An hour after I had kissed my lovely, enlarging wife goodbye and hopped into the crew van headed for the airport I was sitting in that same van waiting to enter a security checkpoint which allowed access onto the field. In front of us was a string of other vehicles, carrying cargo bound for domestic locations and airport workers. I had my head down reading something rather uninteresting when I felt like I was getting car sick, which was quite puzzling due to the fact we were stationary. My head started whirling and I wondered whether my wife, who’s known for doing such malicious acts, had drugged me again to simply take advantage of me. Sometimes it’s difficult being absolutely irresistible, even when one is married.
So anyway, as I sat there pondering whether or not I’d have to call in sick to work because of my wife’s devious ways, I happened to notice that the vehicles in front of us were swaying back and forth slowly. “Ah, it’s really windy!” I thought…”funny that the leaves aren’t blowing though…hmm”. When the people in the nearby building started pouring out in throngs, many screaming, which I mistook for singing (trust me, it’s easy to mistake the two in China) I really began to wonder what was going on. Then it sank in, the fog lifted and I realized what was happening. “Dude” I said to Spoon (another foreign pilot here) “we’re having an earthquake!”. And then we both stared dumfounded outside as the earth rocked around and high vehicles neared tipping.
We both hopped out of the van with another foreign pilot, Bruce, and marveled at the dizzying experience. Remember the first time you smoked a cigarette or chewed tobacco and your head was swimming around and the dizziness almost left you on the edge of nauseous vertigo? Surely you do if you swallowed the chewing tobacco! I stood for a moment hoping my inner ear would catch up and realized I wasn’t alone in this feeling as I noticed many Chinese workers around me holding their heads as if to stabilize their swaying noggins.
I looked around and got a bit nervous when I noticed the nearby electrical lines and their supports swaying dangerously, causing me to back down the road a bit to remain clear of any potential electrocution, a form of demise that doesn’t appeal to me (though none of them really do I guess).
High above us, looming over the field sat, or rather swung like a large wet noodle, the Air Traffic Control Tower, making me really, really, really glad that I was safely on the ground having only to battle with my own strange vertigo and not more dangerous realities. The lower doors of the airport terminal, and jet-ways swung open around this time and thousands of Chinese passenger poured onto the field, creating quite a spectacle to behold. The tarmac, usually only inhabited by aircraft, baggage carts, fuel trucks and the occasional policeman riding an antiquated bicycle now resembled a huge ant colony, with little black haired Han Chinese swarming everywhere. Not something you see every day.
I immediately tried calling Elizabeth to make sure she was ok, only to find all the phone networks were out of service. I sent failed text message after failed text message to her until they started to go thru, only to leave me more nervous when she didn’t respond. Thankfully a mutual friend who lives next door to our apartment had a phone that was working and relayed, after an hour of nervous uncertainty, that everyone was fine.
The earthquake happened in Sichuan province, one south of Shaanxi, where we live. As I’m sure everyone is aware of now it was quite powerful, measuring around 7.8 on Mr. Richter’s lovely scale. Current estimates place the death toll at around 12,000, but judging from the construction I’ve seen in the older apartment buildings around where we reside, I fear that number will grow significantly in the days to come. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on the matter I can’t help but guessing that the building codes here are just a bit lacking when compared to those in other seismically active areas elsewhere in the ‘modern world’. The news agencies on CCTV are almost comical in their coverage of the story, as they replay the same footage over and over again, with differing musical soundtracks. They absolutely love this technique, one which I came to despair this past winter when an ice storm shut down this nation. That time, and surely again in a few weeks, the government hosted a relief workers awards show, with musical numbers, dancing, singing and men in military uniforms waving snow shovels around rhythmically. Watch out Broadway, Chinese natural disasters are the up and coming theatrical breakthrough. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not laughing at this catastrophe, as I do find it terrible. My heart goes out to all those in Sichuan, where we’d been just 2 weeks ago. The corniness of the government controlled Chinese media just gets me sometimes.
That night, last night, our ground floor apartment turned into the local foreigner hostel, housing around 10 others who weren’t allowed to enter their high rises as of yet. While I sat in a hotel room in Shenzhen, awaiting a flight to Qingdao for a simulator check, Elizabeth managed Hotel Archambault charging fantastic rates that will surely help us reach our retirement goals quickly.
Long story short: We got rattled, but we’re all fine.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Catch up
Wow, I feel like I need to write something profound and incredibly insightful. I've been on braindead autopilot for the past month or so, not having much motivation to write or take pictures or a lot of other things. Why? I dunno...maybe the suspended heavy metal particulates in the air held down at my lung level by constant temperature inversions has finally done the trick...I'm slowly becoming retarded. Or maybe I was stressed about other things. Toss up I think.
We went to New Zealand for a friend's wedding outside of Wellington. The trip, and the wedding were great. I even managed to work in a days worth of fly-fishing on the day of the wedding with an old man who felt bad for me. This pity was great. We flew into Wellington on Day 1, spent 2-3 days in the Levin-Wellington area, and then headed for the South Island. We underestimated the size of the island however, and spent more time driving then we had initially planned on. I should have expected this, coming from Colorado where a town could be within spitting distance but the drive thru the various mountain passes takes hours. On the South Island we made our way along its North Shore and to the wild West coast and its amazing scenery. Spending a couple days making our way down we also took a heli-hike up Fox Glacier before heading down to the island's extreme southwest corner and its amazing Fiordland National Park. We did a two day kayaking trip thru the impressive fiords which Elizabeth decided she would never do again while pregnant, and she claims I'm lucky to still be alive for convincing her to do it. After the kayaking we made our way back up to Queenstown for some wine tasting (well I did) and some bungee jumping (again, I did... pregnancy limits one's ability to drink and jump off high ledges...may be an evolutionary survival trick, who can tell?). So thats the extreme short hand version of our 1st and surely not last New Zealand experience. It was fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone and their Grandmothers. It was just that good.
I'll write more soon, as its been an interesting couple of weeks.
Jesse
We went to New Zealand for a friend's wedding outside of Wellington. The trip, and the wedding were great. I even managed to work in a days worth of fly-fishing on the day of the wedding with an old man who felt bad for me. This pity was great. We flew into Wellington on Day 1, spent 2-3 days in the Levin-Wellington area, and then headed for the South Island. We underestimated the size of the island however, and spent more time driving then we had initially planned on. I should have expected this, coming from Colorado where a town could be within spitting distance but the drive thru the various mountain passes takes hours. On the South Island we made our way along its North Shore and to the wild West coast and its amazing scenery. Spending a couple days making our way down we also took a heli-hike up Fox Glacier before heading down to the island's extreme southwest corner and its amazing Fiordland National Park. We did a two day kayaking trip thru the impressive fiords which Elizabeth decided she would never do again while pregnant, and she claims I'm lucky to still be alive for convincing her to do it. After the kayaking we made our way back up to Queenstown for some wine tasting (well I did) and some bungee jumping (again, I did... pregnancy limits one's ability to drink and jump off high ledges...may be an evolutionary survival trick, who can tell?). So thats the extreme short hand version of our 1st and surely not last New Zealand experience. It was fantastic and I would highly recommend it to anyone and their Grandmothers. It was just that good.
I'll write more soon, as its been an interesting couple of weeks.
Jesse
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
चिनेसे न्यू एअर
It was sometime after we had crashed the first time, yet before the second.
We were flying from Tianjin, an industrial city just outside of Beijing, to Taiyuan, a central Chinese city known for among other things, its famous vinegar and its hideous statue of a seemingly intoxicated horse galloping thru space with tongue flailing wildly outside its teeth which nicely greets you at a major crossroads. I had given the previous copilot my “here’s how I do not want you to land” speech, one which I have been working on refining lately, as it hadn’t seemed to hold too much credence amongst the First Officers here. I think I was working on how to adapt it to the FO sitting beside me then, Gavin (self given English name), when something outside the window caught my eye.
Ok close your eyes and imagine this:
Great, now that you’ve opened your eyes again you’ve realized that closing your eyes and reading doesn’t work too well. So let’s try this again. Imagine a late June evening in the Eastern United States. Fireflies are at their hormonal peak and are flashing away everywhere frantically, each in its own, random yet rhythmic Morse code. You are at a large field on a cool June evening, so there’s a bit of mist rising as the air cools near its dew point. Yet you’re not actually standing at the field, you are hovering about 500 feet above it, watching through the mist, a completely random, completely silent, orchestra of light bursts. Now go up about another 25,000 feet and imagine that this orchestra is being played out by thousands and thousands of other little buggers for as far as you can see. What do you have? Day 4 or 5 of Chinese New Year…and still going strong. Oh, and for authenticity sake, each of these little fire flies, whenever it gives off its burst of light, lets out a huge burst of noxious, toxic smoke, pleasantly laden with nitric oxide, sulfur oxide, heavy metals, and huge amounts of ozone. Oh, and most of these fire flies are no longer allowed to enter the United States because of among other things, the discovery of some radioactive isotopes in many of them that are born in China. But hey, it’s pretty, right?
So, back to inside the cockpit. I sat there, face pressed against the large side window, staring down, through the mist (or more accurately, toxic death clouds—bit pessimistic, eh?) at one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. For as far as I could possibly see stretched an endless ocean of mute explosions…some colorful, some simply white bursts, but all endless in their frequency. As we flew over the metropolitan area surrounding Tianjin, a zone with a population in excess of 10 million, it appeared that every resident and their visiting relatives were out there, intent on lighting the sky up with a ferocity previously only known to Baghdad dwellers. The clouds thickened and we crossed over the mountainous area west of the Tianjin before crashing again in Taiyuan. Good times.
A few evenings before the firefly episode we had experienced the real Chinese New Year. My ears are still ringing and my stomach still gurgles at the thought of the drinking contests, three weeks afterwards. It was insane. We began the night at a hotel which is run by the Chinese version of the FAA, and were treated to gifts and a typical bizarre assortment of edible experiences including sweet fried snake, and my favorite, huge cubes of pure pork blubber with pepper. There is nothing quite like gelatinous blobs of peppered pig fat to go with an ice cold beer and shots of rice moonshine. After dinner we migrated down the street to another large, boisterous and smoky restaurant where the First Officers and mechanics awaited. It was here that the binge drinking truly began.
