This Weekend

This weekend SR and I were scheduled to head up to Jinzhou in northeast for some friends' wedding. We couldn't go up there together. She went up Friday morning on one of the only direct flights of the week from Shanghai to Jinzhou; because a coworker was out of town, I had to stay and work Friday. My plan was to catch an 8pm flight to Beijing, then transfer to a midnight train to Jinzhou. I was scheduled to get to Jinzhou at 6 am Saturday, go to go to the wedding, then head back to Shanghai on a train Saturday evening. I didn't end up making it to the wedding. I made it to the airport Friday on time to catch my flight. We get on the plane, and they say we need to wait for some Australians connecting from Sydney; by 9, all the Australians are on board. Then, they say it is storming in Beijing, so we have to wait for the weather to clear. We then sit on the plane, for the next THREE HOURS. Sitting. In our seats. On the plane. Not a good start. I call up SR to chat, call up Sol, call up Orion. They aren't jealous of my situation. I know pretty quickly that I will miss my train, and try to think of how else to get to Jinzhou by 10am for the wedding. SR is a little worried about me, because I had been working till 10pm every day that week and was already pretty exhausted. And it was looking to be another long night.

I manage to unhook my legs and curl up in a couple of empty seats and slept for an hour. The plane took off at midnight, putting us in BJ after 2 am. It turns out that BJ taxi drivers don't count on many fares at the airport at 2 am, so after waiting for a ride, and then the drive across town, I get to the train station right around 4 am. There is something very peaceful and enjoyable about walking around a big city at 4 am, at least a Chinese city where you feel safe in any neighborhood. At the train station, there were dozens of people snoozing on their prepared bedroll next to their large multicolored super-duty plastic bags (David Hoffman knows the ones). Of course this was normal and understandable, but there was a weird split-second delayed reaction where I realized I was walking a few feet from large groups of people sleeping out in the elements. They would be snuggled up together under their blankets, sleeping seemingly soundly and peacefully. It felt like I was intruding somehow. I moved a few steps aware and walked a little lighter. At the ticket window, I found out that there was a train leaving for Jinzhou in the next few minutes! The only problem was that there were no seats left, much less sleepers. So I could take a standing ticket. I considered it, for about 2.5 seconds, and decided I am not that hard-core anymore. I might not have survived that train ride in the state I was in. It was at that point that I started thinking I　might not make it to the wedding.

Because China is all one time zone, in eastern Chinese, it starts getting light a little after 4 am in the summer. It is weird, 4 am should be the dead of night, but the fruit stand and the street sweepers were already starting to prepare for another day as the first streaks of light shown in the east and the guys under their blankets continued to snooze undisturbed and I wandering around the square going over my options. I figured the next best bet was a bus, so I asked a few guys where the long-distance bus station with buses leaving for Liaoning province might be. I got my answer and caught a cab. At 4:30 I was at the bus station, and found out it didn't open till 6:30. I was stuck until 6:30. The anhui couple with the steamed bun stand was just opening up then, so I sat down for a few buns and some soy milk. The bun lady asked me how much my salary was and how expensive things were in Shanghai. I paid her 5 kuai, told her to keep the change, and decided I would walk around to see what was open. By then it was full daylight, early morning daylight.

SR called me at 5:30 - she apparently hadn't slept much either - to see how I was doing. She suggested something I hadn't thought of: see if there is a plane to Jinzhou from Beijing. I don't like flying anyway, and after my experience the night before I had decided to give up flying once and for all, but I said I would look into it. I asked some of the loiterers at the train station how long the bus to Jinzhou takes - about 5 hours if no problems - and decided to call about the flight. I figured the stress of a half hour flight with a decent chance of no disasters was better than a 5 hour bus ride that would put me in Jinzhou after the wedding. but I did seriously deliberate for a good 5 minutes. There was a flight at 7:55, so I hailed a cab, now 6 am, fell asleep for a few minutes, and was at Beijing's other, less-visited airport that services smaller cities, at 6:30. Shanghai has two airports, like most big cities, but I had never been to Beijing's other airport. It was like a bus station. Small, pretty run-down, lots of crowding up to the counter to buy tickets. Well, I got my ticket, and realized I was going to be in Jinzhou by 9 am, plenty of time to change into some pants and collared shirt in a bathroom and get to the town's only Catholic church in time for the 10 am wedding. Or so I thought.

We get in the air, and were descending into Jinzhou within 45 minutes. I could see the runway, I was 100 feet above my final destination, but then the plane was pulling back up, we kept going up, back into the clouds, and I couldn't see that blessed brown, cracked runway anymore. I figured we were looping around to take another pass at it (I mean, landing a 100 ton or whatever piece of metal moving 200 miles an hour onto a slab of concrete can't be easy), but the captain announced that due to heavy fog in Jinzhou, we were being redirected to Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning about half an hour away. I could not believe my luck, but in a way, it seemed appropriate. Now I really wasn't going to make the wedding. We landed in Shenyang and waited for 2 hours for the fog to clear. Around 11:30, we headed back to Jinzhou and were able to land. I walked through the one room airport, caught a cab, went to the hotel, changed clothes, and walked over to a restaurant in the middle of the lunch after the wedding, with quite the story to tell our table.