5am. Shower. Change. One last sweep of the house for things I’ve probably left behind. Hit the road. I-93 south is slow but moving. I can’t imagine how people do this everyday. The horizon glows a dark plum color that intensifies to bright orange in the time it takes us to drive into the city, a special treat for us and all others who are awake before dawn. Detour around the Callahan Tunnel. Terminal B for tickets and coffee and I’m off. A beautiful day for a flight.
I’m flying Air Canada mainly because it's a nice airline but also because I accrue Star Alliance mileage points. But a pleasant effect of this flight is my stopover in Toronto. Every seat in each waiting hall comes equipped with a clean, stone table, an electronics charging unit, and an iPad. Yeah. An iPad. I opted to charge my computer and check my emails from the tablet. The airport is clean, modern, and organized. The basic signs, gates and infrastructure are stylish. I’m tempted to drop three Canadian dollars and order a Coke from my iPad (oh, what service!) but I’d rather not tempt my bladder. I’ve got a window seat.
And fourteen hours on a flight is no joke. I took the window seat because on trans-Pacific flights to Asia, at least on those that originate from the east coast of the US, the plane route naturally takes the shortest distance between the two cities which in this case nearly takes us over the north pole. When looking at the GPS tracker from the small monitor plastered on the seat in front of me, the direct route the plane takes misleadingly looks more like an exaggerated, upside down U-shape that shoots the plane directly north out of Toronto to well above the Arctic Circle and into the Arctic Ocean, north of Canada. We don’t fly back over land until dipping back south from the Arctic Circle through Siberia, down the longitudinal axis of about Yakutsk, through northern China, and then down to coastal Shanghai. I would say that from the look of the route on the monitor and then confirmed from my constant peering out the window from my seat on the left side of the plane, just behind the wing, that for roughly 90% of the ride, if we were to go down in an unfortunate turn for the worse and then somehow survive the crash, sadly this would be no “Lost” (hit ABC tv show Lost) situation, we’d have minutes before freezing to death and zero chance of being reached. Nice thoughts for a fourteen hour plane ride.
One thing I learned from this particular plane ride was that Chinese people love to take advantage of duty free items. Stuff is cheap in China, true, but imported foreign goods are not. I never really understood the desire to purchase ordinary items on a plane however and I’ve never actually seen anyone do it before. But the stewards and stewardesses always roll the duty free cart down the aisles in any event, mid-flight, on all these long trips. I’ll set the stage. To my right were two Chinese people, a middle aged woman to my immediate right and a middle aged man to her immediate right, strangers to each other and to me. Directly in front of me was a flamboyant Korean-Canadian man, upper-20s. I was mid-nap but stirred awake when the frenzy began as two stewardesses stood on either end of the duty free cart in the aisle next to me. One stewardess, an old Canadian woman, no apparent skill for the Chinese language, the other, a young Chinese woman, fluent in both.
“You know, you’re up to 110 dollars at the moment. If you spend just 15 dollars more you get a free bracelet from the airline.” (Chinese stewardess to the Chinese woman in English)
“ 好. ” Hao. Okay. (Pause. Think.) “ 你有什么酒？” Ni you shenme jiu? Tell me about your liquor…
“Excuse me. Do you have cigarettes?” (Korean-Canadian to old Canadian stewardess)
“Yes.” (Checking.) “We have Marlboros, Camels…” (old Canadian stewardess)
“Oh, you just have cartons. Not individual packs.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have Pall Malls?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll take the Marlboros. Red.”
“Great.” (Dipping back down into the cart.)
“You know, you can buy them cheaper in China.” (Chinese stewardess to Korean-Canadian man)
“I can?”
“Yeah, do you speak Chinese?”
“No. Korean.”
“Well, just go to the airport and buy them there. They’re like half the price.” (giving the Korean-Canadian man a look as if to say, you’re welcome.)
(To the Canadian stewardess, rummaging for the carton) “Ahhh, excuse me, I don’t want them anymore.”
“What?”
“Nooo, no, no. I don’t want them anymore.” (Speaking louder to get her attention) “She said they’re cheaper in China.”
“What?”
“She said they’re cheaper in China.”
“Who did?”
“She did.” (pointing to the Chinese stewardess, who was mid-negotiation with the Chinese woman next to me over a bottle of Sky vodka, speaking Chinese.) “She said I shouldn’t buy them.”
The old Canadian stewardess, upon realizing she just lost a sale, turned and frowned at the young Chinese stewardess, who was occupied with the Chinese woman next to me, pretending not to notice, but clearly looking sheepish, betrayed by the Korean-Canadian man. It was pretty awkward. The woman next to me, when all was said and done, had spent roughly 125 dollars on two boxes of stuff I didn’t recognize, a bottle of vodka, and a complimentary bracelet.