Unfortunately for many who dislike drinking in gargantuan proportions, myself included, the Chinese at festivities cannot just casually drink together with festive mellowness. If one comes to you and says hello, makes a toast and ‘cheers’ you, you are expected to raise the bottom of your bottle towards the ceiling and finish the remainder of whatever you are drinking right there on the spot. This is fine until you realize that standing behind First Officer Bill (whose real name is Wang Chai) is a line of 11 other copilots you’ve flown with (all with comical English names. My favorite being one whose name was…ummm….something like Zonqing Xailu Rong, but who then states after introducing himself “You can call me Bob.”) in the past month, all waiting their chance to clink glasses or bottles. After a few of these, and some scornful (but life saving!) glances from Elizabeth, I had to politely bow out from all of the other goodwill wishes coming my way, but not before getting to see one copilot completely empty his stomach contents, projectile like, immediately in front of us. He apologized, and then in true Chinese style, so as not to lose face, picked up another full beer and slammed it while we stood holding our noses in horror. He has ironically become one of my best copilots. Thankfully we don’t binge drink in the cockpit.
After the alcoholic mayhem had taken its toll on my cognitive functions I was hustled out to an awaiting taxi by Elizabeth and we headed home with a few other friends. When we arrived back home I passed out almost immediately, with only a few bed-spins, and missed the bombardment that took place that night. Lucky for me, the fireworks fervor is maintained throughout the 14 day celebration, and each night was of amazing intensity. Ever wondered what it sounded like landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944? Come to China after the lunar New Year and you’ll find out.
Check out this link to a video shot by our neighbor and fellow expat pilot for an idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be8RBCoC4po
We were flying from Tianjin, an industrial city just outside of Beijing, to Taiyuan, a central Chinese city known for among other things, its famous vinegar and its hideous statue of a seemingly intoxicated horse galloping thru space with tongue flailing wildly outside its teeth which nicely greets you at a major crossroads. I had given the previous copilot my “here’s how I do not want you to land” speech, one which I have been working on refining lately, as it hadn’t seemed to hold too much credence amongst the First Officers here. I think I was working on how to adapt it to the FO sitting beside me then, Gavin (self given English name), when something outside the window caught my eye.
Ok close your eyes and imagine this:
Great, now that you’ve opened your eyes again you’ve realized that closing your eyes and reading doesn’t work too well. So let’s try this again. Imagine a late June evening in the Eastern United States. Fireflies are at their hormonal peak and are flashing away everywhere frantically, each in its own, random yet rhythmic Morse code. You are at a large field on a cool June evening, so there’s a bit of mist rising as the air cools near its dew point. Yet you’re not actually standing at the field, you are hovering about 500 feet above it, watching through the mist, a completely random, completely silent, orchestra of light bursts. Now go up about another 25,000 feet and imagine that this orchestra is being played out by thousands and thousands of other little buggers for as far as you can see. What do you have? Day 4 or 5 of Chinese New Year…and still going strong. Oh, and for authenticity sake, each of these little fire flies, whenever it gives off its burst of light, lets out a huge burst of noxious, toxic smoke, pleasantly laden with nitric oxide, sulfur oxide, heavy metals, and huge amounts of ozone. Oh, and most of these fire flies are no longer allowed to enter the United States because of among other things, the discovery of some radioactive isotopes in many of them that are born in China. But hey, it’s pretty, right?
So, back to inside the cockpit. I sat there, face pressed against the large side window, staring down, through the mist (or more accurately, toxic death clouds—bit pessimistic, eh?) at one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. For as far as I could possibly see stretched an endless ocean of mute explosions…some colorful, some simply white bursts, but all endless in their frequency. As we flew over the metropolitan area surrounding Tianjin, a zone with a population in excess of 10 million, it appeared that every resident and their visiting relatives were out there, intent on lighting the sky up with a ferocity previously only known to Baghdad dwellers. The clouds thickened and we crossed over the mountainous area west of the Tianjin before crashing again in Taiyuan. Good times.
A few evenings before the firefly episode we had experienced the real Chinese New Year. My ears are still ringing and my stomach still gurgles at the thought of the drinking contests, three weeks afterwards. It was insane. We began the night at a hotel which is run by the Chinese version of the FAA, and were treated to gifts and a typical bizarre assortment of edible experiences including sweet fried snake, and my favorite, huge cubes of pure pork blubber with pepper. There is nothing quite like gelatinous blobs of peppered pig fat to go with an ice cold beer and shots of rice moonshine. After dinner we migrated down the street to another large, boisterous and smoky restaurant where the First Officers and mechanics awaited. It was here that the binge drinking truly began.
Unfortunately for many who dislike drinking in gargantuan proportions, myself included, the Chinese at festivities cannot just casually drink together with festive mellowness. If one comes to you and says hello, makes a toast and ‘cheers’ you, you are expected to raise the bottom of your bottle towards the ceiling and finish the remainder of whatever you are drinking right there on the spot. This is fine until you realize that standing behind First Officer Bill (whose real name is Wang Chai) is a line of 11 other copilots you’ve flown with (all with comical English names. My favorite being one whose name was…ummm….something like Zonqing Xailu Rong, but who then states after introducing himself “You can call me Bob.”) in the past month, all waiting their chance to clink glasses or bottles. After a few of these, and some scornful (but life saving!) glances from Elizabeth, I had to politely bow out from all of the other goodwill wishes coming my way, but not before getting to see one copilot completely empty his stomach contents, projectile like, immediately in front of us. He apologized, and then in true Chinese style, so as not to lose face, picked up another full beer and slammed it while we stood holding our noses in horror. He has ironically become one of my best copilots. Thankfully we don’t binge drink in the cockpit.
After the alcoholic mayhem had taken its toll on my cognitive functions I was hustled out to an awaiting taxi by Elizabeth and we headed home with a few other friends. When we arrived back home I passed out almost immediately, with only a few bed-spins, and missed the bombardment that took place that night. Lucky for me, the fireworks fervor is maintained throughout the 14 day celebration, and each night was of amazing intensity. Ever wondered what it sounded like landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944? Come to China after the lunar New Year and you’ll find out.
Check out this link to a video shot by our neighbor and fellow expat pilot for an idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be8RBCoC4po
Monday, February 11, 2008
Flying for prizes
The last time I flew a CRJ was May of 2006. It was from Raleigh-Durham, N.C. to Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and as I exited the aircraft and set out to catch another that would take me home to Colorado, I think I turned and flicked the airplane the bird. My anger, or actually bitter relief at that very point, had little to do with the airplane itself, but more to do with the evil empire which owned the aircraft, my previous employer. I would like to think that there exist few companies out there who treat their employees so poorly, for surely the world would be a better place without throngs of miserable, exhausted and abused workers. I thereafter packed up my house, moved to Africa, and found more personal, inner serenity in a war torn, backwards faux state (that is currently under siege-again) than I did during my previous 5 year tenure within our national boundaries. That in itself speaks volumes I think.
Twenty something months later I’m back flying this aircraft that was the nail in the coffin of my decision to quit that previous job. Ironically, the new company I work for is a joint venture between two nations and two airlines, with one of the parties being my past paycheck issuing nemesis. Yet it couldn’t be farther from that previous abusive job that would’ve made a great Stockholm Syndrome case study. Every morning a van arrives to pick me up early, right at the entrance of our apartment complex. It takes me and the rest of the crew for a lavish, early morning Chinese feast before our day begins. It did take me some time to come around to the a.m. banquet, my stomach turning the first few times I smelled pickled beef with cabbage at 0630,then again, there may be no appropriate time for such a dish. There is no such thing as breakfast food here. No waffles, nor bacon. No eggs Benedict or breakfast burritos. Only steamed broccoli, spicy noodles, beef dishes, chicken dishes, pork dishes, fried eggs, steamed buns, dumplings, hot milk and a vast assortment of other dishes one rarely considers ordering when perusing the neighborhood Chinese take-away menu. Yet you are expected to eat, to gorge in fact, as it is considered unsafe to fly if you have an empty stomach.
After breakfast and a trip to the dispatch office to retrieve and review paperwork, we are taken to the airplane, already warmed and inspected. The fueler stands waiting patiently in the stinging cold for your order and what looks like a herd of half bears half Chinese Paul Bunyan wannabees circle the airplane repeatedly scanning for defects. They wear thick, poofy, dark leather jumpsuits which have bear fur hats and collars, and clumsy looking arctic boots. If China had an Iditarod these guys would be suited and ready to mush.
Its somewhere in this timeframe of completing cockpit inspections and admiring the busy, shaved ursus asianas wobbling about that the flight attendant usually approaches and asks:
“Cup-tin, what would you like when we arrive in Tianjin?”
The first time I heard the question I wasn’t sure how to respond. I sat staring smiling and shrugged my shoulders, hoping she’d pick up on the international signal for “ I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.” Thankfully she did.
“Milk, chocolate, rice, beef, chicken, gum, soap..ah yes…here…you need shampoo!”
“Ok…not sure what you’re implying, but sure, I’ll take the shampoo. Why am I taking the shampoo again?”
I received the tried and trusted international signal right back.
Sure enough, upon landing in Tianjin an army of little Han Chinese women overflow into the aircraft aiming to clean, yet one comes looking like a miniature, perverse version of Santa Claus in a hodge podge of raggedy, coal dust colored clothes. She unloads the sack of presents into the center aisle whereupon the flight attendant quickly divvies up the booty into personal sub piles. Before the passengers arrive the bag containing a bottle of Pantene ProV shampoo finds its way into my hands, along with a bag of individually wrapped, jerkied beef nuggets…my favorite.
Since that inaugural day of flying for prizes I have both remained utterly confused and come to some miniscule understandings. Every day I am asked “what would you like from XYZ?” and after I hear my choices I usually pick chocolate. However when we arrive at the airport where I m supposed to be given my cocoa flavored prize, I am most often given a bag of something completely different along with the explanation of “Sorry…no chocolate today in XYZ!” In my random bags of concession prizes I have won more beef nuggets, yak meat, ass meat (yes, that is correct), do-it-yourself nasty 4 rice porridge packages, gum, large dried flowers that strengthen my loins, chocolate milk, gallons of cooking oil, and skin whitening of body moisturizer. Oh, and a whole smoked, blue chicken complete with head, beak and feet.
For a while it was great fun coming home at night to my beautiful wife and proudly proclaiming that while she’d been lazily learning the hardest language on earth, I had been actively working to win great quantities of ass meat. If there was ever a way to instill guilt in a nonworking spouse this is it. Yet when the piles of unopened, unused Chinese, edible oddities began to rise, we felt guilty about our stockpile. Certainly there were starving kids in Ethiopia who would kill for an edible loin strengthening weed that when taken into one’s mouth tasted of raw, wholesome and anthrax laden dirt! Surely there were limbless beggars dragging their way thru the streets of Delhi’s ghettos who’d give anything but to taste the mouth watering goodness of an individually wrapped Yak nugget the size of a peanut. Surely I’m going to hell for this one.
