December 31, 2008: It's weird, i get this sinking feeling whenever i arrive back home, the closest thing i've experienced to depression, as circumstances are actually quite good. Photos from Hong Kong and Tianjin.
It doesn't matter where the home is or what it's like either, cos it's happened when i've gone back to my old place in Australia, back to our nice apartment in Songyuan, our dank migrant workers' hole in Minhang, and now our average room in Shanghai.
Anyway, so last month we were staring down another visa-enforced tour of shame - this time to Hong Kong. Actually it was possible to renew the visas here in Shanghai via the various backdoor operators who are now back in business after the Olympics, but i calculated that HK train tickets + accommodation + outrageous HK prices for a day equalled a saving of about 500 yuan.
We wanted to catch up with Dell, our pal from Kansas, over xmas and he was up in Tianjin, the northern port city near Beijing. So we plotted a whirlwind 9-day triangular route from Shanghai to HK to Tianjin and back to Shanghai.
The critical part of this whole triangle was that we were to take a plane from Shenzhen (just outside HK and much cheaper flights) to Tianjin on xmas eve. This was to be the first time we would take a Chinese domestic flight, so we were a little nervous but generally kept the faith, reassuring ourselves by arriving at the Shenzhen airport 14 hours early and sleeping the night there before our 9am flight, saving between 150 and 300 yuan in the process.
After a bad night's sleep we awoke to the sound of the trilingual passenger announcements. If you think of all the passenger announcements at a busy airport, then multiply that by three, the result is the speakers are pretty much always blaring. In this case i could understand 2 out of the 3 languages, the third being Cantonese. I'd heard Cantonese spoken quite a few times before and been fascinated by its distinctive sound in relation to Mandarin, but i could never nail down what was distinctive about it. In that airport, with Cantonese versions directly following the Mandarin announcements, one word i kept hearing over and over - aeroplane - the mandarin "fei-ji" becomes "fuyh-guyh". Suddenly it was clear what the distinction is: Cantonese is Mandarin spoken as though one is retarded! "Fei-ji"...."Fuyh-guyh"!
And then i looked at the departure board. Our flight wasn't on it. Cancelled. China Southern airlines ran one flight a day - that one. Bear in mind, xmas eve, we'd already - voluntarily of course - been in that airport for about 12 hours, and you can probably imagine the general state of shatterment. However, one thing we hadn't considered was the truly ridiculous number of airlines operating domestic routes in China. I thought they would return our money (internet special price, 75% discount - the reason we could actually afford to be flying) and tell us to go over to another airline desk and buy a ticket (0% discount, out of the question).
But - and maybe this is because so many flights get cancelled - they have what seems to me to be an amazing system of co-operation between airlines, whereby with a slip of paper and a red stamp they transferred us to another airline who were running a flight 3 hours later.
Unfortunately the other airline, Shenzhen Airlines (even cities have their own airlines, it's ridiculous!) was having some computer problem and they said they couldn't tell me whether they had seats for us. They told me to come back in 2 hours. So i went across to their ticket sales desk and claimed i wanted a ticket on that fight. It seemed the sales desk's computer was more receptive - and they didn't have 2 seats, the girl said.
So back i went to the China Southern counter, and told them the result of my sleuthing. After about 10 minutes of rapidfire phone conversation, my conclusion was verified, and they finally agreed to switch us to a third company's flight, this one 4 hours later, but at least it had seats.
I had expected that for domestic flights it would almost be like the good old days of air travel - just strolling to the gate and hopping on as you get on a bus. But the security checks were the most thorough i've ever witnessed, much more even than international flights from Heathrow, Hong Kong, wherever. The xray operators analyse each bag for a good 30 seconds, and the walk-through metal detector is so sensitive it picks up the zipper of your jeans. Anyone who sets it off, which is about 50% of all passengers, has to stand on a block and get the full-body scan with the hand-held metal detector, arms and legs spread etc. They were totally undiscriminating - everyone got to experience being "of middle-eastern appearance".