As all this was taking place around me, disturbing my sleep, I opened the window shutter and looked out to find a deep orange sun just sitting on the horizon, it’s ripply edges melting and molding into the crack of land below. The sun just sat there, in a permanent form of stasis, as if frozen in time. The sun was not actually setting, I realized, we were just so far north that the sun could only be seen directly south, the frozen, cracking, Arctic ice below was in a permanent state of winter darkness, as I could only see the sun from the vantage of this 35,000 foot altitude. And we were following the sun as both we and it made our way east. A bizarre situation. The sky below was perfectly clear of clouds and I could see the the frozen ice of the Arctic and its cracks as large as canyons, rippling like lightning in all directions across the surface. I’ve seen this before, on my flight to China from New York in 2007. I chose this seat to get this view. I’m glad I didn’t sleep through it.
Meanwhile, the two Chinese people next to me were chatting in Chinese about her recent purchases, deciding, post-purchase, what was a good deal and what wasn’t, as far as I could understand anyway. The Chinese man flipped through the magazine further as the cart rolled slowly away down the aisle and came across something desirable. He showed it to the Chinese woman next to me, lifted his eyebrows and shoulders as if to say, “Eh?”, and struck with shopper’s delight, the woman threw up her arm, said, “Hey! Ni hao! Ni hao!” flapping her hand up and down in a summoning motion. The Chinese stewardess turned around and then turned back towards the old Canadian stewardess who just frowned. I went back to sleep.
Touchdown. Shanghai’s Pudong international airport. Grab my bags and wait through customs. The lady at the customs window took my passport and looked from me to my passport two or three times, turned to her coworker and showed him my picture, then turned back to me and said, “胡子.” huzi, beard. Then she asked me for a second form of ID, laughed at the childish grin beaming up at her from my I’m-21-now! face on my driver’s license, shook her head a bit and let me go. I have a beard now.
First impressions of China are vivid in my mind. The first time I came to China in 2007 for study abroad I remember getting off the plane with all my Holy Cross undergraduate friends, groggy and discombobulated, being shuffled into a large tourist bus in the late evening hours, and driving into the heart of Beijing towards the school. I sat by the window and with my face pressed up against the fogging glass gawked at the glowing billboards and the huge Chinese characters on the walls of buildings and the smog. The smells, sights, that whole drive is still permanently imprinted in my head. Shanghai strikes me in the same way, not of course, for the novelty of Chinese characters or smog, but for its huge, tall, sprawling buildings and its cosmopolitan orderliness. If Beijing is old China, traditional and at times, chaotic, Shanghai seems to be new China, orderly, planned, and international. Being shuttled into the city on Pudong’s Maglev high speed rail, the transfer onto the city’s elevated subway lines with images of the brightly colored TV tower, bottle opener building, Jinmao tower, whizzing past through the windows, suggest prosperity. Even the hostel I stayed in was pleasant and packed with international travelers.
I’m moved into my new residence now. After a brief stint in the hostel to await my appointed check-in day I’m in the international student dormitory on Fudan University’s main campus. I live in a very comfortable single room on the 20th floor of a very tall apartment building. My view looks north, away from downtown (sadly), to a cityscape of endless residential apartment blocks. I’ve got a balcony and the weather is pretty mild for February so I’ve found myself once or twice (more times actually) standing out the balcony door peering out into the great cityscape beyond. It’s peaceful so high up in the air. A nice thinking spot I suppose. In the very furthest edge of my view north, towards the Yangtze River, the buildings gloss over in haze, smog presumably, and a few factories billow smoke. But they’re pretty far away and the smog in this city is already noticeably better than I’ve experienced in either Beijing or Chengdu (a city I lived in last year).
I’m also still hearing the pop pop pops leftover from Chinese New Year (which occurred weeks ago) and for the start of the Chinese paper lantern festival. Fireworks day and night (I’m hearing them now, in fact. It’s 10am). And from my vantage point high up in the northern suburbs, pockets of low level fireworks dot the city below in dense neighborhoods, scattered all around. This was frightening when I experienced it in Beijing. Living much closer to the ground at the time, fireworks would explode right outside my bedroom window, in the dense alleyways between buildings and in hutongs, and during the day outside our classroom windows. I’m feeling slightly more removed from them here though, the fireworks are much more pleasant from this comfortable distance.
So I’m here. I’m jet-lagged. Oh, so jet-lagged. But I made it. I’m off to the Bund today to soak in the grandeur of this city and will check in with the university in the morning.
More to come!