It was when I asked a Chinese friend “do people actually eat this shit????” and heard his response of “YES! Most of this is a delicacy in China” that I understood what we must do with my treasure at home. We quickly consulted Google Earth, found an uninhabited island in the South Pacific and then proceeded to draw up a map, complete with skulls, crossbones and swimming serpentine monsters with forked tongues, and then placed a large X on our island. We were going to cache the supplies until the Dollar-Yuan exchange rates rose exponentially again in 2060, then make out like bandits on the lucrative luxury food trade. Yet upon examination of ticket prices on Expedia.com we decided against the burying of our ass meat and rice porridge stashes and simply decided to divide up all of the random goods into equal sized bags and give them to homeless families living in the streets of Xi’an.
Now when I fly and am queried with my daily prize selection I pick something I know will be nutritious and good for someone who needs it more than I do. We also aim to collect goods to donate to the local orphanage and homeless shelter, as well as to a local agency (run by an American) that goes to remote, impoverished villages in the Shaanxi province and delivers much needed food and medicine.
I can see our philanthropy at work now:
The scene:
A doctor sits at a table in the middle of a sunny, yet frigid cold town center, flanked by two nurses and a large box of medicine and supplies. A tired and sullen crowd of peasant Chinese workers shuttles single file to him confiding their ailments and receiving free medications and food in return. Hope is in the air. True human goodwill is beginning to energize the crowd out of their despair. An old man reaches the desk and whispers his complaint of hip problems and incessant hunger. The doctor thinks not for a second, turns to the box of medicines and goods and removes two packages, handing them slowly to the man while vocalizing the appropriate actions required.
“Eat this flower. It tastes like horseshit but your loins will never be stronger. Ignore the dirt that may still be lodged within its pedals…tis roughage. Then it this meat, after of course you have removed the 3 layers of wrappers. Nothing will nourish your ancient bones like little nuggets of donkey’s hindquarters. Go old man, go and be well.”
As far as I can tell, I may be facing eternal damnation for this one.
Twenty something months later I’m back flying this aircraft that was the nail in the coffin of my decision to quit that previous job. Ironically, the new company I work for is a joint venture between two nations and two airlines, with one of the parties being my past paycheck issuing nemesis. Yet it couldn’t be farther from that previous abusive job that would’ve made a great Stockholm Syndrome case study. Every morning a van arrives to pick me up early, right at the entrance of our apartment complex. It takes me and the rest of the crew for a lavish, early morning Chinese feast before our day begins. It did take me some time to come around to the a.m. banquet, my stomach turning the first few times I smelled pickled beef with cabbage at 0630,then again, there may be no appropriate time for such a dish. There is no such thing as breakfast food here. No waffles, nor bacon. No eggs Benedict or breakfast burritos. Only steamed broccoli, spicy noodles, beef dishes, chicken dishes, pork dishes, fried eggs, steamed buns, dumplings, hot milk and a vast assortment of other dishes one rarely considers ordering when perusing the neighborhood Chinese take-away menu. Yet you are expected to eat, to gorge in fact, as it is considered unsafe to fly if you have an empty stomach.
After breakfast and a trip to the dispatch office to retrieve and review paperwork, we are taken to the airplane, already warmed and inspected. The fueler stands waiting patiently in the stinging cold for your order and what looks like a herd of half bears half Chinese Paul Bunyan wannabees circle the airplane repeatedly scanning for defects. They wear thick, poofy, dark leather jumpsuits which have bear fur hats and collars, and clumsy looking arctic boots. If China had an Iditarod these guys would be suited and ready to mush.
Its somewhere in this timeframe of completing cockpit inspections and admiring the busy, shaved ursus asianas wobbling about that the flight attendant usually approaches and asks:
“Cup-tin, what would you like when we arrive in Tianjin?”
The first time I heard the question I wasn’t sure how to respond. I sat staring smiling and shrugged my shoulders, hoping she’d pick up on the international signal for “ I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.” Thankfully she did.
“Milk, chocolate, rice, beef, chicken, gum, soap..ah yes…here…you need shampoo!”
“Ok…not sure what you’re implying, but sure, I’ll take the shampoo. Why am I taking the shampoo again?”
I received the tried and trusted international signal right back.
Sure enough, upon landing in Tianjin an army of little Han Chinese women overflow into the aircraft aiming to clean, yet one comes looking like a miniature, perverse version of Santa Claus in a hodge podge of raggedy, coal dust colored clothes. She unloads the sack of presents into the center aisle whereupon the flight attendant quickly divvies up the booty into personal sub piles. Before the passengers arrive the bag containing a bottle of Pantene ProV shampoo finds its way into my hands, along with a bag of individually wrapped, jerkied beef nuggets…my favorite.
Since that inaugural day of flying for prizes I have both remained utterly confused and come to some miniscule understandings. Every day I am asked “what would you like from XYZ?” and after I hear my choices I usually pick chocolate. However when we arrive at the airport where I m supposed to be given my cocoa flavored prize, I am most often given a bag of something completely different along with the explanation of “Sorry…no chocolate today in XYZ!” In my random bags of concession prizes I have won more beef nuggets, yak meat, ass meat (yes, that is correct), do-it-yourself nasty 4 rice porridge packages, gum, large dried flowers that strengthen my loins, chocolate milk, gallons of cooking oil, and skin whitening of body moisturizer. Oh, and a whole smoked, blue chicken complete with head, beak and feet.
For a while it was great fun coming home at night to my beautiful wife and proudly proclaiming that while she’d been lazily learning the hardest language on earth, I had been actively working to win great quantities of ass meat. If there was ever a way to instill guilt in a nonworking spouse this is it. Yet when the piles of unopened, unused Chinese, edible oddities began to rise, we felt guilty about our stockpile. Certainly there were starving kids in Ethiopia who would kill for an edible loin strengthening weed that when taken into one’s mouth tasted of raw, wholesome and anthrax laden dirt! Surely there were limbless beggars dragging their way thru the streets of Delhi’s ghettos who’d give anything but to taste the mouth watering goodness of an individually wrapped Yak nugget the size of a peanut. Surely I’m going to hell for this one.
It was when I asked a Chinese friend “do people actually eat this shit????” and heard his response of “YES! Most of this is a delicacy in China” that I understood what we must do with my treasure at home. We quickly consulted Google Earth, found an uninhabited island in the South Pacific and then proceeded to draw up a map, complete with skulls, crossbones and swimming serpentine monsters with forked tongues, and then placed a large X on our island. We were going to cache the supplies until the Dollar-Yuan exchange rates rose exponentially again in 2060, then make out like bandits on the lucrative luxury food trade. Yet upon examination of ticket prices on Expedia.com we decided against the burying of our ass meat and rice porridge stashes and simply decided to divide up all of the random goods into equal sized bags and give them to homeless families living in the streets of Xi’an.
Now when I fly and am queried with my daily prize selection I pick something I know will be nutritious and good for someone who needs it more than I do. We also aim to collect goods to donate to the local orphanage and homeless shelter, as well as to a local agency (run by an American) that goes to remote, impoverished villages in the Shaanxi province and delivers much needed food and medicine.
I can see our philanthropy at work now:
The scene:
A doctor sits at a table in the middle of a sunny, yet frigid cold town center, flanked by two nurses and a large box of medicine and supplies. A tired and sullen crowd of peasant Chinese workers shuttles single file to him confiding their ailments and receiving free medications and food in return. Hope is in the air. True human goodwill is beginning to energize the crowd out of their despair. An old man reaches the desk and whispers his complaint of hip problems and incessant hunger. The doctor thinks not for a second, turns to the box of medicines and goods and removes two packages, handing them slowly to the man while vocalizing the appropriate actions required.
“Eat this flower. It tastes like horseshit but your loins will never be stronger. Ignore the dirt that may still be lodged within its pedals…tis roughage. Then it this meat, after of course you have removed the 3 layers of wrappers. Nothing will nourish your ancient bones like little nuggets of donkey’s hindquarters. Go old man, go and be well.”
As far as I can tell, I may be facing eternal damnation for this one.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Made In China
January 9th, 2008
“Relax, we took the test already” she said.
Sixty days. We celebrated our 60 day anniversary of landing on communist soil January 3rd by heading to Hong Kong, a strangely free (only because it makes money—lots of money) collection of islands and swamps to revalidate our Visas. Every 2 months we must leave the main motherland and head for either another country altogether or a self governing, self administrating area, which there are only 2 of in/out of this nation, Hong Kong and Macau. It is quite confusing though, because Hong Kong and Macau are considered SAR’s, or Special Administrative Regions, and are left to governing themselves, yet there are a few more Self Autonomous Regions as well, also SAR’s, who are clearly not independent. These other SAR’s feel the lovely effects of Chinese infrastructure development, no existing zoning rules for development, poorly managed tourism and horrible pollution standards. Tibet and Xinjiang, are the two ‘other’ SARs, the latter being a province larger than the State of Alaska. And like Alaska to Washington Republicans and oil mongers, Xinjiang is highly prized by those in Beijing for its vast oil reserves.
Anyway…
Another lovely night in the incredibly personality-less and young city of Shenzhen left us with sore backs after sleeping on hardened slabs touted as beds. About 25 years ago, in preparation for the Hong Kong handover, and also to reap some of the then present benefits of the close neighboring British colony, the Chinese government decided to build a city where previously only fishing villages existed. They classified it as another S-acronymed entity, this time a Special Economic Zone, and set about bulldozing fill into the swamps bordering the Hong Kong territories, and raising uniformly ugly high rise apartment buildings to house their future armies of workers. Kiss green hills sloping down to the South China Sea’s lapping waves goodbye, and say hello to another beehive belching noxious, choking exhaust fumes and bordered by garbage laden beaches. In the course of 25 years, Shenzhen has grown from 310,000 indigenous fisherman to nearly 10 million Han Chinese workers. Puts Las Vegas and Phoenix, those equally bizarre, bulging cities in nowhere, to shame. I make it sound so lovely, don’t I?
We took the early morning ferry over to Honk Kong from Shenzhen arriving at the Star Ferry Terminal around 10am. After carting our luggage thru the subway and finding our hotel on the north end of Hong Kong Island, we set out to explore. IN our minds, the first thing we wanted to find was comfort food to take home and bookstores with English print books. Elizabeth is what I would consider a book junkie, she starts to quiver and drool if without a new book for over 2 days, which happens quite regularly seeing that she reads a 500 page novel in about 3 days. We succeeded in finding both macaroni and cheese and trashy novellas within the first few hours and then set our sights on finding good Pad Thai, one of our favorite delicatessens.
