Fuddland
The China Eastern Airlines flight from London to was surprisingly empty; not only did I have two seats to myself, but if I’d wanted to, I could have moved into the middle of the ‘plane and stretched out across five empty seats for a sleep. [It was only the fear that the cabin crew would tightly strap all five seatbelts around my prone form that prevented me from doing so.] Instead, I sampled several cans of TsingTao beer and read or snoozed throughout the eleven-hour journey.
Airport was not as large or chaotic as I imagined it would be; I could walk from one end to the other in about five minutes (of course it’s possible I was in only one of fifty different terminals). Thanks to bilingual signs I quickly located the China Eastern Airlines desks and joined a “General Check-in” queue to deposit my bags for the connecting flight to . I handed my ticket over to the lady at the counter and, for the first time since arriving in the country, I was spoken to in Chinese. The woman looked at my blank expression and tried to repeat what she had said, but in English: “Backside,” she said, gesturing to the opposite side of the bank of desks. Apparently I was queueing on the wrong side, and so the first thing anyone said to me in Chinese in China translated as “backside”. Wonderful.
Taking my chance with more familiar technology rather than having to figure out how to use one of the space-age-like videoscreen public telephones, I opened up my laptop and, much to my relief, found an open wireless network to which I could connect. I sent a couple of “Ha! I’m in and you’re not messages!” to my friends and family as well as emailing the headmaster of the school, to let him know that everything was on schedule and he should come and meet me at at our previously-agreed time that night. In closing I mentioned that he could carry a sign so that I know how to recognise him — in his reply he said not to worry, he would know me. Once I boarded the flight, I realised how: I was the only non-Chinese person aboard the jam-packed plane.
The two-hour flight passed quickly and the only thing of note was a rather heated argument between a mother and a man sitting in front of her child — the entire plane stared on as they shouted louder and louder about something or other [except for me of course, I’m far too polite to stare and merely glanced out of the corner of my eye every now and then]. Once we had landed my bags arrived quickly on the conveyor belt and, sure enough, the headmaster came straight up to me after I walked through the arrivals gate and directed me to his waiting taxi back to City.