We finally got through. and into the gentle care of Hainan Airlines. Hainan is an island that was only given province status a few years ago. I would venture to guess it was Hainan Airlines' only plane. Either way, they afforded us a great view of the Guangdong pollution, followed by Jiangxi mountains, followed by a couple of excellent products:
It seemed to me, when i saw this out the window, that we might have just had a near miss with another plane:
Seriously, the photo doesn't show it very well but that vapour trail was maybe 200 metres from my window!
Our friend Dell has a very cushy life. He actually still works for the school in Songyuan that brought us here, only he's been dispatched to the Tianjin Economic Development Area as private tutor to the chairman of the area government. The chairman is so busy that he only has class about 3 or 4 times a week, and never for longer than 2 hours. So he works about 6-8 hours a week.He never has class before 6.30pm and he never continues beyond 9.30. So all day every day is pure free time for Dell and not only that, the chairman comes to Dell's house when he wants English class. And not only that, because the chairman comes to him, the school boss back in Songyuan has set him up with a swell apartment designed to impress the chairman (and help him decide whether to allow the boss to open up a school in TEDA).
We actually passed through the TEDA last year, on our way to the port, and the first impression of it then was "incredibly rich, incredibly tacky". It's actually about 50km away from Tianjin, and is a city unto itself. Quite reasonably, the English name got abbreviated to TEDA, but then, once its status as a Special Economic Zone (tax free for foreign companies) ran out, they decided to give it a Chinese name...a Chinese name based on the sound of "TEDA": Taida. It happens to mean "Peaceful Achievement", which i'm sure they thought was very cool. But really, a Chinese city named after an abbreviation - an English abbreviation at that?
In fact, when i think about it, it's actually sums up quite well the non-Chinese, and indeed non-anything, completely alien, culture-free character of the place: endless rows of the same apartment building, broken only by 8-lane roads, Disneyland theme park-like "European style" buildings, "drive-thru" fast food outlets, a giant elevated freeway running through the middle of it. Etc.
And if the place lacks a bit of life, it's not due to our friend Dell. As his classes never finish later than 9.30pm and he never has to get up in the morning, he goes out most nights. As a result he knows all the bands (mostly Filipinos, Colombians and Trinidadians), all the bouncers, all the bar staff, and all the regulars in all the local bars. That despite knowing very little Chinese.
The north had had snow storms just a couple of days earlier, so we got to experience a snowy xmas. "White xmas" would be the wrong term because it very quickly turns brown in many places.
Unfortunately on xmas day we were in no state to be frolicking in the snow, or anywhere at all. The minute we arrived at Dell's place he sprung upon us tickets to a 1488RMB xmas eve celebration being held by the government (the price was printed proudly on the front of the fancy envelopes alongside "merry christmas"), which the chairman had obtained for us when he heard Dell had friends coming. Thanks, chairman, as a token of my appreciation i won't name you. So we threw down our bags and, showered and headed out to the palatial, 5-star "Harborside" restaurant, a massive buffet with unlimited beer. We were then hustled across the brand-new hotel compound to the indoor tennis court, the exterior of which looked like a 17th century church built by Dale Alcock Homes (apologies to Macca).
Inside the "gala" was being held - one of those events where everyone sits in silence on McDonanlds chairs for 4 hours while an endless roll-call of half-hearted singers and dancers perform in front of a backing poster proclaiming the purpose of the event, accompanied by screeching loudspeakers. In this case, the specially-made backing poster stretching across the stage showed a giant santa claus of the coca-cola type, along with the English words, "Meeting in Binhai, Sharing the prosperity" (Binhai is the county TEDA lies inside). A rather ironic choice of slogan, given the ostentatious price printed on the front of everyone's fancy ticket envelopes. As a finishing touch, facing the stage on the far wall was a massive olympic sign that had clearly just been hastily painted by some dodgy workmen.
Thankfully we came late and they couldn't find seats for us, so we stood at the back and smoked and talked as the dancers on stage did the bare minimum. In true Chinese style, of course, the audience of party goons and their families matched their enthusiasm when it came to applauding. After about 1/2 an hour we were able to slip away and hit the bars, long and hard, which we proceeded to do each night thereafter.