Over the next few days we explored the city and one of the outer islands, Lamma. Unfortunately, due to extremely false advertising, creating an extremely saddened author as Lamma island has no llamas to offer. Instead we had to suffer thru beautiful nature hikes, gorgeous beaches and rocky cliffs overlooking the South China Sea and fresh lobster for lunch. Not even a damn alpaca to speak of. That night we went out for more Thai food, another round of Pad Thai and some famous Thai Massaman Red Curry that causes me to drool whenever I think of it. Spicy…coconutty…creamy…oooooooooooh. After dinner and once we’d mopped up the mess my salivating glands had caused, we headed for a glass of wine at one of the many wine bars that inhabits SoHo in Hong Kong. A fine Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon for me and a dull Italian red for the lady. We agree on almost all wine choices with the exception of her love for some Italian reds…blaaa.
On the way home we stopped by the pharmacy and picked up a couple things.
“Wow those aren’t as expensive as I thought. How many do you have back at the apartment in Xi’an?”
“only a couple left. I used one 2 weeks ago and I told you nothing happened.”
“I know, but it’s weird don’t you think? I mean its been a while since you…”
“that will be 45 Hong Kong Dollars sir” the cashier said.
We made our way back to the Ibis North Point hotel and our closet sized room again for another night of marital bliss. As has been happening more often lately, while I was showering and readying for bed and for squirming beneath the covers with my wife, Elizabeth, my wife, the very one who was supposed to join in the festive squirming, decided it was best to shut her eyes. Upon my marvelous and sensual exit from the steaming bathroom wearing nothing but a towel, I found myself in the company what sounded to be an animate assemblage of raging chainsaws. As I rounded the corner, squeezing past the bed frame into the smurf sized room I found my chainsaw asleep under the covers. Even turning on the television and finding comical Chinese pornography ( I know most would disagree about the comical value of pornography, or value whatsoever, but when you see a Chinese woman in construction boots and bunny ears being spanked endlessly by a team of giggly and bubbly Chinese men, as she feigns and makes really bizarre noises, I, at least got a good laugh at it) the lovable, beautiful chainsaw kept cutting away. Ah, marital romance at its finest. I nudged her, and the motor quit finally, probably running out of oil.
Elizabeth claims adamantly that women do not snore, and especially not her. Instead, some women, yet again-not her, ‘snortle’, which is a far cry from the boisterous and rude thing that only men do while they snooze. I claim that while I agree some men, my grandfather included, can take snoring to new horizons, what she does, which she denies, is far from her dainty definition of ‘snortling’.
In the morning she emerged from the bathroom while I lay with the Hong Kong daily (no more Chinese spanking on the television) news on the bed. She handed me a white plastic thing that was strangely warm and that had evidently caused her much surprise.
“Look.” She said.
“I am.” I said.
“Umm…” she said.
“Yeah, ummm…really??” I asked. “How about one more?”
“Later.”
And I concluded our incredible conversation as any man would, with some not so longwinded words of wisdom. “OK”.
After reading up on all the great Hong Kong news for the day, we headed off for the legendary Kowloon Flower and Orchid market, where we marveled at the crazy colored orchids from around the world, all at very cheap prices. Blue, pink, ruby, yellow, white, plaid. All there, and all beautiful. Yet we kept looking at each other and saying profound things like “Wow” and “But…I thought…umm…wow, holy God, wow.” Most shop keepers surely thought our appreciation for orchids was immense.
Leaving the flower market street, we made our way thru the bird market, just to tempt the bird flu virus to have a go at us. As I suspected, it chickened out and stayed with its poultry friends instead. Every other cage full of sparrows and song birds was promised freedom via a breakout by Elizabeth as we made our way down the alley. The songs from the caged aviaries was incredible and deafening, yet beautiful at the same time. It reminded me of waking up in Durango during the spring and summer. Every morning I’d be awoken early not by an alarm clock or a needy dog (she’d have slept to noon if able) but by a choir of chickadees sitting on the aspen branches just outside my window next to my headboard. The robins on the lawn squawking at the juicy worm they just found and the swallows squeeking as they soared in and out of the nest I allowed them to plaster to my front door, it all added to the song. As I walked thru the market I kept thinking of this and how someday soon I hoped to awake to that very same harmonization of bird talk that would surely overpower the snortling beauty that was continuing to promise freedom to the jailed ouiselles. I pulled her thru as quickly as possible when the promises started sounding more and more real.
After the bird market Elizabeth was in dire need of a bathroom and a bite to eat. The only logical choice for a clean bathroom and some dirty grub? McDonalds of course—in Aisa. The golden arches don’t mean much to me in a foreign country besides a clean bathroom and some garbage food that will take your mind off of the shits you’ve acquired from unknowingly eating bad pickled duck’s intestines with a nice tangy ginger pork brain sauce. The clean bathroom is key though in China, as the vast majority of public and restaurant water closets out here are gaggingly disgusting. I pride myself on my previous skin diving experience every time I enter one of the foul rooms, taking a deep gasp of air just before submersion in vileness.
We both quickly disappeared into the bathrooms for some clean and wholesome relieving. When I emerged, expecting her to be longer, I established a space in the line to order her some French fries. A few moments later she came out, flushed with color, yet without a little white, plastic stick. She slowly approached, as I slowly approached the ordering counter. She came beside me and a sheepish smile crept on her face, and then onto mine as if strangely contagious. We stared at each other in an awkward silence for a few moments before her lips cracked open and she began to speak. The smile broadened.
“You’re going to be a D..”
“Can I take your order?” the McDonald’s counter clerk chirped.
“Medium fries to go please, that’s all” Elizabeth said, turning to the young girl.
“This means you’ll have to change the kitty litter from now on” she pointed out.
“DAMN! All well, me having to change the kitty litter is a small trade off! Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m going to be a D…”
“Here you are ma’am, medium fries! Any ketchup with those?”
“No thank you”
We look at each other and then one of us jokes:
“Think it’ll come with a Made In China sticker?”
“That’s fine, so long as it isn’t coated in lead based paint.”
Holy Shit. I’m going to be a Dad.
“Relax, we took the test already” she said.
Sixty days. We celebrated our 60 day anniversary of landing on communist soil January 3rd by heading to Hong Kong, a strangely free (only because it makes money—lots of money) collection of islands and swamps to revalidate our Visas. Every 2 months we must leave the main motherland and head for either another country altogether or a self governing, self administrating area, which there are only 2 of in/out of this nation, Hong Kong and Macau. It is quite confusing though, because Hong Kong and Macau are considered SAR’s, or Special Administrative Regions, and are left to governing themselves, yet there are a few more Self Autonomous Regions as well, also SAR’s, who are clearly not independent. These other SAR’s feel the lovely effects of Chinese infrastructure development, no existing zoning rules for development, poorly managed tourism and horrible pollution standards. Tibet and Xinjiang, are the two ‘other’ SARs, the latter being a province larger than the State of Alaska. And like Alaska to Washington Republicans and oil mongers, Xinjiang is highly prized by those in Beijing for its vast oil reserves.
Anyway…
Another lovely night in the incredibly personality-less and young city of Shenzhen left us with sore backs after sleeping on hardened slabs touted as beds. About 25 years ago, in preparation for the Hong Kong handover, and also to reap some of the then present benefits of the close neighboring British colony, the Chinese government decided to build a city where previously only fishing villages existed. They classified it as another S-acronymed entity, this time a Special Economic Zone, and set about bulldozing fill into the swamps bordering the Hong Kong territories, and raising uniformly ugly high rise apartment buildings to house their future armies of workers. Kiss green hills sloping down to the South China Sea’s lapping waves goodbye, and say hello to another beehive belching noxious, choking exhaust fumes and bordered by garbage laden beaches. In the course of 25 years, Shenzhen has grown from 310,000 indigenous fisherman to nearly 10 million Han Chinese workers. Puts Las Vegas and Phoenix, those equally bizarre, bulging cities in nowhere, to shame. I make it sound so lovely, don’t I?
We took the early morning ferry over to Honk Kong from Shenzhen arriving at the Star Ferry Terminal around 10am. After carting our luggage thru the subway and finding our hotel on the north end of Hong Kong Island, we set out to explore. IN our minds, the first thing we wanted to find was comfort food to take home and bookstores with English print books. Elizabeth is what I would consider a book junkie, she starts to quiver and drool if without a new book for over 2 days, which happens quite regularly seeing that she reads a 500 page novel in about 3 days. We succeeded in finding both macaroni and cheese and trashy novellas within the first few hours and then set our sights on finding good Pad Thai, one of our favorite delicatessens.
Over the next few days we explored the city and one of the outer islands, Lamma. Unfortunately, due to extremely false advertising, creating an extremely saddened author as Lamma island has no llamas to offer. Instead we had to suffer thru beautiful nature hikes, gorgeous beaches and rocky cliffs overlooking the South China Sea and fresh lobster for lunch. Not even a damn alpaca to speak of. That night we went out for more Thai food, another round of Pad Thai and some famous Thai Massaman Red Curry that causes me to drool whenever I think of it. Spicy…coconutty…creamy…oooooooooooh. After dinner and once we’d mopped up the mess my salivating glands had caused, we headed for a glass of wine at one of the many wine bars that inhabits SoHo in Hong Kong. A fine Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon for me and a dull Italian red for the lady. We agree on almost all wine choices with the exception of her love for some Italian reds…blaaa.
On the way home we stopped by the pharmacy and picked up a couple things.
“Wow those aren’t as expensive as I thought. How many do you have back at the apartment in Xi’an?”
“only a couple left. I used one 2 weeks ago and I told you nothing happened.”
“I know, but it’s weird don’t you think? I mean its been a while since you…”
“that will be 45 Hong Kong Dollars sir” the cashier said.
We made our way back to the Ibis North Point hotel and our closet sized room again for another night of marital bliss. As has been happening more often lately, while I was showering and readying for bed and for squirming beneath the covers with my wife, Elizabeth, my wife, the very one who was supposed to join in the festive squirming, decided it was best to shut her eyes. Upon my marvelous and sensual exit from the steaming bathroom wearing nothing but a towel, I found myself in the company what sounded to be an animate assemblage of raging chainsaws. As I rounded the corner, squeezing past the bed frame into the smurf sized room I found my chainsaw asleep under the covers. Even turning on the television and finding comical Chinese pornography ( I know most would disagree about the comical value of pornography, or value whatsoever, but when you see a Chinese woman in construction boots and bunny ears being spanked endlessly by a team of giggly and bubbly Chinese men, as she feigns and makes really bizarre noises, I, at least got a good laugh at it) the lovable, beautiful chainsaw kept cutting away. Ah, marital romance at its finest. I nudged her, and the motor quit finally, probably running out of oil.
