China 2019

[aadler]

I didn’t bother to do a day-to-day record of my most recent China trip, essentially because I just didn’t feel like it.

Some highlights, however:

I’ve already acknowledged the problem at the very beginning (here), wherein flight delays at the beginning made me miss my connecting flight. That wasn’t a catastrophe or even a real hardship, just annoying, but I was annoyed. Still, I stayed overnight in the motel room provided for me, used all three of the meal vouchers provided for me, got to the airport in quick order and took off on time (just a day late).

From previous experience with twelve-hour flights, I had brought a pair of fuzzy house slippers; I changed into them while I waited at the gate for the flight to be called, stowing my regular shoes in my carry-on, and wore them clear to Hong Kong (after a few hours, my feet start to feel constricted, and this is one way of avoiding that). I had anticipated that I might sleep some on the flight, but I didn’t, just watched movies the whole way.

In Hong Kong, I went through all the processes: showing my passport and visa at customs (the visa is for ten years, and is contained in an expired passport), finding my checked bag at the baggage area. Usually my son Kevin is waiting right outside the area where passengers exit into the main terminal, but not this time. I tried to use my phone, Kindle, and laptop to send Skype messages, but for some reason the Hong Kong wifi wouldn’t properly register on any of them. I got tired of standing, sat down every now and then. There were always new passengers arriving, however, and new people coming to meet the passengers, and I worried that I might miss Kevin arriving to look for me, so I would periodically get up and trundle my luggage around the area, inspecting those waiting at the exit for passengers.

Eventually this went on long enough that I began to worry that something had gone wrong. Noting that there were two reception areas, I walked across the main terminal area to the second one, and found Kevin there. (He had been misled by a flight announcement, though I suspect that he was seeing the flight departing Hong Kong for San Francisco, rather than arriving in Hong Kong from San Fran.) He got me through the Hong-Kong-to-mainland customs area, and booked a bus for us to the point where he could pick up a taxi the rest of the way.

He had set up a hotel room for us a block from where he and Mei-li live. Mei-li had worried that it wasn’t as nice as the one she had picked out; he offered the opinion — and we heartily agreed — that we’d like it better to be close, plus her idea of ‘nice’ outstripped ours by a fair margin. Susan was happy to see me, but insisted that I shower before I came to bed. By then I was so tired I wasn’t doing very well at concentrating, so I didn’t argue.

I had to deal with other issues as well. One of the primary ones was that, on the flight out of San Francisco, I dropped the boarding pass and it fell under a seat across the aisle; when I leaned over to retrieve it, stretching that far over the armrest strained some muscles around my ribs, and that caused me continuing discomfort. After the first few days in China, it had healed enough to be almost unnoticeable … and then I did something wrong and strained them all over again, and that lasted for the rest of my stay.

So, my first interactions with Amber. We’d talked on Skype, and I’ve seen many photos. She always looked tall in them … and she IS tall, she’s one of the youngest children in her class but she’s the tallest, only this turns out to be “tall for a three-year-old”. In person, she’s a little bitty thing. It turned out also that she knows more English than I expected, so apparently living with ONE English-speaking parent carries more benefit, even for a three-year-old, than I had expected.

The Yins didn’t go as all-out in their hospitality as in our first visit, but perhaps a bit more than in the second. Nonetheless, we got some good meals at restaurants, and many at their home. The father, Logan, did practically all of the cooking (which, I think, is a change from previous visits). At one point, after we’d been out to the beach (where it was cool enough that none of us wanted to go into the water, but warm enough to work up a sweat just sitting out in the sun), Mrs. Yin (Laura) took us to a seafood place where we selected the live items we wanted, and they were cooked for us on the spot … and I had Kevin (translating for me) tell Laura, “You know, this is a treat and I’m glad to have it, but I kind of think that what your husband cooks for us is better.” She agreed, and said the rest of the family feels the same; the man is genuinely that good.

Susan was enchanted with Amber, and for most of the time I was there she was talking about retiring as soon as she possibly could and moving to Shenzhen to be more involved in her granddaughter’s life. I’ve tried to soft-pedal any such notions in the past, but found myself thinking in different terms now. The fact is that I don’t like big cities; in fact, I have a positive aversion to big cities. Shenzhen definitely qualifies — the population is estimated somewhere between 12 and 20 million — but it just affects me differently. It’s clean, well-ordered, well-designed (the newer Chinese cities are built according to a PLAN, and this was a good plan), and I just plain like it. As a result, over most of the rest of my stay we went over different aspects of the possibility.

(This was supplemented by unexpected developments on other fronts. As she nears the end of her time in California, Susan had been investigating transferring back to the VA in our home state. There was a telehealth position due to open in April; it came up suddenly, however, a day or so after I arrived in Shenzhen, with an application deadline of February 14th, with Susan not due to return to the States till the 18th. She had already arranged for a friend to try to work the USA Jobs application process for her — she’s never been able to navigate it herself, having started at the VA before that horrible process became mandatory — but didn’t know if anything could be managed before the deadline passed.)

I can’t really think of anything else to add. We did things, we went places, but mostly we had lunch or dinner (or both) every day at our co-in-laws’ apartment, and spent time with them and our granddaughter. I had been worried that Amber would tire of Susan and me very quickly once it penetrated to her that we didn’t actually speak a civilized language, but her English was adequate for her to understand us and make herself understood, and she was sufficiently accustomed to having people dote on her that she welcomed two more who were inclined to do so.

Oh, one other thing: three or four days before time for me to come back, my laptop slid off the hotel room couch and hit the floor, and I couldn’t get it to operate after that. It’s in a shop being diagnosed right now (with an understanding that it may be possible only to retrieve the data, and possibly not even that much), and meanwhile I’m operating with a bare-bones Chromebook.

I’m back at ‘home’, and it feels a bit colder and lonelier after nearly two weeks with a combined family of eight. Susan took three weeks off work (I could only swing two), so she’s still there.

Life goes on.

Comments

[snogged.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you got to spend time with your family.

Hope you are feeling a bit less sore now.

[aadler]

That part’s pretty much resolved itself.

More annoyances in the meantime, however.