March is my two-year anniversary in China and I as I crossed the busy road on which I first entered the city, it all came spiraling back to me like a lost vision, and before it escapes again, I would like to share with you all. I woke in darkness, making minor last minute adjustments, then set off in full for China as the moon lingered over apple orchards and the sun rose in the east: a dual blessing. My nephew’s shiny car hurtled through any of my remaining doubts, and he and his father, my brother in law who has often seen me off on other journeys or picked me up when I returned, were vibrant company—which I duly noted and appreciated, but I all I could do just then was watch the March morning on the Merritt Parkway as it dissolved into New York and eventually into New Jersey. Friendly airline employees got me sorted out in my overpacked-ness and before I knew it I was up-up-and-away over Newark skies, then over Canada, the Hudson Bay, the white arctic, then Alaska, my former home, where I sent down sky greetings to all my friends and former lovers, whether they liked it or not, then a short jolt over the Bering Sea, listening to King Sunny Ade on the headphones, across the vastness of Siberia, flying over the Chukchi Sea, the East Siberian Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk, and finally down into China, landing in Shanghai. I should’ve felt lost but felt exactly the opposite. I knew I could handle the customs and money changing and the buses and checking into the hotel, where I would spend the night and continue my journey in the morning. The force of my excitement overcame any hardship. I was a whirling planet and anyone not matching my vibration bounced off. Those spinning at my velocity easily entered. My first night in China was unremarkable, absent of any foreign land danger, but totally remarkable because I was truly here, and people stared at me as if I were a wandering polar bear, and I stared back because, why not? And if they thought I was strange, they should’ve seen themselves through my eyes on my first virgin night among them. I could read no street sign. I could read no advertisement. The letters glowed but not for me. I was totally illiterate, childlike in my helplessness, but knew enough to grin like a fool, because I believed that grinning fools are beyond harm, and time after time I have proven that right. What I ate that night I cannot recall and crashed after being awake for 24 hours. I was up early the next morning to catch my flight west and a cabbie drove me to the nearest airport. As we drove around, I happened to notice the sign for Spring Airlines, but the driver was convinced I was at the wrong airport and who was I to disagree? We drove about twenty minutes to another airport, where he let me out, all smiles, waving bye-bye. Bare in mind, I could understand absolutely nothing. When I showed my ticket, everyone jabbered at me—chingchulwaaluh, chowah—or something to that effect. I swiveled my head around like a prairie dog sensing disaster. A uniformed porter led me back out to the taxi stand, pointed at a cab and washed his hands of me. Then, like Moses parting the seas of my overstimulation, an ordinary angel passing by snatched the ticket out of my hand, scrutinized it, waved a taxi over, barked out orders, ushered me into the cab, and before I could thank him, we were off, back towards the—yeah, you guessed it, the first airport. The giant clock of missed flights was ticking. We drove on elevated highways pungent with exhaust vapors, the sky a washed out Shanghai gray, maneuvering our way through packs of speeding cars and trucks like animals in Africa rushing towards the waters on the Okavango Delta, while in my mind I was yipping like mournful hyena. Then we were there. I went to pay him with a twenty-dollar bill, having already spent all my Chinese Yuan, but he wouldn’t take it. I left my luggage in the cab and rushed inside the terminal but no one would take the money and the exchange was not yet open. I begged, I pleaded in un-understandable English, the clock ticking, but everyone looked at the money as if it would give them a rash. I went back outside and stood in front of the doors, forlornly holding my diseased twenty up to the passersby, avoiding the look of my cabbie impatiently waiting and not very happy about it. I was about to surrender, then, a voice, “Need change?” I gaped. The smiling Chinese man went on, speaking great English. “Today’s rate is one dollar equals six point two Yuan, so,” . . . he then carefully counted the Chinese bills and offered them to me. I shook my head to make sure he was real, snatched the money and bowed, as if saying we are not worthy. That man will never know how grateful I was. I paid the cabbie and raced toward my flight. I made the check-in but there was another problem. With my luggage on the scale, I was given a receipt, written in Chinese that I had no clue as to what it was. I wasn’t allowed to go further. In my mind I saw my flight taking off. What? Jesus Christ, what!? Everyone was smiling, pointing at my luggage. Then, someone held up money. They wanted money. It seems my baggage was overweight. I was never told the weight limit was less than U.S. airlines. The bill was over 600 Yuan. I had no more Chinese money. I held up a $100 bill and they had no problem taking it. Suddenly, my money was disease free. At the security check-in, they took away the two bottles of contact lens solution I had brought in case I couldn’t find them in China, which I now realize was silly, but at the time it just added to the frustration of just getting there, and racing onward, I did make my flight, climbing up the ladder on the tarmac where inside I was the only foreigner aboard and duly stared at, but fastened myself in at a window seat I paid extra for, and then we were off, rising up into the skies over China. All during the flight, there were repetitious announcements. Normally, like on Chinese trains, I can usually just tune them out. But these were first announced in Chinese, and then repeated in English. The voice doing the English translations was hauntingly familiar. Where had I heard that voice? Then it hit me. It was Gary Busey, the actor. I had overcome so much. Jet-lagged and culture stunned, yet here I was, locked inside a flying tube with strangers, forced to listen to Gary Busey droning on and on, repeating all those mundane airline instructions about how to use your seatbelt and how throwing up on your seatmate is strictly forbidden, and after the eighth time I just started laughing hysterically, spooking all the Chinese passengers around me who were probably convinced that the pale-faced laowei had evidently lost his mind, while Gary informed me that you can’t open aircraft windows and enthusiastically thanked me for choosing Spring Airlines, thirty-five thousand feet in the air above mainland China. That was just the beginning of the weirdness, and the wonder that is, China . . .
2 Comments
Andy Monaco
3/16/2014 02:21:43 am
Ah, the parts I assumed but had not heard; an exciting remembrance on your second anniversary... akin to my story of deciding to move to San Francisco in 1970. I knew no one and left JFK , literally on a wing and a prayer. I asked a cab driver in SF where a good place to live was; he told me that a lot of people liked Sausalito... I wound up renting a 2 bed. on Bridgeway (Rt. 1) overlooking the Bay and Alcatraz and The Trident (across the street) and paid 4 months rent in advance ($175./mo.). I stayed there until everyone in the building decided to move to Hawaii (It was $100. one way)...experienced one earthquake, a herring run in the bay, with all of the local Asians netting the spawning herring into buckets, becoming a bus boy at 'The Trident', serving coffee and breakfast to Steven Stills, Carlos Santana, Joni Mitchell, but the rules were that I was not permitted to make eye contact with any of the patrons. The signs in the city said, 'HIRING: (no longhairs). I tied my hair back and got a job selling hot dogs in a shop; seven different kinds and all I could eat. As I was a vegetarian, I would eat buns with sauerkraut and onions and mustard and relish... so long ago that it seems like it was someone else's memories... keep your stories close to you my friend and thank you for the sharing....
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Mary
3/20/2014 05:51:22 am
What an adventure you are a brave soul going into the unknown by yourself and not speaking or reading a word of Chinese. I give you a lot of credit. That seems so long ago as you have come such a long way in 2 years. It is incredible!! I never heard those beginning stories and I think I would have cried and turned around and went home. Oh, and by the way don't stride.lol
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