Elizabeth claims adamantly that women do not snore, and especially not her. Instead, some women, yet again-not her, ‘snortle’, which is a far cry from the boisterous and rude thing that only men do while they snooze. I claim that while I agree some men, my grandfather included, can take snoring to new horizons, what she does, which she denies, is far from her dainty definition of ‘snortling’.
In the morning she emerged from the bathroom while I lay with the Hong Kong daily (no more Chinese spanking on the television) news on the bed. She handed me a white plastic thing that was strangely warm and that had evidently caused her much surprise.
“Look.” She said.
“I am.” I said.
“Umm…” she said.
“Yeah, ummm…really??” I asked. “How about one more?”
“Later.”
And I concluded our incredible conversation as any man would, with some not so longwinded words of wisdom. “OK”.
After reading up on all the great Hong Kong news for the day, we headed off for the legendary Kowloon Flower and Orchid market, where we marveled at the crazy colored orchids from around the world, all at very cheap prices. Blue, pink, ruby, yellow, white, plaid. All there, and all beautiful. Yet we kept looking at each other and saying profound things like “Wow” and “But…I thought…umm…wow, holy God, wow.” Most shop keepers surely thought our appreciation for orchids was immense.
Leaving the flower market street, we made our way thru the bird market, just to tempt the bird flu virus to have a go at us. As I suspected, it chickened out and stayed with its poultry friends instead. Every other cage full of sparrows and song birds was promised freedom via a breakout by Elizabeth as we made our way down the alley. The songs from the caged aviaries was incredible and deafening, yet beautiful at the same time. It reminded me of waking up in Durango during the spring and summer. Every morning I’d be awoken early not by an alarm clock or a needy dog (she’d have slept to noon if able) but by a choir of chickadees sitting on the aspen branches just outside my window next to my headboard. The robins on the lawn squawking at the juicy worm they just found and the swallows squeeking as they soared in and out of the nest I allowed them to plaster to my front door, it all added to the song. As I walked thru the market I kept thinking of this and how someday soon I hoped to awake to that very same harmonization of bird talk that would surely overpower the snortling beauty that was continuing to promise freedom to the jailed ouiselles. I pulled her thru as quickly as possible when the promises started sounding more and more real.
After the bird market Elizabeth was in dire need of a bathroom and a bite to eat. The only logical choice for a clean bathroom and some dirty grub? McDonalds of course—in Aisa. The golden arches don’t mean much to me in a foreign country besides a clean bathroom and some garbage food that will take your mind off of the shits you’ve acquired from unknowingly eating bad pickled duck’s intestines with a nice tangy ginger pork brain sauce. The clean bathroom is key though in China, as the vast majority of public and restaurant water closets out here are gaggingly disgusting. I pride myself on my previous skin diving experience every time I enter one of the foul rooms, taking a deep gasp of air just before submersion in vileness.
We both quickly disappeared into the bathrooms for some clean and wholesome relieving. When I emerged, expecting her to be longer, I established a space in the line to order her some French fries. A few moments later she came out, flushed with color, yet without a little white, plastic stick. She slowly approached, as I slowly approached the ordering counter. She came beside me and a sheepish smile crept on her face, and then onto mine as if strangely contagious. We stared at each other in an awkward silence for a few moments before her lips cracked open and she began to speak. The smile broadened.
“You’re going to be a D..”
“Can I take your order?” the McDonald’s counter clerk chirped.
“Medium fries to go please, that’s all” Elizabeth said, turning to the young girl.
“This means you’ll have to change the kitty litter from now on” she pointed out.
“DAMN! All well, me having to change the kitty litter is a small trade off! Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m going to be a D…”
“Here you are ma’am, medium fries! Any ketchup with those?”
“No thank you”
We look at each other and then one of us jokes:
“Think it’ll come with a Made In China sticker?”
“That’s fine, so long as it isn’t coated in lead based paint.”
Holy Shit. I’m going to be a Dad.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Pictures
Sorry, in case you haven't figured it out yet, I'm really struggling with the uploading of pictures onto this site. I thought I had it figured out, and then nothing happened. Some images are huge, even though I manually resized them, and some are small, and some are just simply...not there. Someday I'll get it figured out, or you can just wait and come over our house when we get home and I'll share them over a beer.
Wiggers and Whiteouts (well not really)
When you have well in excess of 1.3 billion people (in fact nearly 1/5 of the world’s population lives in China-hence you have 20% of the world’s people living on less than 2% of the world’s terra firma—a bit crowded!{just for comparison’s sake, the US, with about 300 million now, sits at roughly 4.75% of the world population, living on about the same 2% of the land mass}) its not difficult to find warm bodies for completely random jobs.
Swarms of security enforcement personnel –many looking not a day older than 17 yet legitimized by their flambouyant uniforms, armies of aircraft interior cleaners and endless numbers of women in green and grey zip up jumpsuits armed with a broom, dustpan, and occasionally a plastic bag, can be found anywhere, and at literally anytime. Saturday was no different.
We had flown from Xi’an, in the heart of Central China, to Lanzhou, a city to the northwest, already, and I was grateful to be free of Xi’an’s never ending snowstorm (about 10 days in fact), if only a brief respite. We were on our second leg, from Lanzhou to Fort Jiayuguan, the ancient limit to Dynastic China, an enclave pressed against rising terrain to the south, the Tibetan Plateau, and Xinjiang to the west, home of Islam and speakers of Uyghur (pronounced Wigger for everyone who might get a kick out of that), a language closest to Turkish than any other. The city sits, seemingly, on the edge of nowhere, a trait I have grown to appreciate in my travels. South and west, the mountains, resembling daggers or splintered canine teeth, protrude 16000 t0 17000 feet into the air, giving you the willies when you descend thru cloud layers only to catch a momentary glimpse of the precipitous, snow spackled granite close by. To the north and northwest, the town gradually disappears into the nothingness of the Badain Jaran Desert, an arid subsidiary of the Gobi, but proudly standing on its own as the world’s 4th largest desert. In the winter the desert looks more like an arctic ocean that froze during the middle of a huge storm. Sand dunes that rival those I saw in Algeria stretch for as far as the eye can see, yet are completely white, buried beneath a couple feet of snow. The pattern makes your eyes hurt if you stare too long, and I often wonder if I cross my eyes and stare long enough if a magic, computer generated 3D image will pop out, or maybe I’ll simply spot Waldo. So far neither has happened, yet I’ve spent a good amount of time staring crosseyed out the cockpit windows—on purpose.
The captain I’m flying with today, as I still need more Chinese flying hours before they’ll set me loose on the Mandarin speaking world, doesn’t speak a lick of English beyond what he must’ve learned off an archaic John Wayne movie… “howdy…how da ya do?”, to which I usually reply “well I reckon just fine pardner”. As we begin our descent from 28,000 feet into the tiny—by Chinese standards—frontier town, he informs me, through the use of the translating co-pilot strapped into the jumpseat behind me, that there may be a little snow on the runway…just patches though. I think to myself “Myself, this is no problem. Xi’an has had patches of snow 5 inches thick everywhere and most taxi ways are simply dirty slush pits with aircraft tire marks cutting through…therefore no need to worry, myself”. Yet it wasn’t until we descended thru the cloud bases on an ILS approach for Runway 32, and the copilot said “Approach lights in sight…and…uhhh….”, and the respective concern that the unfinished comment generated within me, that I realized what patches of snow in Jiaguayan means.
In a featureless, flat landscape, at a featureless, flat airport, marked only by a depressingly colored control tower, and a few random vehicles scattered about, was a featureless, flat and white landscape which was laid out before me, with flashing approach lights leading up to it.
“Ummm…” the copilot kept murmuring, while the captain muttered something undiscernible next to me, presumbably in Chinese.
I officially joined the intellectually stimulating conversation by belching out “holy shit, that’s white” after but a brief moment.
“Five Hundred” the computer generated voice announced, letting us know we were five hundred feet above the ground, and closing in fast. The flashing lights that sequentially led up to the end of the runway, sequentially led up to…nothing. I considered the fact that maybe the captain was referring to the fact that this was in fact a patch of snow, one that extended 100 miles in each direction, as I struggled to find features that would help me identify the edges of the runway. “Two Hundred”, Bob the emotionless voice from nowhere said. Finally I found the barely discernible tops of the runway edge lights, delineating where I should place an airplane from where I should not. Then I saw them: Greenish gray little specks jittering and whirling around everywhere, off to the side of the runway.
I turned my attention back to landing the aircraft back between the practically invisible bumps on the side of the runway. It reminded me a bit of landing in Bahai, Chad, on a bad visibility-dust stormy day, yet it was more difficult, as I had little to no visual clue as to where the ground actually was. It was an optical illusion…everything was white…and flat. I remembered a South African captain I had met while flying in Algeria who liked to talk of his time spent flying scientists around the south pole. His favorite stories revolved around flying in white out snowstorms where the visibility was 0. “I’d just slow the old DC3’s descent to 200 feet per minute, pick a cardinal direction on the compass, and hope that whatever you landed on eventually was flat, connected to land –i.e., not an iceberg, and didn’t bite. No icebergs here, it’s surely flat, and the only thing that bites is the fact I can’t really see the thing I’m landing on, I thought as Bob announced “50…40…30…20…10…”. I pulled up slowly, waiting for a serious thump, and waited, and waited. Still waiting…doo da doo…yep, still here.
‘Er-Er’ finally came as I landed on the smooth and creamy runway. We slowly decelerated and came to a complete stop before I looked around out my side windows. White everywhere…a bright, light infused gray mist containing my view to a mere ¾ mile in each direction, and then, as I turned the aircraft around to taxi back, I saw the little greenish gray jittery blurbs running frantically about with what looked like Harry Potter broomsticks. They were everywhere, sweeping and swishing and sweeping the snow off the taxi way lines and now, the sides of the runway. We slowed our taxi speed to allow more taxi lines to be uncovered and suddenly what was just a featureless, flat, white surface, was now a flat, white surface in the middle of nowhere with intersecting yellow lines neatly criss-crossing about. I felt like I had just landed on another planet. But then again, China kinda is. Who else would have platoons of frigid women in green jumpsuits running about an airport with broomsticks made of local grasses, instead of a petrol powered snow plow? Chad maybe…if they had snow.
Swarms of security enforcement personnel –many looking not a day older than 17 yet legitimized by their flambouyant uniforms, armies of aircraft interior cleaners and endless numbers of women in green and grey zip up jumpsuits armed with a broom, dustpan, and occasionally a plastic bag, can be found anywhere, and at literally anytime. Saturday was no different.
