Arrival

The sign at Gate 27 presented the order of boarding for Air China flights: First class, then Business class, then passengers needing special assistance, then rows 32-46, followed by rows 23-31, and finally rows 9-22.

I looked again at my boarding pass: seat 20G. Might as well get comfortable.

At ten minutes past one in the morning, LA time, an attractive Chinese woman picked up a microphone and said, at a very high rate of speed, about three minutes worth of words that had absolutely no meaning to me. She then, presumeably, repeated the spiel in English, and, if anything, only increased her prodigious pace. From it, I gathered that boarding was announced for First class, Business class and special-needs passengers. A small mob formed by the gate and slowly made its way through the door. Some time later, when that group had nearly finished exiting the terminal, a uniformed Chinese man moved a section of rope barrier near the end of the line. Apparently, this was the signal everyone else had been waiting for. With no announcement what so ever, 90% of the remaning passengers rose and formed a much larger mob at the gate. An American standing near me seemed rather incensed by the lack of order and formal boarding calls, but it all seemed very Chinese to me. I waited with a few other stragglers until the crowd had thinned, then picked up my bags and joined the queue.

As I made my way down the Tarmac, I was anxious to try out my rudimentary Chinese on the crew. "Ni hao, ni hao!" Just before stepping onto the plane, I singled out a young male attendant. "Ni hao!"

"Hi," he replied. Then, with a sheepish grin, "...er, ni hao!"

20G was an aisle seat in the plane's middle section of four seats, right behind a video screen. That placement afforded a couple much-appreciated inches of additonal legroom (though still inadequate for my 6-2 frame). It also, fortuitously, placed the aisle on the side of my bad knee. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

The three other seats in my part of the row were occupied by an older Chinese gentleman beside me, an older Chinese woman beside him, and a younger Chinese woman beside her, with an infant boy, in the opposite aisle seat. The way the three adults fussed over the baby, I surmised they were a family. I also surmised their English was little better than my Chinese.

I wanted to say something, so I looked up the Chinese word for "grandson" -- sunzi (soon-zee) in my pocket dictionary. I pointed at the baby and asked the older gentleman, in Chinese, if that was his grandson.

"Yes, yes!" came his spirited reply, in English.

One hour into the flight, the monitor right in front of us showed our progress. We had made it from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a distance barely discernable on the full view of our route. Wonder how to say "we have a long-ass way to go" in Chinese?

All in all, though, the flight wasn't as bad as I had feared. I still don't like flying, but once I'd resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be on the bird for a really long time, I was able to relax. . . . at least a little. I still didn't sleep nearly as much as I'd hoped, but I think I got enough to get me through the day, at least with all the adrenalyn I have going.

My first glimpse of China came through the windows across the row of three seats on my right as we came in on final approach. It was dark, and all the lights and trucks and warehouses looked about the same as the outskirts of any metropolitan U.S. airport.

Getting through customs turned out to be a breeze at 5:30 in the morning. Ours was the only international arriving flight, and within 45 minutes of landing, the Chinese had turned me loose into their country. The first thing to do was, naturally, find a bathroom. All was going well until I started looking for the toilet paper. It wasn't in the stall. I finally found it in a big dispenser on the wall near the sinks. There was only one other person in the bathroom at the time (quite the rarity, I would later discover), but I was still pretty self-conscious about unwinding a big wad of T.P. in front of someone else. So I only took a little wad, and by the time I had covered the seat, I was left with only a scant three squares to cover myself. Some creative usage was required to finish the job.

6:30 found me sitting in the "Beijing Capital International Airport" on a Friday morning, just arrived on a new continent for the first time ever, and. . . . waiting for Starbucks to open. And hoping they would take U.S. dollars, since the bank for money changing didn't open for another two hours.

Luckily for me, foreigners band together in strange lands, and a British couple mentioned that a bank upstairs had just opened. Upstairs? Where? Tucked in an out of the way corner I found an escalator, which took me up to an even bigger, more sprawling level of the airport that I would never have known existed otherwise. It took some time, but I finally got my hands on some local currency and proceeded to what is probably the most expensive internet cafe in China. The "Sunbird Digital Relaxation Harbor" charges 50 RMB for unlimited access, and that includes a mug of tea (with little green tea leaves floating in it). 50 RMB is about 6 USD. Last night in LAX, I paid $5 for 20 minutes.

Actually, though, on this strange time-space continuum that gets pretty warped on trans-Pacific flights, that was the night BEFORE last in LAX. An old Chicago song is stuck in my head this morning. Does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care? It's nine in the morning on Friday where I am, six in the evening on Thursday where I came from, nine at night on Thursday where I lived, and eight in the morning where I'll go to find Maureen in a couple of months. On the flight over, we had breakfast served at 3:00am local time, a little over an hour after takeoff. Then we got lunch at 4:00am local time, which was a full ten hours later. I've had some late-night breakfasts before, but I don't think I've ever had chicken and rice for lunch at four in the morning.

But was it really four in the morning? Afterall, it was 1:00 in the afternoon back in LA. I certainly don't know, but taking a cue from the band, I don't much care either. It's cloudy and raining here, but it's time to go exploring. I hear they have a big wall somewhere in this area. Wonder if I can find it?