away and we, her family, were going to be nine hours away. But I digress.
So while Doe was preening, Bumpo was laying quietly in her bed with her cheeks sunken in and her forehead taking a rather pale grey tone. Did I mention she has strep throat? Kudos to our pediatrician for getting her in so swiftly, and for giving us a dose of antibiotics to take with us in the chance one us loses our focus and shares a toothbrush with her…..incredibly, that child rallied and was the most upbeat and unaffected by the maelstrom that the next 24 hours were to bring.
I’ll have what she’s having ;)…strike that, it is just in her nature to be that relaxed and unencumbered by the anxiety that riddles through my genomes. I hope it stays that way. She was packed and listening to music, quietly texting her friends.
Tank on the other hand was a shitstorm. His clothes were not packed, he had not bathed or prepared any lists, and his chores were not done. It was now about 12pm, and we were leaving the house at 6pm. For someone who had so much to do, he seemed relatively at ease about it all, and any amount of shrieking on my part just resulted in a further display of nonplussed attitude. In my mind’s eye I could see Tank in some gunnery position on an aircraft during a time of military conflict, with his baseball cap askew chomping placidly on a wet cigar as he takes out the enemy…in his boxer shorts. He just does not care. He was in the basement “cleaning up his Legos” (ie, playing with them) watching some series on Netflix that had nothing whatsoever to do with China, and the pile of dishes he was supposed to be disposing of in the dishwasher was congealing behind him on the coffee table.
“Wait til your Dad gets home” was my warning call, and I texted his father to prepare him. Beloved was coming home at 3, and things had better been done.
The subsequent yelling and thrashing about that ensued at about 3:05 doesn’t need to be replayed, but suffice to say things got done. And by 6:15 we were on our way to the EconoLodge in Denver to meet our airport shuttle.
How cute we were the five of us, in a color coordinated outfits (hey it’s Colorado you wear either grey, brown, black or denim). We looked so cute as we confidently rolled into the Econolodge with our Coleman rolling bags and our Starbucks coffee drinks held aloft.
Then the world started to shift on its axis. 8 pm. No shuttle. 8:05pm. Still no shuttle. We had a 10:30flight to LA. There was no shuttle. I noticed an elderly Chinese couple sitting on a stone bench on the patio. Instantly, because obviously there’s no Chinese in Denver (doh) I deduced that if they were not worried about making the shuttle to DIA, why should I?
Let this be a lesson, children. Just because you see a Chinese person, do not automatically assume that they are going to China. They may in fact, just be staying at the Econolodge while their carpets are getting cleaned in Aurora.
They did not get on the same shuttle as us. I’m not even sure they were going on any trip.
When the shuttle did arrive, at a galling 8:15, the driver was apologetic and got us to the airport in record speed. Me trying to find reason behind everything believed that the reason why we were late was so that we could get a last long glimpse at a beautiful Colorado sunset from the shuttle. It was truly lovely.
We get to the airport (see I haven’t even GOTTEN to the airport yet)….it’s now about 8:30. We check in at United.
Your itinerary does not match our records said the Eticket kiosk. Beloved clears his throat.
Your itinerary does not match our records said the Eticket kiosk. Beloved clears his throat and Doe mouths the words “OH MY GOSH” and starts fanning herself.
“I have a bad feeling about this” she said to no one in particular, and in no real productive fashion.
Your itinerary does not does match our records said the Eticket kiosk. Two VERY friendly women help us deconstruct what happened. Hey guess what….the travel agent who was subbing in for the regular University office travel agent mucked it up.
We had three tickets. We had Beloved’s, but then we had DoeBumpo and TankKim. She didn’t delineate the names on the tickets, so we had four people on two tickets. It was AWESOME.
We made it through though and made our way through security, down to our gate to our LA flight. Now there were a few more Asian faces appearing. Plus one VERY handsome Army soldier, who kept staring at Doe with unabashed delight. Tank sweetens the deal even further by going over to the soldier, shaking his hand and saying “Thank you for your service”. The cute young blonde brush-cutted man smiled and said “Thanks buddy!”.
Good job Tank.
Make our flight to LA. It’s now about 1;30 am Pacific time. On any normal day I would have been sleeping for about 4 hours, but oh well.
We have two hours to make our flight to China Air. We get off the plane, find our Departure gate, which is TS3. Start moving a little bit quicker now, find a officious looking man who sleepily tells us that TS3 is indeed Tom Bradley Terminal. We walk about 1.5 miles through the airport and then wait 30 minutes for the shuttle to TS3. We are the first ones on the shuttle, then a young couple (Chinese!) climb on with a stroller and walking toddler. The woman sits down wearily on the bench as the man talks her throughout. As I watch in horror, the toddler steps out of reach of both the man and woman, and incredibly walks down the bus steps like a full on adult. This child is all of 2 years old. He is off the bus and out on the sidewalk, making a beeline for the oncoming traffic. I make a move to grab him, but a woman outside starts screaming “THERE’s A BABY OUT HERE! THERE’S A *BABY* OUT HERE!” Man jumps up and grabs the baby, all the while the woman is sitting there, looking completely exhausted. I thought at first she was incoherent or disabled, but I now know she was just completely out of her gourd jetlagged.