We had flown from Xi’an, in the heart of Central China, to Lanzhou, a city to the northwest, already, and I was grateful to be free of Xi’an’s never ending snowstorm (about 10 days in fact), if only a brief respite. We were on our second leg, from Lanzhou to Fort Jiayuguan, the ancient limit to Dynastic China, an enclave pressed against rising terrain to the south, the Tibetan Plateau, and Xinjiang to the west, home of Islam and speakers of Uyghur (pronounced Wigger for everyone who might get a kick out of that), a language closest to Turkish than any other. The city sits, seemingly, on the edge of nowhere, a trait I have grown to appreciate in my travels. South and west, the mountains, resembling daggers or splintered canine teeth, protrude 16000 t0 17000 feet into the air, giving you the willies when you descend thru cloud layers only to catch a momentary glimpse of the precipitous, snow spackled granite close by. To the north and northwest, the town gradually disappears into the nothingness of the Badain Jaran Desert, an arid subsidiary of the Gobi, but proudly standing on its own as the world’s 4th largest desert. In the winter the desert looks more like an arctic ocean that froze during the middle of a huge storm. Sand dunes that rival those I saw in Algeria stretch for as far as the eye can see, yet are completely white, buried beneath a couple feet of snow. The pattern makes your eyes hurt if you stare too long, and I often wonder if I cross my eyes and stare long enough if a magic, computer generated 3D image will pop out, or maybe I’ll simply spot Waldo. So far neither has happened, yet I’ve spent a good amount of time staring crosseyed out the cockpit windows—on purpose.
The captain I’m flying with today, as I still need more Chinese flying hours before they’ll set me loose on the Mandarin speaking world, doesn’t speak a lick of English beyond what he must’ve learned off an archaic John Wayne movie… “howdy…how da ya do?”, to which I usually reply “well I reckon just fine pardner”. As we begin our descent from 28,000 feet into the tiny—by Chinese standards—frontier town, he informs me, through the use of the translating co-pilot strapped into the jumpseat behind me, that there may be a little snow on the runway…just patches though. I think to myself “Myself, this is no problem. Xi’an has had patches of snow 5 inches thick everywhere and most taxi ways are simply dirty slush pits with aircraft tire marks cutting through…therefore no need to worry, myself”. Yet it wasn’t until we descended thru the cloud bases on an ILS approach for Runway 32, and the copilot said “Approach lights in sight…and…uhhh….”, and the respective concern that the unfinished comment generated within me, that I realized what patches of snow in Jiaguayan means.
In a featureless, flat landscape, at a featureless, flat airport, marked only by a depressingly colored control tower, and a few random vehicles scattered about, was a featureless, flat and white landscape which was laid out before me, with flashing approach lights leading up to it.
“Ummm…” the copilot kept murmuring, while the captain muttered something undiscernible next to me, presumbably in Chinese.
I officially joined the intellectually stimulating conversation by belching out “holy shit, that’s white” after but a brief moment.
“Five Hundred” the computer generated voice announced, letting us know we were five hundred feet above the ground, and closing in fast. The flashing lights that sequentially led up to the end of the runway, sequentially led up to…nothing. I considered the fact that maybe the captain was referring to the fact that this was in fact a patch of snow, one that extended 100 miles in each direction, as I struggled to find features that would help me identify the edges of the runway. “Two Hundred”, Bob the emotionless voice from nowhere said. Finally I found the barely discernible tops of the runway edge lights, delineating where I should place an airplane from where I should not. Then I saw them: Greenish gray little specks jittering and whirling around everywhere, off to the side of the runway.
I turned my attention back to landing the aircraft back between the practically invisible bumps on the side of the runway. It reminded me a bit of landing in Bahai, Chad, on a bad visibility-dust stormy day, yet it was more difficult, as I had little to no visual clue as to where the ground actually was. It was an optical illusion…everything was white…and flat. I remembered a South African captain I had met while flying in Algeria who liked to talk of his time spent flying scientists around the south pole. His favorite stories revolved around flying in white out snowstorms where the visibility was 0. “I’d just slow the old DC3’s descent to 200 feet per minute, pick a cardinal direction on the compass, and hope that whatever you landed on eventually was flat, connected to land –i.e., not an iceberg, and didn’t bite. No icebergs here, it’s surely flat, and the only thing that bites is the fact I can’t really see the thing I’m landing on, I thought as Bob announced “50…40…30…20…10…”. I pulled up slowly, waiting for a serious thump, and waited, and waited. Still waiting…doo da doo…yep, still here.
‘Er-Er’ finally came as I landed on the smooth and creamy runway. We slowly decelerated and came to a complete stop before I looked around out my side windows. White everywhere…a bright, light infused gray mist containing my view to a mere ¾ mile in each direction, and then, as I turned the aircraft around to taxi back, I saw the little greenish gray jittery blurbs running frantically about with what looked like Harry Potter broomsticks. They were everywhere, sweeping and swishing and sweeping the snow off the taxi way lines and now, the sides of the runway. We slowed our taxi speed to allow more taxi lines to be uncovered and suddenly what was just a featureless, flat, white surface, was now a flat, white surface in the middle of nowhere with intersecting yellow lines neatly criss-crossing about. I felt like I had just landed on another planet. But then again, China kinda is. Who else would have platoons of frigid women in green jumpsuits running about an airport with broomsticks made of local grasses, instead of a petrol powered snow plow? Chad maybe…if they had snow.
Jie Xie gets Mo Pi-ed.
January 15
Mr. Murphy, also known in these Eastern parts as Mo Pi, has a certain intrinsic ability to find me anywhere on this waterlogged planet. The day that I finally cracked the super secret Chinese Information Control Services code with my incredible Cracker Jack Brand decoder ring, and wrote everyone saying that I’d fill them in…boom, Mo Pi calls Kunpeng Airlines, Inc. who subsequently call me to inform me of that I must work. It would seem, unfairly enough, that the Chinese powers that be, in cooperative conjunction with Mo Pi, decided that my 2 ½ month Chinese couch potato stint need come to an anticlimactic close, ironically just as I was beginning to really get the hang of it. My first day of flying, in fact, I struggled hard to fight the urge to demand nap time after 2 flights.
Woe is me. Actually, its Jie Xie, my new Pinyin-ized Chinese name (pinyin is traditional written Chinese translated phonetically into roman alphabet characters so that those of us who haven’t a clue as to how to pronounce the character that looks like a house with 2 trees outside and some strange squiggly lines here and there, can actually have a fighting chance at making asses of ourselves when trying to formulate a sentence). When I Google translated my name I was of mixed emotions when I read the translation: Unfolds the woods. Quite poetic actually, especially considering that another 2 guys here I’ve met were given Chinese names which translated into “Big-bird” and “Magic Monkey Boy”. I just simply sound like the subject of a Robert Frost poem. While I do appreciate the contemplative serenity that my new nomenclature offers, I’m considering petitioning for a slight change along the lines of “Unfolds the Woods with fists of fury that are covered in the warm blood of his deceased enemies who were actually highly skilled ninjas, therefore speaking volumes for his own ability”. I’ll let you know the verdict on the name change.
So since the Mo Pi strike down I have flown nonstop and with aircraft luck that reminds me of my first day flying the jet at Mesa Airlines. I was so fresh out of training I still had the wrapper partially on. I got paired up with the most junior, least flight time First officer (nice guy however) and we were tasked to fly into the craziest airspace on earth, the NYC trifecta Cluster F#@K during a blizzard that shut New York down for almost 4 days. The airplane worked only because of the duct tape holding it together. Just kidding…or…? The climax of that tumultuous first day was the landing which as I was in the flare, the previous aircraft, who had vacated the runway at this point, noted that the braking on the runway was next to nil. Thanks for the heads up guys. We, however, landed safely-with sweaty palms-and taxied to the gate, yet the 747 who was on approach behind us, Turkish Air I believe, skidded off the side of the runway just enough for airport officials to decide it time to close down operations.
Anyway, this time around in China, after months of purging my grey matter of any and all relevant flying information, I am thrown into guess what? A blizzard, with a broken aircraft (coincidentally an ex Mesa airplane)…an aircraft type which I haven’t touched in nearly 2 years, and a Chinese speaking crew. Nee hao!
I believe my thoughts that morning when I stepped into the cockpit and upon seeing the bazillion lights and switches flashing, and the snow dumping down on the windshield, and while listening to the Mandarin chitter chatter, was along the lines of “oh, fuck me”. Yep, confidence was oozing out of my pores that morning and dripping down my brow in the 15 degree Fahrenheit temperatures.
Since that day however, things have gotten much easier, and I have remembered how to fly the CRJ, to the relief of you and my Chinese passengers, I’m sure. It has been a lesson in patience though, flying with numerous Chinese captains, who all have a completely different way of doing things, and who are all of a train of mind that my western mind just cannot completely grasp. Let’s just say the Chinese have a different way of doing things, that gets the job done, but leaves some out there scratching their heads in wonder. If I scratch any more I’ll be bald in a week.
Mr. Murphy, also known in these Eastern parts as Mo Pi, has a certain intrinsic ability to find me anywhere on this waterlogged planet. The day that I finally cracked the super secret Chinese Information Control Services code with my incredible Cracker Jack Brand decoder ring, and wrote everyone saying that I’d fill them in…boom, Mo Pi calls Kunpeng Airlines, Inc. who subsequently call me to inform me of that I must work. It would seem, unfairly enough, that the Chinese powers that be, in cooperative conjunction with Mo Pi, decided that my 2 ½ month Chinese couch potato stint need come to an anticlimactic close, ironically just as I was beginning to really get the hang of it. My first day of flying, in fact, I struggled hard to fight the urge to demand nap time after 2 flights.
Woe is me. Actually, its Jie Xie, my new Pinyin-ized Chinese name (pinyin is traditional written Chinese translated phonetically into roman alphabet characters so that those of us who haven’t a clue as to how to pronounce the character that looks like a house with 2 trees outside and some strange squiggly lines here and there, can actually have a fighting chance at making asses of ourselves when trying to formulate a sentence). When I Google translated my name I was of mixed emotions when I read the translation: Unfolds the woods. Quite poetic actually, especially considering that another 2 guys here I’ve met were given Chinese names which translated into “Big-bird” and “Magic Monkey Boy”. I just simply sound like the subject of a Robert Frost poem. While I do appreciate the contemplative serenity that my new nomenclature offers, I’m considering petitioning for a slight change along the lines of “Unfolds the Woods with fists of fury that are covered in the warm blood of his deceased enemies who were actually highly skilled ninjas, therefore speaking volumes for his own ability”. I’ll let you know the verdict on the name change.
