| JOURNAL FOR 09/29/00 | |
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| <== Last episode, our hero... | |
| (09/29/00)
This description really needs a look at the many photographs at http://www.marmotgraphics.com/jiangmen/0929.html to really do it justice, and I very much suggest you check it out!
The park (which costs 10 yuan to get in) was a large, well-kept and a very pretty place, and crowded with people going up and down the mountain along winding roads. The travel books say that it will take you three hours to climb it on foot, and I agree. We drove up the winding roads, past many walkers with parasols, many rest stops well stocked with cold drinks, and so on. At the top, where the overlook of the city was, there were great floods of people milling about. The majority of people at the summit were (according to Shasha) from some big insurance company. There were very large groups of them in primary colored t-shirts - green, red, yellow, blue, etc. Hundreds. And as we later discovered, there were a lot of overseas Chinese tourists there, especially from Taiwan. The grounds were beautifully set up in huge flower gardens; however, the sun and steam from the unendingly hot and humid weather boiled all the fun out of it. I was soon overheating, and the trip got to be a real drag. One of the features of the site (supposedly) was an aviary, which they charged another 10 yuan to get in. Most of the birds were in the trees and unviewable, with a few exceptions. There was a small collection of moth-eaten stuffed birds - and since the building was air conditioned, it wasn't a total loss. There was also a very lame bird stunt show, showing things like a Parrot playing a xylophone. Sort of. The audience did go nuts for one feature - parrots that were trained to swoop into the audience and pick up money from their hands! Several of the people excitedly waving around money were using dollar bills! Of course, the money disappears in the bird house...
The drive back and forth to the park and the drive later out to the airport were wonderful shots of city life, going along through endless mazes of expressways with tons of traffic. Traffic was building all day; we heard from people that earlier trips of China Seas people out to the airport were slowed down by the start of a long weekend for the Chinese for their National Day, celebrating the founding of the People's Republic. At five in the afternoon, the people leaving on the China Southern plane for Los Angeles started to congregate in the 'Red Couch' area on the main lobby with their luggage and their children, and head out when Shasha call for them to get on the bus to Baiyun (White Cloud) Airport, to leave China. We had already said our good-byes to people who had already left, traded e-mail and regular addresses, and spent large chunks of the last day stuffing all of the clothes and purchases and baby stuff into bulging suitcases. We got on a bus, and set off on a last run through Guangzhou as night started to fall.
The Baiyun (White Cloud) Airport is not all that big, as compared to LA or Chicago's airports. Most people in China use trains for long-distance trips, unless they have some money or must for their jobs. But tonight, as we got there, the place was packed. As we got there, a line for the International departures was beginning to form...all of the places served by one gate. I think there were ten flights leaving through the international process that night, and they were all to leave via that one gate...and everyone had a huge pile of luggage, including us. This included all of the stuff we'd bought for people back home, and the extra baby stuff.
Baiyun is NOT air conditioned, by the way. And the more confined areas, loaded with people, were stiflingly hot. I'll also point out that the Chinese in line were not necessarily staying in any sort of order; people would cut in front of you ruthlessly, and the devil take the hindmost. The 'line' really was more a limited-direction mass, not anything organized or orderly. I don't know if I can really bring across how really awful this part of the process was - hot, boring, and nerve-wracking. I can only wish you good luck in getting through it without wanting to kill something. There were a couple of bright lights. A little Chinese girl and her mother were checking out one of the China Seas babies. Her original 'what's with these odd foreigners and their Chinese babies' attitude was melted down when we introduced her to the babies - her suspicions turned into smiles, and she ended up mugging for the camera for Susan. A Chinese couple resident in the USA were talking to us in line, dismissing the crowds and tough controls and whatnot as nothing new, nothing odd. They were funny and friendly, and I enjoyed their comments greatly.
The check-in area was a mob scene right out of Dante. Tons of crowding-pushing people coming into rough lines, big family screaming matches, people trying to cut in front of you in line, and so on. I managed to stop one guy from doing that by my best angry-glare-from-a-height, and growling to him in Chinese to hold on, buster, and wait your turn. He looked at me in utter dumbfounded astonishment; my Chinese worked on him, at least! It didn't work so well on a grandma who was making cute-baby noises at Meredith. I fished out some cue cards I had, and tried to read off a message that explained that we had just adopted her, etc., and she gave me a blank look. I just handed the card to her (which had the same message in written Chinese), and she excitedly told her family about us with lots of pointing and smiles. Another warning to the families coming through...there are certain things you will be asked for over and over, and you had better be able to pull them up in short order every time. The airport people have no time to screw around with you, and the Chinese Immigration people are seriously snotty. They are:
And so we went upstairs, and the rest is continued on the next rock... |
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Jim: At the farewell dinner, a couple in the China Seas group spoke to us about a possible trip up to the White Cloud Mountain, overlooking the city of Guangzhou in a big park near the airport. I was unsure as to whether to go, but Susan suggested that I should go and take pictures. So about 10 am, we boarded a bus with Shasha, our guide, and headed off to the park.
Notice that I've gotten around mentioning the actual view of the city of Guangzhou, the reason everyone supposedly came? Well, this is it. Typical Guangzhou. A dark gray haze with the buildings barely peeking through - humidity and pollution well mixed. That is the typical sky in Guangzhou, the typical look at the sky at all times- a heavy, hot overcast.
Everywhere on the streets, the few Chinese red flags that I had seen in the city were joined by thousands and thousands of their cousins. Every building seemed to be flying a flag in anticipation of the national holiday. And the evening rush-hour traffic combined with long-weekend traffic was very heavy. We played tag with dozens of packed to overcapacity buses; everyone inside looked hot, tired and ready to go home. We passed by the train station, and saw a vast mob of thousands and thousands of people waiting outside in the parking lot to even get into the terminal!
Meredith was really good through the long wait. Some of the older kids departing tried their best to deal with the boredom of the long wait in the line for the international flights, which must have taken two hours. And the adults tried coping with it all as best as they could.
Finally, we ended up going through the first gate and into the check-in areas.
Leaving the check-in area, we were much lighter, but we still had a ton of 'carryon' luggage with us. As we started to get on the escalator to go up to the next level, we saw a woman fall backward down the escalator; the Chinese watched in horror and silence as she struggled to her feet, but a Western man (working for the airport, I think) hurried to her aid.