Get off the shuttle, start running now to the terminal. Make our flight to Beijing. I am at first pleased to board AirChina, as their seating was these large cubicles of mattresses and pleasing lavender-blue lighting with a dedicated screen and probably some cupholder nearby.
Damn this is first class I start to remind myself. Some Chinese boy is already asleep under a white fluffy comforter. I kind of hate him already.
Go through the entire length of the plane. Find our seats. Thank God we are all together. The seats are surprising plush and comfortable. Having an inseam of 34 inches I’m grateful for whatever legroom an airplane seat can offer, and AirChina does not disappoint. I am giddy.
Get our pillow and our blanket, mold the plane’s head cushion perfectly to the confines of my head and swiftly fall asleep.
About an hour later I wake up. Hey we are still on the tarmac.
The world is still starting to turn off its axis.
We now have less than an hour between our flight landing in Beijing and our connecting flight to Harbin, China.
AIrChina attendants were appallingly aloof and unfriendly. Underwhelmed with their service and could not find one who spoke enough pidgin English to find out why our row of television sets did not seem to work. I think it was because I couldn’t see which was the Call button or which was the TV button on the tiny little diagrams. She was openly hostile towards me towards the end of the flight.
Food was served cool and gummy, with brown salty sauce over chicken bits and flaccid carrots. The ramps/onions/cabbage combination was a nice surprise. We all fell on it like wolves, devouring every bite. The drinks were served lukewarm, with approximately one thimbleful of juice and or soda for each proffered plastic cup. Ah but you got the entire can of beer if you so chose to drink a beer.
The flight lasted approximately 3 days. I’m not even kidding. I think I heard the American woman and Beloved exchange the news that there were “only two hours left” approximately 3 times over the course of our flight. In the end I think it was more like 12, but who knows. Those hours will forever be lost in a long metal capsule carrying over 300 souls that traveled over the Pacific. They’re just gone forever. I missed the sunrise and seemingly slept off and on throughout it so that was nice. I was seated on the aisle seat which meant I was next to a Chinese-American woman and her darling daughter, who spoke very loudly to her throughout the flight when they were not spooning adorably in their row of seats. At one point the little girl was sleeping with her face against the seat cushion and her mother was surrounding her, both heavily asleep, and it was such a sweet picture of contentment I was tempted to take a picture. But that would have been a little weird.
As we are getting ready to debark the plane finally, Beloved starts to coach us in Chinese behavior. “Don’t wait just get up and stand up and don’t let anyone in front of you.” This would be well-heeded in the next few hours to come.
The Chinese woman starts talking to me as we are waiting. She is actually an American citizen, and she is visiting her parents for 3 weeks. When she learns we have a connecting flight, she flies into action. I’m telling you…this woman was an angel. She starts rapid-fire speaking to the now very pleasant flight attendant, all the while explaining that while we will not be leaving the terminal for our connecting flight, we still need to go through Customs to get to our gate. She takes total charge of the situation, all the while calmly chatting to us along the way. While she tells us to wait behind the others in the Customs line, she walks up to the front of the line and starts requesting that everyone give up their place because we have a connecting flight that leaves in 50 minutes. One Middle Eastern man refused and so we had to wait for him (as we should have, truthfully). But we got through.
A mad dash down to the waiting train, which was making a bonging sound and loudly announcing something, and then we were on the shuttle to the next terminal.
Make it to the terminal, and find our way to security for the plane to Harbin. There are now about 20 minutes until our flight boards.
Real panic is when your hear your family name being paged over the Intercom in an international airport requesting that you check in for your flight, which will be boarding soon.
There is yet another line to go through to get to security yet. Beloved and I both exhale sharply when we see the line for the security. There is a wall of swarming humanity all about the same height all talking at the same time. Well over a thousand people crammed into one large room which is segmented by signs and cordoned off with markers and security gates. Beloved flags down a young man with a lanyard on and throws his boarding pass at him. The man looks at his watch, gasps “Fast Track” and points to the opposite side of the large room. This is a small desk against a glass wall plastered with posters. As I am the last in line a Chinese man and woman start talking rapidly to each other, and the man shoves his way next to me. His plan is to cut in between me and my kids. Having attended enough concerts and stood in enough festival seating, I know the drill. Look straight ahead and firmly plant your leg and hip in front of the offending party. When he starts to shove my arm down, I quickly step in front of him and block him. I think there may have been some physical contact.