I’m flying Air Canada mainly because it's a nice airline but also because I accrue Star Alliance mileage points. But a pleasant effect of this flight is my stopover in Toronto. Every seat in each waiting hall comes equipped with a clean, stone table, an electronics charging unit, and an iPad. Yeah. An iPad. I opted to charge my computer and check my emails from the tablet. The airport is clean, modern, and organized. The basic signs, gates and infrastructure are stylish. I’m tempted to drop three Canadian dollars and order a Coke from my iPad (oh, what service!) but I’d rather not tempt my bladder. I’ve got a window seat.
And fourteen hours on a flight is no joke. I took the window seat because on trans-Pacific flights to Asia, at least on those that originate from the east coast of the US, the plane route naturally takes the shortest distance between the two cities which in this case nearly takes us over the north pole. When looking at the GPS tracker from the small monitor plastered on the seat in front of me, the direct route the plane takes misleadingly looks more like an exaggerated, upside down U-shape that shoots the plane directly north out of Toronto to well above the Arctic Circle and into the Arctic Ocean, north of Canada. We don’t fly back over land until dipping back south from the Arctic Circle through Siberia, down the longitudinal axis of about Yakutsk, through northern China, and then down to coastal Shanghai. I would say that from the look of the route on the monitor and then confirmed from my constant peering out the window from my seat on the left side of the plane, just behind the wing, that for roughly 90% of the ride, if we were to go down in an unfortunate turn for the worse and then somehow survive the crash, sadly this would be no “Lost” (hit ABC tv show Lost) situation, we’d have minutes before freezing to death and zero chance of being reached. Nice thoughts for a fourteen hour plane ride.
One thing I learned from this particular plane ride was that Chinese people love to take advantage of duty free items. Stuff is cheap in China, true, but imported foreign goods are not. I never really understood the desire to purchase ordinary items on a plane however and I’ve never actually seen anyone do it before. But the stewards and stewardesses always roll the duty free cart down the aisles in any event, mid-flight, on all these long trips. I’ll set the stage. To my right were two Chinese people, a middle aged woman to my immediate right and a middle aged man to her immediate right, strangers to each other and to me. Directly in front of me was a flamboyant Korean-Canadian man, upper-20s. I was mid-nap but stirred awake when the frenzy began as two stewardesses stood on either end of the duty free cart in the aisle next to me. One stewardess, an old Canadian woman, no apparent skill for the Chinese language, the other, a young Chinese woman, fluent in both.
“You know, you’re up to 110 dollars at the moment. If you spend just 15 dollars more you get a free bracelet from the airline.” (Chinese stewardess to the Chinese woman in English)
“ 好. ” Hao. Okay. (Pause. Think.) “ 你有什么酒？” Ni you shenme jiu? Tell me about your liquor…
“Excuse me. Do you have cigarettes?” (Korean-Canadian to old Canadian stewardess)
“Yes.” (Checking.) “We have Marlboros, Camels…” (old Canadian stewardess)
“Oh, you just have cartons. Not individual packs.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have Pall Malls?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll take the Marlboros. Red.”
“Great.” (Dipping back down into the cart.)
“You know, you can buy them cheaper in China.” (Chinese stewardess to Korean-Canadian man)
“I can?”
“Yeah, do you speak Chinese?”
“No. Korean.”
“Well, just go to the airport and buy them there. They’re like half the price.” (giving the Korean-Canadian man a look as if to say, you’re welcome.)
(To the Canadian stewardess, rummaging for the carton) “Ahhh, excuse me, I don’t want them anymore.”
“What?”
“Nooo, no, no. I don’t want them anymore.” (Speaking louder to get her attention) “She said they’re cheaper in China.”
“What?”
“She said they’re cheaper in China.”
“Who did?”
“She did.” (pointing to the Chinese stewardess, who was mid-negotiation with the Chinese woman next to me over a bottle of Sky vodka, speaking Chinese.) “She said I shouldn’t buy them.”
The old Canadian stewardess, upon realizing she just lost a sale, turned and frowned at the young Chinese stewardess, who was occupied with the Chinese woman next to me, pretending not to notice, but clearly looking sheepish, betrayed by the Korean-Canadian man. It was pretty awkward. The woman next to me, when all was said and done, had spent roughly 125 dollars on two boxes of stuff I didn’t recognize, a bottle of vodka, and a complimentary bracelet.
