aadler | Third day on the way to China (and first day there)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we were flying west, away from the sun. It never caught up with us, not while we were in the air, so for us all of February 5th had been spent in flight, in darkness. When we landed at last, in Beijing (about 4:30 local time, I think), the sun still hadn’t come up.

We got a surprise: it was cold. As in, snow-on-the-ground cold. Susan had a sweater and shawl with her, but — since our son had told us weather in Shenzhen was around 70°F — my coat was packed in our checked luggage. Yet Susan was the one who kept complaining of being cold.

The airport at Beijing wasn’t over-heated, either. Partly because it was still pre-dawn hours, I suppose, but some of it may have been standard practice; when, at 7:30, we went to board our final flight to Hong Kong, the areas we passed through weren’t heated at all, including the jetway. I scrambled to get through that and into the relative comfort of the plane; grabbed a free (English-language) newspaper just before stepping inside, and then learned that the weather wasn’t purely a Beijing phenomenon, much of China had been hit by a cold front and people were still adjusting.

Case in point: the plane was supposed to take off at 8:00AM, but extra de-icing was necessary. With one thing and another, it was past 9:30 before we got off the ground … which meant that the updated arrival information I had sent our son, by Skype note and e-mail, was promptly obsolete.

One thing I hadn’t previously noted: after passing through three security checkpoints on the way (at our home airport, then Houston, then LAX), Susan had the small scissors confiscated from her crochet bag at Beijing airport, and they also pulled the baggie of her jewelry from my carry-on (she got to keep it, but they ran my carry-on back through the X-ray a second time, to assess it without that tangled mass of confusing metal).

Descending on Hong Kong about 12:30. There was more sky-haze than I had expected, and less traffic on the single highway I was able to see during our approach. The ground temperature? 77°F. Much better.

I was separated from Susan on the tram to the terminal, but she showed up on the next one, and we proceeded together from there. Once we got through immigration, the stopped at a place to change some of her money to Hong Kong dollars. That was almost to the point where the entry from the flightline gave way to the main terminal, so I stepped out to look around, caught an angle so I could look farther …

… and saw Kevin, our son, waiting for us.

Susan hugged him for an entire minute. There might have been some crying. We hadn’t seen him for nearly a year and a half, though there had been some visual contact through Skype. He had brought a couple of bottles of water for us, and a cell phone for me to use while we’re in China, and a friend named Jack (Jack Yin, I quickly discovered, Kevin’s girlfriend’s brother). Kevin took us to the baggage tracking center to check on the status of our baggage: which, we learned, was some kind of limbo, ready (as we had been told) to be forwarded to Hong Kong, but waiting for the new baggage tags that would have been issued when we (as we had not been told, so we hadn’t done it) turned the old tags over to Air China so they could begin the process. Yeah. Thanks. But, it’s set up properly NOW.

We ate quickly at the airport McDonald’s. Yes, I know, fly all the way to China and our first meal there is at McDonald’s, but we were hungry and it was right there. Then we caught a cab to Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where Susan met with local members of the same nursing honor organization she belongs to. Because of the various changes of schedule — even though eventually we wound up with one that would allow us to arrive at the time originally set — this turned out to be Susan trading insights and experiences with just two other nurses, albeit senior teaching staff, about the differences between nursing in Hong Kong, mainland China, and America.

When finally it was time to leave, Kevin and Jack led us to the border crossing. (Yes, Hong Kong is officially Chinese property again, but it still operates under a different set of rules, and the overall Chinese government treats transit between the two almost as if you were entering China from another country. Leaving Hong Kong took time, because there were a lot of people (hundreds, probably over a thousand, very possibly thousands plural), and not that many official lines for passing them through; entering main China was faster because of more personnel, but the immigration security was very thorough, checking every digit of our passport numbers individually. Even so, there was no difficulty.

(No official difficulty, at any rate. Susan fell on one of the moving sidewalks: she’d been trying to take a photo, didn’t realize it would end so soon, hit the end unaware with both hands up holding the camera … I heard a whoomp behind me, looked back — not even worried, just wanted to see what the sound was — and Susan was flat on her face. Then, after we got her up and moving again and uninjured except for maybe some bruises, she fell again in the border line because the crowd was so thick she didn’t see the iron feet of the railing that marked off the different sections. After that, she held onto Jack on one side and Kevin on the other till we were safely clear of everything.)

Jack had already arranged for his mother to pick us up, and she was waiting outside the main crossing center. Mrs Yin would be about a dozen years younger than Susan (meaning fifteen younger than me), and was very welcoming in her greeting. She drove us to a restaurant and treated all of us to dinner, which was quite a bit more than we could eat. She had no English, Jack some but not a lot, so Kevin served as the translator for us.

(Jack and I had beer, and he kept toasting me with “Vostroviye,” which of course is Russian. I made it a point to always respond with something else: “Lachaim,” “skoal,” and Farsi for beer is very good. At one point Kevin was talking about some of the things he could take them to when they come to visit us, and Jack observed that he liked fishing. I said, “I love fishing, until I run out of bullets.” Which struck him as both funny — as intended — and Huh?, because there ARE no privately owned firearms in China. So I had to tell him I only owned five guns myself, but he was welcome to try them out when the time comes. These things are my idea of humor.)

Done with dinner, we went on up to their apartment, and I got to meet Mr Yin. He poured tea for me, which I couldn’t refuse but didn’t like (too strong-flavored for my effete tastes), and we visited to the extent possible, but I was starting to fade down from the long day. Mei-li, Kevin’s girlfriend, finally showed up from work, and was somewhat more enthusiastic in her greeting, since we’d actually talked via Skype on a few occasions in the past.

Then enough was enough, and we were driven to Kevin’s apartment. He showed us where things were, and had bought an extra coverlet on his bed just for us; the climate in Shenzhen is mild, so people don’t really heat their houses, they just dress to stay warm, and he’s accustomed to it by now but wasn’t sure we would be. He left us to go back to the Yins’ place — he’ll be staying there while we’re here, and then later he’ll let go of the lease on his apartment and get another place with two roommates — and Susan and I changed into pajamas and zonked out immediately.