So since the Mo Pi strike down I have flown nonstop and with aircraft luck that reminds me of my first day flying the jet at Mesa Airlines. I was so fresh out of training I still had the wrapper partially on. I got paired up with the most junior, least flight time First officer (nice guy however) and we were tasked to fly into the craziest airspace on earth, the NYC trifecta Cluster F#@K during a blizzard that shut New York down for almost 4 days. The airplane worked only because of the duct tape holding it together. Just kidding…or…? The climax of that tumultuous first day was the landing which as I was in the flare, the previous aircraft, who had vacated the runway at this point, noted that the braking on the runway was next to nil. Thanks for the heads up guys. We, however, landed safely-with sweaty palms-and taxied to the gate, yet the 747 who was on approach behind us, Turkish Air I believe, skidded off the side of the runway just enough for airport officials to decide it time to close down operations.
Anyway, this time around in China, after months of purging my grey matter of any and all relevant flying information, I am thrown into guess what? A blizzard, with a broken aircraft (coincidentally an ex Mesa airplane)…an aircraft type which I haven’t touched in nearly 2 years, and a Chinese speaking crew. Nee hao!
I believe my thoughts that morning when I stepped into the cockpit and upon seeing the bazillion lights and switches flashing, and the snow dumping down on the windshield, and while listening to the Mandarin chitter chatter, was along the lines of “oh, fuck me”. Yep, confidence was oozing out of my pores that morning and dripping down my brow in the 15 degree Fahrenheit temperatures.
Since that day however, things have gotten much easier, and I have remembered how to fly the CRJ, to the relief of you and my Chinese passengers, I’m sure. It has been a lesson in patience though, flying with numerous Chinese captains, who all have a completely different way of doing things, and who are all of a train of mind that my western mind just cannot completely grasp. Let’s just say the Chinese have a different way of doing things, that gets the job done, but leaves some out there scratching their heads in wonder. If I scratch any more I’ll be bald in a week.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Leonard and the Chairman
“One cat, seriously babe, just one.”
“But I want Kitty…..zzzz!”
“We don’t even have one, so that gives us a good starting point” I said, knowing that she’d have to concede to that, at the very least.
“But’ he’ll be so lonely!”
And so it went, over and over again, the morning that I left with Alyssa Netter to find a cat. A week earlier Elizabeth and I had mentioned to a mutual Chinese friend, Trisha (the English-ized version of her Chinese name), that we wanted to pick up a feline for the apartment. Her response, as with every other Chinese individuals response on the matter was “why you no get dog!!??”
The Chinese it seems have a rather formidable distaste for cats. In actuality distaste may not be the most fitting word because you can find plenty of cats on skewers with sezechuan spices grilled to your liking, so they have their own acquired taste in a way. Generally speaking, most Chinese dislike housecats because of their laziness and self centered ego we learned.
When I met up with Trisha and Alyssa I asked again about operation kidnap a cat. “I found ad in paper. Old woman has too many cats, needs get rid of many. Maybe you take many?”
“No, however much Elizabeth may like it that I get many, I will only be getting one.” I clearly stated as we crammed into the backseat of a little green Xian Taxi service cab. The seats were wet and the windows were fogged, making it musty, and noxious smelling inside. It had been raining all morning and was one of those bitterly cold types that stings your nose and eyes a bit when you open a door. Of course when in China, and some of its wonderfully polluted cities, one occasionally asks oneself it is the cold that is stinging one’s eyes and nose.
The visibility, as we drove abnoxiously fast (as all cabs, cars, trucks, and anything else with four wheels and an engine with more than one cylinder does in China) and wove between the insanely packed fellow motorists who joined in the chaotic symphony of swerving cars, was horrible. At points I couldn’t see the third floor of the skyscraper just out the window because of the low, dreary clouds. Xian’s weather has been just that, dreary, for most of the time we’ve been here. Misty, grey, drizzly, smoggy. Nothing like brown fog in the morning to make you think “Wow, looks like a stellar day for a morning jog!”. Yet when we’ve asked about the horrible pollution the possibility of a direct link with the depressing weather, most Chinese simply state “well, its big city, of course it’s cloudy”. I now understand why Japan files regular complaints against China for pollution which drifts over the sea towards their tiny island chain.
We made our way thru the mist and under one of the archways that allows traffic to pass into the walled section of the ancient capital city. Around the year 1370 (+/- 2000 years for my horrible research on this matter) Xi’an was the capital city for the second time, the first being nearly a thousand years before that, and the Ming Dynasty then in power decided it was high time to build a wall nearly 40 feet tall and 60 feet thick to protect the city’s mayor, General Tso, and his army of imperial, spicy chickens.
About 5 minutes afterwards we finally made it to our destination. As we exited the taxi, two girls in raincoats rushed us, greeting us warmly and extremely graciously, as the Chinese always do. Behind them sat a huge, depressing, gutted office building that looked as if it were a relic of the Chernobyl disaster. “Where are we?” Alyssa and I asked.
“Welcome to the Xian headquarters of the Shaanxi National Newspaper!” one of the girls proudly announced.
“Trisha, why are we at the newspaper?” we asked. No response was given but a sheepish smile.
We were brought up the dank, lightless stairways that were wet with frigid, dripping water. I felt like I was being led to a Soviet era interrogation room. On the third floor they opened a door revealing a Spartan office with a few newspapers scattered about the few heavy wooden desks. We were given chairs and glasses of hot water (a Chinese thing that made E and I laugh for a while). After sitting for 25 minutes we picked Trisha’s brain for more answers as to why we were there. She finally spilled that in fact, this was a big event. She had seen a newspaper STORY –not an ad--about a woman who ran a shelter for cats and needed donations or for someone to adopt a few. Trisha had called the newspaper saying that she could provide both and some interesting foreigners, Americans at that, for the story. We went out for kittens and walked into a strange, uniquely Chinese, press event. The reason we waited in the office, it was revealed, was so a bus could be brought to take us, another 2 Chinese women, and an army of reporters to the shelter for this incredible headline story. We giggled, sighed, and then drank our hot water as we waited.
After an hour in the newsroom we were shuffled back downstairs and into a prehistoric Chinese bus. We drove back into the bedlam of bumper to bumper traffic which ground our progress to a slow crawl. The reporters decided to take advantage of this situation and began asking Alyssa and I some questions.
“Where are you from? Why do you like cats? Are you planning on adopting any today? How are cats treated in the United States? Do you eat cats in the USA? Do you like dogs in the USA? What is your favorite dog?...etc, etc...” I laughed at many of the questions finding them innocently absurd, and then as a joke, that I was prepared to rescind if they gave me a funny look, answered “Herman Bigglesworth” when they asked me for my name. However they never gave me the funny look, and instead had me spell it out on paper. Another hour later we found ourselves driving by our very own apartments that we had left hours earlier. About 2 blocks beyond our apartments the bus turned right, made a left and drove about a ¼ mile down a muddy alley. We had travelled and waited for nearly 3 hours to go about 1/3 a mile from our front doors. Then the bus stopped. One of the reporters sighed and slapped her forehead.
“Ahhhhhh, I am so very sorry, but my colleague forgot to bring the camera” she apologetically stated.
“Oh, that’s ok, we don’t need our pictures in the paper” Alyssa and I said, hoping it would convince them to put an end to the journey.
“Ahhhhhh, I am so very sorry, but my colleague, she wishes to wait for the camera so we may shoot pictures.”
And so, in a muddy alleyway with a quizzical, toothless old man peering in the bus , we sat, freezing our asses off for another hour before the camera arrived, all just 1/3 a mile from our warm apartments.
Finally, after the camera came, we were shown to the door of the shelter. From the outside you could smell the cat urine pungently flavoring the damp air around. It made me hold my breath as we opened the creaky iron door. Two flights up and we opened another door where instantaneously pandemonium broke loose. Cats flew off walls, and skidded across the wet tile floor. Cats dropped from the ceiling. Cats commit suicide and jumped out windows. The old woman screeched at the suicidal cats. Cats poured from under mattresses and out of desks. Cats seem to come from everywhere and ran back and forth, yowling for help. At one point a cat jumped thru a raggy curtain and hit a Chinese woman in the face, knocking her glasses to the floor, breaking them. I did what I could not to laugh at the chaos.
I spotted a small orange cat that strikingly resembled Harold Sparks, II, and lunged for him. Getting bitten and slashed by a sea of other cats I decided to plow my way thru the masses with my feet before reaching blindly again. After 5 minutes of chasing, I finally had the quivering ball of stinky fur, and I wasn’t going to let him go. “DONE!” I thought. I have my gato, now I can go home. Alyssa kept searching for the perfect feline for her family however, so I followed her around the cold, cat urine soaked, third floor apartment. It wasn’t too long before I noticed I wasn’t the only one following Alyssa. A small black and white, mangy looking cat followed her like a shadow and would bat at her whenever she’d bend down low enough. When I brought it to her attention she picked up the little guy and he immediately began to purr. Then he swatted her in the nose and purred some more.
“This cat has some serious issues!” she said as we both laughed. She tossed him down and kept looking for the perfect cat for her kids. Yet still, the black cat followed. After a few more amusing events in which the black cat demonstrated he was a comical genius, I couldn’t take it any longer. “Damn, damn, damn!! I’m so weak! I’ll take em both.”
Alyssa finally decided on a feline; we posed for some pictures and finally made our way to the awaiting dinosaur minibus. When we got home I let the cats out of the bag (yes, I had to keep them in a black zipper bag for the ride). The orange one ran for cover immediately while the black one stepped out casually, licked his crotch, looked around, and headed for the couch where he made himself at home, spread out. It was as if he had planned it from the moment he saw us.
The next day we got a call from Trisha saying she was very sorry. “About what Trisha?” we asked.
“I am so very sorry, but the newspaper seems to have made a mistake. Or maybe you made a mistake?”
On the front page of the Shaanxi National Newspaper is the story of 2 big hearted Americans who saved 3 cats and donated some money to help keep the others alive. The two Americans, Alyssa Netter and Herman Bigglesworth, both loved cats and were happy to help.
We laughed and finalized our name choices for the cats. Leonard Bigglesworth the 1st, and Chairman Meow are now part of the family.
“But I want Kitty…..zzzz!”
“We don’t even have one, so that gives us a good starting point” I said, knowing that she’d have to concede to that, at the very least.
“But’ he’ll be so lonely!”
And so it went, over and over again, the morning that I left with Alyssa Netter to find a cat. A week earlier Elizabeth and I had mentioned to a mutual Chinese friend, Trisha (the English-ized version of her Chinese name), that we wanted to pick up a feline for the apartment. Her response, as with every other Chinese individuals response on the matter was “why you no get dog!!??”