As all this was taking place around me, disturbing my sleep, I opened the window shutter and looked out to find a deep orange sun just sitting on the horizon, it’s ripply edges melting and molding into the crack of land below. The sun just sat there, in a permanent form of stasis, as if frozen in time. The sun was not actually setting, I realized, we were just so far north that the sun could only be seen directly south, the frozen, cracking, Arctic ice below was in a permanent state of winter darkness, as I could only see the sun from the vantage of this 35,000 foot altitude. And we were following the sun as both we and it made our way east. A bizarre situation. The sky below was perfectly clear of clouds and I could see the the frozen ice of the Arctic and its cracks as large as canyons, rippling like lightning in all directions across the surface. I’ve seen this before, on my flight to China from New York in 2007. I chose this seat to get this view. I’m glad I didn’t sleep through it.
Meanwhile, the two Chinese people next to me were chatting in Chinese about her recent purchases, deciding, post-purchase, what was a good deal and what wasn’t, as far as I could understand anyway. The Chinese man flipped through the magazine further as the cart rolled slowly away down the aisle and came across something desirable. He showed it to the Chinese woman next to me, lifted his eyebrows and shoulders as if to say, “Eh?”, and struck with shopper’s delight, the woman threw up her arm, said, “Hey! Ni hao! Ni hao!” flapping her hand up and down in a summoning motion. The Chinese stewardess turned around and then turned back towards the old Canadian stewardess who just frowned. I went back to sleep.
 |
| Logan Airport, Boston |
 |
| Every seat at the Toronto Airport comes equipped with an iPad |
 |
| The route |
 |
| The sun, looking straight south, motionless |
 |
| Cracks in the ice over the Arctic Ocean, from 35,000 ft |
 |
| An eclectic lunch: cup of noodles, Israeli Coke, and French Canadian cookies |
 |
| My first Chinese meal in Shanghai, lamian, Hui pulled noodles |
Touchdown. Shanghai’s Pudong international airport. Grab my bags and wait through customs. The lady at the customs window took my passport and looked from me to my passport two or three times, turned to her coworker and showed him my picture, then turned back to me and said, “胡子.” huzi, beard. Then she asked me for a second form of ID, laughed at the childish grin beaming up at her from my I’m-21-now! face on my driver’s license, shook her head a bit and let me go. I have a beard now.
First impressions of China are vivid in my mind. The first time I came to China in 2007 for study abroad I remember getting off the plane with all my Holy Cross undergraduate friends, groggy and discombobulated, being shuffled into a large tourist bus in the late evening hours, and driving into the heart of Beijing towards the school. I sat by the window and with my face pressed up against the fogging glass gawked at the glowing billboards and the huge Chinese characters on the walls of buildings and the smog. The smells, sights, that whole drive is still permanently imprinted in my head. Shanghai strikes me in the same way, not of course, for the novelty of Chinese characters or smog, but for its huge, tall, sprawling buildings and its cosmopolitan orderliness. If Beijing is old China, traditional and at times, chaotic, Shanghai seems to be new China, orderly, planned, and international. Being shuttled into the city on Pudong’s Maglev high speed rail, the transfer onto the city’s elevated subway lines with images of the brightly colored TV tower, bottle opener building, Jinmao tower, whizzing past through the windows, suggest prosperity. Even the hostel I stayed in was pleasant and packed with international travelers.
I’m moved into my new residence now. After a brief stint in the hostel to await my appointed check-in day I’m in the international student dormitory on Fudan University’s main campus. I live in a very comfortable single room on the 20th floor of a very tall apartment building. My view looks north, away from downtown (sadly), to a cityscape of endless residential apartment blocks. I’ve got a balcony and the weather is pretty mild for February so I’ve found myself once or twice (more times actually) standing out the balcony door peering out into the great cityscape beyond. It’s peaceful so high up in the air. A nice thinking spot I suppose. In the very furthest edge of my view north, towards the Yangtze River, the buildings gloss over in haze, smog presumably, and a few factories billow smoke. But they’re pretty far away and the smog in this city is already noticeably better than I’ve experienced in either Beijing or Chengdu (a city I lived in last year).
I’m also still hearing the pop pop pops leftover from Chinese New Year (which occurred weeks ago) and for the start of the Chinese paper lantern festival. Fireworks day and night (I’m hearing them now, in fact. It’s 10am). And from my vantage point high up in the northern suburbs, pockets of low level fireworks dot the city below in dense neighborhoods, scattered all around. This was frightening when I experienced it in Beijing. Living much closer to the ground at the time, fireworks would explode right outside my bedroom window, in the dense alleyways between buildings and in hutongs, and during the day outside our classroom windows. I’m feeling slightly more removed from them here though, the fireworks are much more pleasant from this comfortable distance.
So I’m here. I’m jet-lagged. Oh, so jet-lagged. But I made it. I’m off to the Bund today to soak in the grandeur of this city and will check in with the university in the morning.
More to come!
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