[as it turns out, blogger is blocked in china, which i had misunderstood when i set it up. because the function of this blog will be ever changing, i thought it best to simply have a close (american) friend help me post there instead of try and create an acceptable site.]
the morning of the thirteenth of june began similarly to the prior ten or so mornings—awakening early from the brief, fretful sleep caused by the sore throat and cold i’d been trying to overcome before leaving the country. but it was the latter bit that rose to my consciousness first: i was leaving for china in but a few hours. i made the mistake of checking my email while still in bed, so as my chest began tightening with the prospect of international travel, i received an email from one of our contacts in china—a grinnell alumnus—warning us about a new US caution to travelers in china. apparently foreigners in the chinese capital were experiencing more frequent and more violent muggings, especially in the area andy and i were planning on staying for the majority of our time in beijing, and cautioned against walking alone at night. this new information only startled me more despite the fact that common sense would likely overcome just about any risk, so i remedied it the best i could by jumping out of bed and forcing down some yogurt and granola while i finished up the last of my packing. we received a call regarding the los angeles to shanghai flight: delayed by two hours. after getting my two bags into the car and saying goodbye to my mother, my father and i drove to the redmond airport. (even at six-thirty they had police waiting to harass anyone who sat around for more than twenty seconds.)
i checked my bag through easily, and eventually my father said goodbye. i went through security, and boarded the plane to portland, but i took a final breath of central oregon before entering the cabin. on the descent into portland my ears began to lose any sensitivity, to the point where i could barely hear the flight attendants thank me, and heard no ambient noise—however, my own speech was far louder and i could still hear a cell phone call alright. scary, but obviously just related to my sickness. as it turned out, my ears both released the pressure as we ascended from PDX, but filled again as the flight reached LA. there i had to exit security, check in (and have my passport approved), re-enter security, and find gate 41—and eventually andy! it was really great to see him. we explored the terminal and found a wildly-expensive (and tasteless) salad for me, and then took turns looking over the bags to take walking breaks. i spoke with my mother and ana on the phone and tried to find a mail box, to no avail: apparently after 9/11 they removed all of them. because ten years later, that’s what’s keeping our airports safe…
we exchanged some US cash for chinese yuan, which, like just about any non-american currency, is beautiful, colorful, and not so obsessed with architecture and dead men, though mao’s portrait is on every bill. finally our enormous plane arrived, and we boarded over two hours after it’d originally been scheduled. (this wasn’t a problem until we encountered no public transportation from the pudong airport due to our lateness.) andy was quite thrilled about the personal TVs for each passenger, as this was his first flight (besides mexico) outside the US. we passed the three sisters for my third time that day, as our route was along the western american coast and then near russia and across japan. at this point i remained deaf and had quite a swollen, sore throat, but i waited to take nyquil and advil for when i would try to rest. i decided to wait until after the airplane dinner, which featured very little that worked with my diet. i ate andy’s chicken and green beans, and he had all the cookies and bread from my tray. we’d received advice to buy cigarettes from the duty free cart to give as gifts in china, so we got a whole carton. after we talked of love and travel for a while, we tried to sleep. i rested well enough, until i began feeling nauseous. after fighting the urge to vomit for a good hour, i finally put my motion sickness bag to good use. with a few hours left of the trip during immensely-drawn out sunset, i was feeling rested but hungry, and generally weak from throwing up the rejected airplane food.
by the time we landed in a very hazy shanghai at night, we were just about the only flight that got in late that thursday. the humidity was immediately noticeable as soon as we exited the aircraft, even in the terminal. going through customs was easy, though my difficulty hearing complicated the process a bit: when the official asked me to “smile” to match my passport photograph, i could neither hear him speak at all nor decipher the heavily-accented word. in any case, we got our checked baggage and made our way to the public section. we exchanged more yuan at an ATM (where 100 yuan is about 16 US dollars) and made our way to the metro station. it had closed about an hour prior. the magline—a bullet train—had been shut down even earlier. our next options were a midnight bus or a taxi. the airport, being huge, exercised us as we pushed our baggage on carts from station to station. we opted for the bus, but upon reaching the supposed station, two men approached us with offers of taxi services. we knew it wasn’t best to go with taxi drivers that heckled you, as they often try to rip off unsuspecting foreigners, but these individuals told us there would be no bus (probably a lie—it just wasn’t there yet, and we were unsure if we had actually found the station)—so we decided to just try their service. one of them led us into what we thought would take us under the busy, multi-lane street towards a taxi he’d motioned towards across the median, but instead it was to a basement parking garage, with a door that had no knob. he told us to put our bags down (to eventually steal? to let us rest our backs and arms??) at a parking spot and made a phone call, appearing very friendly the whole time. soon a modest sedan appeared—totally missing any markers of a regular taxi—and he loaded up our bags as we got into the car with the driver; the man with the phone got in as well. we gave the driver the address to the phoenix hostel, and the first man asked that we pay him. knowing we needed to do anything to avoid being exceedingly ripped off—or, at the worst, separated from our bags—we fully rejected this request and tried to convince him we’d pay him when we were safely delivered to our destination.
“okay, money,” he’d say.
“yes, money, after,” we’d respond.
“yes, okay, money,” he’d repeat, motioning for us to pay him then.
“no, money after drive, when we’re there,” we’d continue, shaking our heads.
we couldn’t explain ourselves and were trying to figure out how much shit we’d gotten ourselves into already. finally, he showed us a flat rate on his cell phone (180 yuan) and suddenly thanked us and left smiling after shaking each of our hands, and the driver proceeded out of the garage. we figured the first man wanted his payment then rather than later, but his driver payed him upfront to keep our business. in any case, an hour-or-so ride from the airport followed, through the pudong region of shanghai and all the orange street lamps and eerily-lit buildings, across the huangpu river to the main, bright part of the city. our driver made a dozen (angry-sounding) phone calls throughout the drive and kept referencing his map, even though our hostel was right near a major center of shanghai in the people’s park area. at one point we pulled off the main road into a small side street to pick up a woman near a bar, though, and she helped him ask other (legitimate) taxis how to get to where we needed to go, it seemed. they may’ve been dating. finally, after we drove through the busiest part of town we’d encountered, he pulled off onto another small street and we saw our hostel. we were so thankful it all worked out, and he took our cash and we got our bags out. he left us on the quiet midnight street.
andy and i made our way to the hostel and thankfully they were open 24 hours a day, so the woman at the counter helped us get a new room quickly, as they’d had to sell ours due to our tardiness. andy realized his debit card was missing as we paid for the room, which sent us into the street to look for it as soon as we put our belongings away. we didn’t find it. i was exhausted and needed something to drink, so we bought soda and water. however, my water ended up being a sugary, transparent lie! this only fed my concern (and not my gut) that maintaining any semblance of my strict diet would be possible—if i couldn’t even find regular water, how could i avoid gluten, diary, and sugar? but there was bottled water in the room so i made do. before we passed out at one AM, we emailed those awaiting news that’d we’d finally, finally made it to china.
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