If, in the course of my lifetime, I ever say "I can't do this" or "I give up," I want you to remind me that I once, single-handedly, navigated the Beijing Capitol Airport. And after a 13 hour flight.
More on Beijing later. First, that flight.
Continental Flight 89 took off from Newark, New Jersey at 12:05 on Thursday, August 19. The airplane was new, and huge, the largest airplane I've ever been on.
Continental Flight 89. The flight attendant told me that the plane was brand new.
So, the flight was scheduled for 13+ hours, and the course took me right over the North Pole! Each seatback has a small, personal TV to keep us occupied. The TVs offered movies (about 50, a mix of old and new releases), TV shows (mostly from Showtime and the Discovery Channel), games (like Bookworm and Bejeweled), and a flight map/info that showed exactly where the plane was on its route. I passed over Canada, Greenland, Russia, and Mongolia on my way to China! To keep myself busy between naps and meals, I watched the film Grey Gardens (the movie, not the documentary) and...
Seatback TV Sets. I watched a number of programs during my flight.
...Frontier House! I loved that show! It really helped me prepare for China. I mean, they were surviving in a new place with absolutely nothing, at least I have markets I can shop at.
TV was, of course, only one of my distractions. I also got in a few short naps. Very short. Like, 3 hours total during the flight. We were fed 3 or 4 separate times while en route. I ate: pepper steak, rice, a cheese omelet, potato gratin, a tossed salad, a fruit salad, a hot dog, vanilla ice cream...seriously, I felt like the food cart was coming past my seat every ten minutes or so. And, honestly, the food was pretty good. I was very surprised.
The flight, as I said, lasted for over 13 hours. And never, once, in that time did the sun go down. Actually, from my perspective, the sun never went down. At all. For 22 straight hours. This was, quite literally, the longest day I've ever experienced.
My flight touched down in Beijing at 1:50pm on Friday, August 20. I arrived in Beijing 31 hours after I left Jacksonville, but with a travel time of only about 18 hours up until this point. I lept ahead in time by 12 hours!
Total Distance Traveled. The final mileage for my flight from Newark to Beijing.
The Beijing airport is massive. Huge. Gargantuan. Larger than any city I've ever lived it. Seriously, its massive. Also, there is no air conditioning. My flight disembarked, and we were herded through the first area, a large domed structure, mostly devoid of other people. This first section served as the immigration area where passports and visas are observed and stamped. After getting my passport stamped, I made my way, following a series of signs, to a train that would lead me MILES AND MILES away to the baggage claim area. MILES! I spoke with a woman at an info kiosk, showed her my itinerary print out, and she informed me that I would need to get my luggage in Beijing, go through customs, and then re-check my bag for my flight to Xi'an. I did so, stopping off to exchange money along the way. My very first trip through customs consisted of walking past a man in a uniform who nodded and smiled at me.
After leaving that section of the airport, I followed signs that lead me up an escalator, down a flight of stairs, and then onto a bus that would shuttle me to my next flight. The bus went, and this is no exaggeration, miles outside of the airport, through a small domestic area of the city, back up an on ramp, through a massive interchange, and then finally back into the airport. I had been scared of China during my flight, I had begun to regret my decision, I was worried I wouldn't be able to make it. But, sitting on that bus, passing small houses and billboards covered in Chinese characters, sitting beside a man to whom my only manner of communication was smiling, I had a sense of awe wash over me. I was in Beijing, and I had managed to travel there by myself. I was going to be just fine.
A porter met me as I was getting off the bus. He told me that I was the only person connecting to the Xi'an flight from Beijing and that Continental had sent him to make sure I that I made my flight. I'm not entirely sure how true that was, but he did lead me the rest of the way through the airport. It wasn't much further, no more trains or escalators or buses, just a short walk to security. He talked to me about America, about the difficulty Chinese have in going there, and about how he was saving money to go. You can imagine that since our currency is work 7 times theirs', a trip to the US would be quite expensive. He helped me check my bag and told me that it was overweight. The sign said that the cut off was 20 kilos, and my bag weighed 50 pounds. At a conversion of about a half a kilo to a pound, I was over by quite a bit. He told me he had them waive the fee for me, but later asked that I just pay him the fee directly. $40 is a lot of money is China, I smiled at him and looked him in the eye, and I said "How about I give you a tip for helping me?" He smiled at me as I handed him the equivalent of $10. He pointed me toward my next gate and we parted ways.
I passed through security and made my way to Terminal 24 to wait for my final flight to Xi'an...
The Floating Boy. Just the boy from the safety instructions on the plane. I thought he was cute.
Hayden
This is all going to make An amazing chapter for your autobiography once you're the leading expert on Chinese translation.
ReplyDeleteBlog2print.com (or several others like ti) will bind this blog as a book when you get home, too!
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