The Road to Shanghai and Jintan

While my last few blog posts seem inspired by the narrative devices new-wave cinema, we’ll now start where I should have… at the beginning.   

Having a Ball on Delta

We had an intense flight from Atlanta to Tokyo, where Mike, Erin, and I spent 13 hours in what Erin dubbed “steerage”.  I felt simpatico with Jack from Titanic, or the chickens featured in PETA documentaries.  Debbie, the Chinese teacher from Arundel, and the facilitator of our journey, was up a few sections with Sarah Lynn, our administrator from AHS.  We found out later in China that the seating was less dense up front, allowing them their own group of seats to stretch out.  Needless to say, the three of us felt jealous, having just squirmed in an Altoids’ can for half of a day. 

However, what Delta lacked in leg room, they made up for in movie selection.  I spent an hour mesmerized by the thousands of movies and television shows to watch.  After watching “Unforgiven” (clearly, I wasn’t going to let movies change my upbeat mood), I tried to get some sleep. 

Erin brought along an amazing travel aide- a beach ball.  She waited until we were at 15,000 feet, and then inflated our sleeping assistant.  It’s nearly impossible for most of us to just put our heads back and fall asleep (Mike did just fine).  Like many of our students demonstrate after lunch, we really need to put our heads down to optimize the sleeping experience.  The food tray is good for a few minutes, before millions of years of evolution remind your back of the recent installation of upright positioning.  Ball solves this problem.

So, Erin shared Ball with me after she had spent a few hours resting, and I was finally able to get some rest.

However, Ball is only good for so long; it traps heat, and can become rather slippery to maneuver after a few hours.  It was definitely the best sleep I got on our plane ride, however.  I highly recommend it—your seat mates might look at you weirdly at first, but they’ll probably have one on their next trans-pacific stint.   

Our last few hours were marred by severe turbulence that made an already-antsy bunch much more so.  When it was time to land, we ramble-rumbled towards the runway, only to be bounced off the ground and unceremoniously pulled back up into the skies.  Winds had grabbed underneath the plane, making it dangerous to land.  We had to make another go-round at the runway, which would take 30 minutes.  The frustration and tension was palpable.  People needed to stretch their legs (and not die landing).  Our second attempt was only slightly less violent, as we bounced on the ground several times before sticking a landing.  I had an image of a sumo wrestler dismounting from a pummel horse. When it was finished, the entire plane erupted in applause.  It was a rather surreal scene—one that was even more noteworthy when I turned on the television in China 12 hours later to see the news from San Francisco.  Our plane was the same model.   

We got out easy.  Thanks Delta.  Thanks, Ball. 

Tokyo

We had a few hours layover in Tokyo, where we enjoyed Japanese vending machines and noodles.  We saw our first porcelain hole in the wall in the restrooms.  Talking bathrooms so early in our trip was a bonding experience for the Arundel enclave- we all knew each other professionally, but needless to say such banter allowed us to connect on a higher level.    

When it was time for us to board another airplane to Shanghai, we had 3 hours to go.

Easy.  China awaited.

Hello China

After an easy run through customs, our crew of educational experts met our host, Kent.   He had a driver ready to take our luggage and show us to Jintan, a 3 hour drive from the airport.

The time differential really never made any sense to me then, and I still haven’t taken the time to figure it out now.  It makes me sleepy:

We left Atlanta at roughly 11am on Friday.   We landed in China at 930pm on Saturday. 

And yet, when Kent offered us an opportunity to see Shanghai (which was an hour in the opposite direction of our destination); the five of us were all on board. 

The buzz of being in a new country, a new culture, a new world altogether is simply electric, sleep cycles be damned.

Off we went, on the highways of Eastern China. 

The Road to Shanghai

I immediately noted to the group that the highways in China were extremely well paved (“better than Pennsylvania”, noted two of my colleagues who were born in the Keystone State).   These highways were filled with 18-wheelers and very little else, once we left the airport scene.   

The skyline was dark, and the road was not very well lit.  However, the horizon was peppered with high rise buildings, cranes, and steel skeletons awaiting completion. 

Shanghai Night

Our driver clearly wasn’t familiar with the downtown area of Shanghai.   In hindsight, if I was picking up associates for my boss at BWI, and he told me on a whim to take them to see downtown Philadelphia, I’d be a little turned around myself. 

We were dropped off in the heart of Shanghai, and walked a dozen city blocks to the famous skyline.  Unfortunately, the lights of the skyscrapers had been turned off long before we arrived, as they do every night after 11:30pm. 

How wonderfully energy efficient. 

The city is divided between the old and new Shanghai, two parts of the city separated by the Huangpu River, with different cultures, different histories, and different planned trajectories.  Even in the dark, it was easy to tell the difference between the two sides-- I was rather happy to be in the older part, the classical European architecture meshed with Chinese culture in a way that made me feel like I was in your classic stereotypical urban Chinatown neighborhood. 

The Apple Store, Gap advertisements, and Starbucks didn’t help defeat that perception.

The transient population in Shanghai was eye-opening.  The Chinese regulate migration and residency strictly, and yet this area had the same amount of bench sleeping as downtown Washington (perhaps not Baltimore). 

There were windows in the high rises pulsating heavy dance beats and neon brilliance.  When we stopped to use the restroom in a hotel by our car, we were asked if we knew where the disco was.  I wish. 

We were all starving.  I was so happy that we all chose a back alley restaurant whose only sign was a neon tomato.  We ordered dim sum.  It was going to take a while, so we went to a convenience store, where we each bought a weird bag of chips to hold us over.  I got fried noodle crisps, with a grumpy girl on the cover—what great advertising.  Someone got tomato and beef potato chips.  These foods need to come west.  The dim sum, piping hot from the neon tomato, was amazing.   This was a great start to our culinary adventure, which was one of the biggest motivating factors in coming.

Hello (Goodbye) to Jintan Hotel (no.1)

We shuffled back in our car, and were taken four hours to Jintan, which is located in Changzhou Province. 

Jintan is a lesser special economic zone, known for the production of brown rice vinegar and a burgeoning solar panel industry. 

We were shown inside our hotel, where our concierge was sleeping below the counter underneath a mosquito net, wearing a silk pajama suit.  She unzipped it, handed our driver five keys, and got directly back in her net/bed after she smiled and wished us goodnight.

The hotel smelled of stale smoke, not unlike a hotel casino in New Jersey.  I didn’t care. 

The smell grew stronger on the fourth floor where our rooms were.  I didn’t care.

Our driver opened up my room.  I unpacked.  I showered.  The shower had such powerful water pressure (and the tub such a horrible sealing) that it flooded my bathroom floor.  I didn’t care. 

I collapsed on the bed, which was as hard as the floor.  I didn’t care. 

I spent a half hour perusing 12 stations of communist television.  One was CNN international.  Saw the plane business in San Francisco, counted my lucky stars, and passed out.  We had all day to sleep in…

Change of Plans

…no we didn’t.

Debbie, our liaison, mover and shaker knocked at my door five hours later.  We were moving hotels.  I was told to pack up and be downstairs as soon as possible.

Abrupt changes would be a dominant characteristic of our trip. 

Next time… more abrupt changes in plan, teaching teachers how to teach, and Lazy Susans.