The Chinese it seems have a rather formidable distaste for cats. In actuality distaste may not be the most fitting word because you can find plenty of cats on skewers with sezechuan spices grilled to your liking, so they have their own acquired taste in a way. Generally speaking, most Chinese dislike housecats because of their laziness and self centered ego we learned.
When I met up with Trisha and Alyssa I asked again about operation kidnap a cat. “I found ad in paper. Old woman has too many cats, needs get rid of many. Maybe you take many?”
“No, however much Elizabeth may like it that I get many, I will only be getting one.” I clearly stated as we crammed into the backseat of a little green Xian Taxi service cab. The seats were wet and the windows were fogged, making it musty, and noxious smelling inside. It had been raining all morning and was one of those bitterly cold types that stings your nose and eyes a bit when you open a door. Of course when in China, and some of its wonderfully polluted cities, one occasionally asks oneself it is the cold that is stinging one’s eyes and nose.
The visibility, as we drove abnoxiously fast (as all cabs, cars, trucks, and anything else with four wheels and an engine with more than one cylinder does in China) and wove between the insanely packed fellow motorists who joined in the chaotic symphony of swerving cars, was horrible. At points I couldn’t see the third floor of the skyscraper just out the window because of the low, dreary clouds. Xian’s weather has been just that, dreary, for most of the time we’ve been here. Misty, grey, drizzly, smoggy. Nothing like brown fog in the morning to make you think “Wow, looks like a stellar day for a morning jog!”. Yet when we’ve asked about the horrible pollution the possibility of a direct link with the depressing weather, most Chinese simply state “well, its big city, of course it’s cloudy”. I now understand why Japan files regular complaints against China for pollution which drifts over the sea towards their tiny island chain.
We made our way thru the mist and under one of the archways that allows traffic to pass into the walled section of the ancient capital city. Around the year 1370 (+/- 2000 years for my horrible research on this matter) Xi’an was the capital city for the second time, the first being nearly a thousand years before that, and the Ming Dynasty then in power decided it was high time to build a wall nearly 40 feet tall and 60 feet thick to protect the city’s mayor, General Tso, and his army of imperial, spicy chickens.
About 5 minutes afterwards we finally made it to our destination. As we exited the taxi, two girls in raincoats rushed us, greeting us warmly and extremely graciously, as the Chinese always do. Behind them sat a huge, depressing, gutted office building that looked as if it were a relic of the Chernobyl disaster. “Where are we?” Alyssa and I asked.
“Welcome to the Xian headquarters of the Shaanxi National Newspaper!” one of the girls proudly announced.
“Trisha, why are we at the newspaper?” we asked. No response was given but a sheepish smile.
We were brought up the dank, lightless stairways that were wet with frigid, dripping water. I felt like I was being led to a Soviet era interrogation room. On the third floor they opened a door revealing a Spartan office with a few newspapers scattered about the few heavy wooden desks. We were given chairs and glasses of hot water (a Chinese thing that made E and I laugh for a while). After sitting for 25 minutes we picked Trisha’s brain for more answers as to why we were there. She finally spilled that in fact, this was a big event. She had seen a newspaper STORY –not an ad--about a woman who ran a shelter for cats and needed donations or for someone to adopt a few. Trisha had called the newspaper saying that she could provide both and some interesting foreigners, Americans at that, for the story. We went out for kittens and walked into a strange, uniquely Chinese, press event. The reason we waited in the office, it was revealed, was so a bus could be brought to take us, another 2 Chinese women, and an army of reporters to the shelter for this incredible headline story. We giggled, sighed, and then drank our hot water as we waited.
After an hour in the newsroom we were shuffled back downstairs and into a prehistoric Chinese bus. We drove back into the bedlam of bumper to bumper traffic which ground our progress to a slow crawl. The reporters decided to take advantage of this situation and began asking Alyssa and I some questions.
“Where are you from? Why do you like cats? Are you planning on adopting any today? How are cats treated in the United States? Do you eat cats in the USA? Do you like dogs in the USA? What is your favorite dog?...etc, etc...” I laughed at many of the questions finding them innocently absurd, and then as a joke, that I was prepared to rescind if they gave me a funny look, answered “Herman Bigglesworth” when they asked me for my name. However they never gave me the funny look, and instead had me spell it out on paper. Another hour later we found ourselves driving by our very own apartments that we had left hours earlier. About 2 blocks beyond our apartments the bus turned right, made a left and drove about a ¼ mile down a muddy alley. We had travelled and waited for nearly 3 hours to go about 1/3 a mile from our front doors. Then the bus stopped. One of the reporters sighed and slapped her forehead.
“Ahhhhhh, I am so very sorry, but my colleague forgot to bring the camera” she apologetically stated.
“Oh, that’s ok, we don’t need our pictures in the paper” Alyssa and I said, hoping it would convince them to put an end to the journey.
“Ahhhhhh, I am so very sorry, but my colleague, she wishes to wait for the camera so we may shoot pictures.”
And so, in a muddy alleyway with a quizzical, toothless old man peering in the bus , we sat, freezing our asses off for another hour before the camera arrived, all just 1/3 a mile from our warm apartments.
Finally, after the camera came, we were shown to the door of the shelter. From the outside you could smell the cat urine pungently flavoring the damp air around. It made me hold my breath as we opened the creaky iron door. Two flights up and we opened another door where instantaneously pandemonium broke loose. Cats flew off walls, and skidded across the wet tile floor. Cats dropped from the ceiling. Cats commit suicide and jumped out windows. The old woman screeched at the suicidal cats. Cats poured from under mattresses and out of desks. Cats seem to come from everywhere and ran back and forth, yowling for help. At one point a cat jumped thru a raggy curtain and hit a Chinese woman in the face, knocking her glasses to the floor, breaking them. I did what I could not to laugh at the chaos.
I spotted a small orange cat that strikingly resembled Harold Sparks, II, and lunged for him. Getting bitten and slashed by a sea of other cats I decided to plow my way thru the masses with my feet before reaching blindly again. After 5 minutes of chasing, I finally had the quivering ball of stinky fur, and I wasn’t going to let him go. “DONE!” I thought. I have my gato, now I can go home. Alyssa kept searching for the perfect feline for her family however, so I followed her around the cold, cat urine soaked, third floor apartment. It wasn’t too long before I noticed I wasn’t the only one following Alyssa. A small black and white, mangy looking cat followed her like a shadow and would bat at her whenever she’d bend down low enough. When I brought it to her attention she picked up the little guy and he immediately began to purr. Then he swatted her in the nose and purred some more.
“This cat has some serious issues!” she said as we both laughed. She tossed him down and kept looking for the perfect cat for her kids. Yet still, the black cat followed. After a few more amusing events in which the black cat demonstrated he was a comical genius, I couldn’t take it any longer. “Damn, damn, damn!! I’m so weak! I’ll take em both.”
Alyssa finally decided on a feline; we posed for some pictures and finally made our way to the awaiting dinosaur minibus. When we got home I let the cats out of the bag (yes, I had to keep them in a black zipper bag for the ride). The orange one ran for cover immediately while the black one stepped out casually, licked his crotch, looked around, and headed for the couch where he made himself at home, spread out. It was as if he had planned it from the moment he saw us.
The next day we got a call from Trisha saying she was very sorry. “About what Trisha?” we asked.
“I am so very sorry, but the newspaper seems to have made a mistake. Or maybe you made a mistake?”
On the front page of the Shaanxi National Newspaper is the story of 2 big hearted Americans who saved 3 cats and donated some money to help keep the others alive. The two Americans, Alyssa Netter and Herman Bigglesworth, both loved cats and were happy to help.
We laughed and finalized our name choices for the cats. Leonard Bigglesworth the 1st, and Chairman Meow are now part of the family.
A brief history...
Ok. Here tis. The inaugural posting! And what a weak one I plan on making it.
Elizabeth and I left the US on November 1st and arrived in Hong Kong the following day. We then headed thru Shenzhen, the base city my new employer, and on up to Xi’an, in Shaanxi province, our new home away from home. In Xi’an we have a great and humungous apartment that overlooks smog and a pine/bamboo park on the ground level. On the weekends we find ourselves being a bit of a zoo exhibit, as local Chinese residents wander by to catch a glimpse of the rare, hairy westerner. I am usually happy to oblige and even show them a bit of lower back fur if I’m feeling especially generous.
Since arriving, Elizabeth has been the most productive. She signed up for intensive Mandarin classes at a local and prestigious university, going 5 days a week for the past couple months. I, on the other hand, have done next to nothing, and have excelled at it. Up until just the other day, when I finally cracked the code for being able to post on this site, I had not touched an airplane. I had, however, learned how to give CPR to babies and jump out of a simulated burning airplane into a shallow pool and swim into a life raft—something extremely useful for flying around arid Central China.
![](/cgi-bin/"http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h171/archie401/shenzhen_emergency_procedures_049.jpg")
We have done a bit of exploring, mainly locally, and have visited many incredible historic sites that I’ll include pictures of. Yet with the uncertainty of when I was to begin work, we were unable to venture too far off…until now. I have begun being a productive member of the world’s society again, and with that have been given a regular schedule that will allow us to venture off more frequently and have stupid-silly adventures here and there.
Ok—there you go- now you’re all caught up. I have written a few postings here and there which I’ll place after this one, so let’s just go from here.
Elizabeth and I left the US on November 1st and arrived in Hong Kong the following day. We then headed thru Shenzhen, the base city my new employer, and on up to Xi’an, in Shaanxi province, our new home away from home. In Xi’an we have a great and humungous apartment that overlooks smog and a pine/bamboo park on the ground level. On the weekends we find ourselves being a bit of a zoo exhibit, as local Chinese residents wander by to catch a glimpse of the rare, hairy westerner. I am usually happy to oblige and even show them a bit of lower back fur if I’m feeling especially generous.
Since arriving, Elizabeth has been the most productive. She signed up for intensive Mandarin classes at a local and prestigious university, going 5 days a week for the past couple months. I, on the other hand, have done next to nothing, and have excelled at it. Up until just the other day, when I finally cracked the code for being able to post on this site, I had not touched an airplane. I had, however, learned how to give CPR to babies and jump out of a simulated burning airplane into a shallow pool and swim into a life raft—something extremely useful for flying around arid Central China.
We have done a bit of exploring, mainly locally, and have visited many incredible historic sites that I’ll include pictures of. Yet with the uncertainty of when I was to begin work, we were unable to venture too far off…until now. I have begun being a productive member of the world’s society again, and with that have been given a regular schedule that will allow us to venture off more frequently and have stupid-silly adventures here and there.
Ok—there you go- now you’re all caught up. I have written a few postings here and there which I’ll place after this one, so let’s just go from here.
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