Taking the slow plane to China

For a full week I have seen neither sun nor stars. During the hours one would label as "day", a thick, dense layer of grayish-white particulate matter dampens and evenly disperses the sun's rays across the sky, so that a tempered light appears to originate from everywhere and nowhere at once, leaving no shadows. It's as if the city lies on an operating table lit by dusty fluorescent bulbs. Awaiting what surgery, I do not know.

The sun, a meager orange disk no brighter than when drawn upon paper, can be viewed without squinting. At "night" the same dry fog widens the beams of focused city lights, completely masking the constellations.


I feel guilty for already counting the days until I return to Arizona, reminding myself of a natural beauty there that's so easily overlooked. But I feel even worse whenever I encounter my colleagues here – all beaming, upbeat, cheerful people, all residents of one of the most polluted cities on Earth.

One writer and I have noticed that in some cases, the more a group of people praises an ideal, the further those people tend to stand from it. Governments vilifying corruption. Politicians lauding bipartisanship. Soccer teams demanding fair play. And factories promoting green technology.

I’ve had the luck and misfortune to visit and/or live in many distant cities, from clean and green to toxically suffocating. Tianjin is the only one of those cities – and I believe the only one in history – in which the World Economic Forum, an organization designed to facilitate global business, has chosen to hold a three-day symposium featuring renewable energy and green technologies.

But I had intended to tell about my journey to get here and I have gotten far too sidetracked. Rewind eight days to perennially sunny California.

Much to our surprise, both Erin and I survived the Napa-to-Sonoma half marathon and lived to tell about it. It was the longest I had ever exercised, both distance and time, by quite a bit. I would ask you to guess what part of my body hurt most after the run, but since you are reading this your eyes will probably just keep on scanning. But stop a minute and try. Go ahead. Guess.

No, it wasn’t my feet. Not my knees (though later the ligaments revolted). Not the hips nor the lungs. It was my right shoulder joint that stung from all of the arm swinging. Weird, huh?

Wine tasting from local vineyards at the finish line was unlimited. Yep, just go back and ask for more. It was probably a safe investment and entertainment venture on their part – offer bottomless glasses to dehydrated runners and see how long before they topple. We have Lisa, John, Aimee and Kerry to thank for keeping us upright both during and after the run. Great cheering squad!

Kerry and I visited San Francisco the next day. Not knowing the city, we figured the subway stop for “Civic Center” would be a good place to get lunch. It was evidently a better place to get other things – brand name knock-off and marijuana vendors worked each street corner from the subway stop to our little terraced French bistro find. From the restaurant’s second floor we witnessed a man of 40-50 years drop his trousers in broad daylight on the corner of a T-intersection and fertilize the sidewalk. A few minutes later an expensively dressed man must have romped through the deposit, for he was swearing at every rushed pedestrian who passed by him there. But he was not vocally alone. I would wager that this particular neighborhood sported the highest density of talk-to-selfers in the city.

Nevertheless, the people of San Francisco immediately struck me as some of the most smiley, friendly and approachable I’ve ever met. A short while later, though, I began to notice that the women were actually not as friendly as I had first noticed. Then it struck me: duh, I’m in rainbow San Francisco! So after all that fun, when Kerry left I headed north to Berkeley. This is where my trusty traveling luck first returned.

With six hours ‘til my flight and nothing to do, I wandered the college campus. Most notable on the walk were fearless squirrels, wooden bridges crossing muted streams, the bell tower’s chimes – a post-modern, achromatic tune that sounded as bitter as it did tickled to be signaling the end of another summer school day – and a baby-faced student’s t-shirt, which read “Capitalists do it ruthlessly”.

As I said, I’ve always been fortunate with finds while traveling. This night a theater that normally puts on a local act or cover band was holding its annual singer-songwriter competition, all acoustic. It must be challenging to judge a contest that encompasses both young students and the older characters who hang around historically influential college campuses long past their cultural significance. Memorable tunes included losing a lover by drinking too much (pop, young), educating the children because after all they are our future (reggae, old), pleading for an ex-boyfriend to come back down to Earth (showtune, young), and lamenting how “she would have loved this beach” (early jazz, old). As if reminding us that we were, in fact, at Berkeley, the emcee told the audience to “feel free to network during the intermission”.

My second layover, in Chicago, began with an 8am visit to the Navy Pier. On this lucky day, the Miss Teen USA pageant had also planned an 8am visit to the Pier. So there I was, not believing that any of these girls in summer skirts and pumps could possibly still be in high school, when a tourist group of identically-clad Chinese high school students swarmed them. What a difference a dress code and milk hormones make. Despite ogling like a creepy older guy at a group of underage girls (yes, “like”), I could not find Miss Arizona. The 75-degree weather was probably too cold for her that day.

I met Vinnie of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for lunch in the tower formerly known as Sears (one of the many buyouts by overseas investors in our own-goal-scoring failure of an economy), and then found Michele and her entourage of friends at the tapas celebration for Spain’s World Cup victory. The best billboard in Chicago read: Your wife is hot. Time to get A/C repair.

My flight landed around midnight the next day in Beijing. You know that feeling at baggage claim, the one everybody gets when the carousel starts to rotate, that every bag will arrive but yours? Well I was starting to feel it while still in the terminal. This was, after all, the largest terminal of any Chinese airport.

So I waited about 45 minutes without seeing my bag before standing in line behind one other person at the help desk. Thirty (30!) minutes later I was told that my bag had already arrived.

“I was here and I never saw it.”
“It is here.”
“Well when did it arrive?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in the back room.”

Wonderful. I guess that wouldn’t have been so bad if the 1.5-hour drive to the hotel didn’t take 2.5 hours. I only know one person who drives 60mph on a 75mph highway, and she’s legally retired. This driver had no good excuse.

I finally got to bed around 4:45am Thursday local time, thus traditionally ending my good travel fortune with an extended stretch of strained uncomfortableness. And no, MS Office and I do not accept that as a word.

Ah, one more story, about the Bank of Beijing. My debit card had expired last month, so I went into the Tianjin branch to get a new one. Liberal translation that makes me sound fluent:

“We can’t do that. We can only give you a new account.”
“No problem.”
Swipes card, types, talks to manager. “At which branch you get this card?”
“Beijing.”
“Then you have to go to Beijing to get a new one.”
“That’s 2 hours away. You have a new one right there.” I point to it.
Swipes card, types, talks to manager. “But we can’t close your account and transfer your funds to the new one.”
“Can’t you open a new account at your branch?”
“Yes, we can.”
“So first open a new account. Then transfer the funds.”
Swipes card, types, talks to manager. “Okay.”

Everyone should experience passing 2.5 hours with bank tellers in developing economies at least once in a lifetime. If only to build character.

So it’s 1:30am and I have to work again tomorrow, for the sixth of nine days in a row, at 9am. To sleep I go.