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.
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