We are now in a line of people waiting for security. I am still in front of the man who is now physically assaulting me by shoving past me and dumping his belongings in the first box he sees, nevermind that they were someone else’s. Beloved, Tank and Bumpo all get through the line and are waiting as Doe and I are harassed for the next few minutes. All of our belongings are unceremoniously dumped out and a large brooding man in a stained uniform is literally pawing through our belongings. I think he may have jammed his finger into the prong of my phone charger, which I do not apologize for. I am now literally pouring sweat, the same grey tshirt I had started with on this flight is now drenched, I could wring sweat out of it had I the inclination. I am sweating from underneath my bra, behind my ears, under my hair, and it’s running rivulets down the sides of my face. I watch my belongings which are now in complete disarray get dumped back into a plastic box and then passed back through the security scanner, being separated from me by about 30 people.
We make it through the security and I don’t take the time to jam everything back into my backpack. Laptop, purse, and backpack are all been clutched in my arms as I start running. Gate C-16 of Beijing airport is a good 30 minute walk from Security, in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation. There are now 8 minutes left.
We make it to Gate C-16. There is an elderly couple, not the same mind you, who are banging on the doors to the jetway. There is no plane in sight, no one is around and the lights are turned off. I think I may have sworn aloud, thinking that the plane had left. But they missed the white placard that I then noticed, written shockingly entire in Chines which supposedly said that the gate had been switched and was now C-4. C-4 is approximately two minutes away from security. We start running back, retracing the exact same path we had to get to C-16. By now I am aware that the Mentos gum I am carrying for the flight sounds like some sick maracas in my carry-on bag. “Chunk chunk chunk…chunk chunk chunk” they rattle as I am running as fast as my feet will carry me. My glasses, which I had worn “for comfort” for the flight, are now dangerously slick on my nose as I am running. I look like something from a John Hughes movie.
Make our flight. Take some stunning pictures of the Yangtze River. It really is so beautiful from up here.
Finally land in Harbin. Make our way to baggage claim. Watch as everyone to a person watches us walk up to our carousel. Some people take out cameras and snap pictures of my girls.
Tank amazes me to no end. He is fearless and confident, laughing and jostling his sisters, and instantly makes his way to the very front of the carousel. I am in awe of him. Everyone is watching him as he stands there, hand on his hip, peering under the rubber curtain every so often waiting for the bags to arrive.
Not in the cards. The biggest fear I had had was not making our flight to Harbin. Laughable. I’d Never even considered the idea that our bags would not be waiting for us at the carousel. I mean….baggage consisted of boxes tied in knots and luggage placed inside pillowcases was easily tottened up and taken away. Not our five cute Coleman bags!
A man comes up in a red vest, we hand him our luggage claim tags and he waves us to follow him. On the back of his red vest are the words “HELP YOU”. He walks us over to a small room to the right of the customer pickup (we saw our Harbin coordinator, Yung, waving at us as we walk past).
The room is small with one fluourescent light fixture in the ceiling, with a long low desk and a row of women all dressed in tight lavender suits sharply talking into telephones.There are ornate maroon The velvet wall hangings and cheerful bulletin boards covered with stickers of smiling cats and anime children, with so much writing on them I cannot imagine being able to understand it all, even if I understood the characters. The smell is intolerable, of rotting vegetables. In one corner is a stack of taped up boxes, with flies swarming around them and “Charfood” stamped on the sides. This must be the source of the smell.
Yong is allowed back to interpret and we fill out the necessary information for the missing luggage, and start the 24 hour wait for them to reappear.
I was not hopeful. Thank you United Airlines for kicking ChinaAir in the butt to get our bags sent to Harbin, and to Yong for sending his student He (yes his real name!) to our apartment at the University 24 hours later to deliver them to our door. When Beloved got the call from Yong that our bags were waiting downstairs, Beloved and I snuck out and met them.
Yes I was the sweaty blonde middle-aged woman in a stained gray t-shirt and stained Cabi jeans hopping and down squealing at the sight of our luggage. The airport driver was a suave young man in a crisp white shirt and mirrored shades, smoking as he leaned outside the car and as I leapt out of the building entrance clapping and saying “Woo hoo! WOO HOO!”
But the beds were clean and the apartment small but tidy, a refrigerator hot plate and microwave were ours for the taking, as was a drying rack and a standing shower. Translation: a hole in the bathroom wall with a shower head and hose attached. The water tank is above the toilet, which is within hand’s reach of the sink. We configured out the equation it would require for us to gain hot water. It’s pushing this glowing orange button a combination of times until the schematic looks like one glowing orange button in the upper left hand corner of the display and one glowing orange button on the bottom half of the display. The number on the display reads ‘6872’ but if release the valve on the hot water pipe and it ejects a bit of water the desired temperature, you are ready to go. A plastic curtain covers the bathroom door entrance and the sink is far away that you can turn the shower on full bore on your aching muscles and it will be quite pleasant. Just remember to not soak the white cotton mop the apartment provided because you’ll need that to sweep the water to the drain.
So those were our first impressions of China…encumbered by a fog of fatigue, exhausted with the heat and the same crusty clothes we’d been wearing through two continents. Each day has gotten progressively better since then.
Figure 1 Harbin University Campus
Figure 2University student supermarket. They sold everything we could possibly need. We had to kit out our own apt with essentials like dishes and towels, which fortunately were very cheap.
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