Prodigal stunned - part 3

Hong Kong!  What an exciting prospect! I had always known I was going to visit it sometime during this school year, but a free trip?  Even one that probably involves me spending a day in a lineup to get a visa?  Sweet!

Everyone was happy, and stopped worrying about my impending deport-date; old students advised where I should go ("the racetrack! Beer and beauties!"), and I even began to look into movies that would be out/concerts I could check out of various varieties...good times.

After a couple weeks of radio silence regarding my flight date to Hong Kong, there was finally some crazy news: one of the Chinese staff had actually done some work!

While reading a document, the person in question happened upon an interesting tidbit, that being that only Hong Kong nationals could get mainland work visas in Hong Kong (after a recent policy change).  This meant that anybody else had to do it in their home country.  It took about 6 and a half weeks (give or take) for somebody to actually read this document after it became apparent that mistakes had been made.  Efficiency.

Thus I found myself going out to the Jinan airport (because, you know, organised support network) on my own dime.  Explaining why I was going to be gone for a week (Halloween week, no less) to the students left them positively agog at the lack of organisational facility displayed, once I explained all the steps leading from June to this moment.  Their consolations ("haha, it's China!") rung in my ears as I took off for the most travel-logged week of my life.

Prodigal stunned - part 4

A weird few days led up to my unexpectedly sleeping for a few hours on the plane.  I've never really been able to do that, because planes (and my cheap company puts us on Air China for obvious reasons) aren't designed for anybody over 6 feet tall, so it was with patent shock that I woke to find that time had, indeed, passed.

I was never able to fully relax back in the real world, because I knew I was really just stealing time from myself.  It was obviously nice to eat large pieces of boneless meat, breathe smog-less air, drink scum-less water, and sleep on a concrete-less bed, but I knew I was going to pay for it all in the form of an absolute deluge of sub-par assignment marking upon my return - plus there was the ever-present spectre of another looming trans-pacific flight to tug at my zen state.

In a strange way, though, getting to the airport again was also a relief, because it meant my few days of shopping for exotic items my friends had ordered (E45 cream? What the hell is that?), as well as being castigated for tracking dirt into my temporary domicile, were over.  I've become rather inured to flying over the Pacific Ocean since my initial hellish flight to Auckland in 2011, but it doesn't mean I don't hate almost every minute of it.

There's something about being in what amounts to a swiftly careening jerky machine for half a day that will never fail to put my teeth on edge.  The necessary dehydration makes my eyes burn after an hour, which is usually about when they get around to giving you the option to watch heavily-edited movies (for content AND duration!)...which I would need a clockwork orange-like device to make watchable, because my eyes automatically close.  

My thought for this trip was that if it could make me somehow teleport directly to my destination, I would have announced to all the passengers aboard that I was going to do it, and then immediately poured hot coffee all over my crotch for their amusement at my pain.  Alas, that wouldn't actually work...the only uptick is that in the future I will scoff at puny flights from Canada to England/Europe.  8 hours? You can barely get uncomfortable in that time!

Prodigal stunned - part 5

Just clutching my head.  Clutching my head, and thinking that I didn't want to die on a concrete bridge in China; if a bridge it must be, then perhaps one of those picturesque wooden ones, but never a horrible overpass bridge outside the Jinan airport.

When I arrived there was no school car to meet me (despite my inquiry), so I shrugged, expelled some colourful language, and went to read the bus information board.  Now, I can't read Chinese at all, but I can recognize the symbols for my city (the first one looks like a little factory! Cute!), and saw that the bus was at 12:30pm.

I got to the bus by 12:08pm, loaded my bag (with precious goods for friends and myself alike garnered from the real world), and decided I had enough time to go use the bathroom in the nearby KFC.  When I got back (12:11pm), the bus was gone.  Gone.

I went from bus to bus bearing my city's characters and checked the cargo holds to ensure that, yes, the bus was gone.  At this point, a young bus driver came out and, with the use of typing simple things into my iphone, assured me that the bus had left at 12:10.

"Well, shit!" I said.
"dui dui, eshit!" he agreed.

I could get on the 1pm bus, or get a taxi for about 30 dollars.  I decided to go look for a cash machine (only having about 20 dollars on hand in RMB), only to be disappointed by the lack of a bank machine of any kind in the 'international airport'.  I went out to the bus area to wait for the 1 (after calling to get the bus company to hold my bag for me at the office in Zibo), only to be enthusiastically waved over by the young driver.

I was in a small group of people, who were all shepherded into a taxi - which I was confidently assured was going to Zibo for ten dollars each.

Now, the first thing you often do in a Chinese taxi is look at the driver's license picture - prominently displayed in the front of the cab.  This guy's licence was not in accord with the female-ness of the driver, but we didn't complain too much; people borrow people's cars from time to time.

She tore out of the airport and immediately pulled into a gas station.  This makes sense, as it's about a 90 minute drive, but after a short exchange with the attendant she motored out onto the highway.  I breathed as much of a sigh of relief as one can in a car full of oniony Chinese men.

As I reflected on the circumstances that led me to this position..... she stopped driving.  In the middle (left lane, too) of a 3 lane overpass bridge.  My first thought was that she had run out of gas, and my second was that I was going to die.  Semi-trucks and overloaded buses were veritably whizzing by, blowing their horns and generally informing us that we were going to die if we didn't move....move she did, at a glacial 45-degree angle pace across the busy lanes to get a better vantage point of her missed turnoff.  It is easily the most terrified I have been in China, and all I could do was put my face in my hands.

My taxi driver, who was borrowing someone else's car, had no idea how to drive to the next town over.

We got there, and I got my bag back, but it was a fitting final point in this inane quest to overcome Chinese incompetence.