on bus stations and running through airports: hk trip pt. 1

After being in China for over 3 years, I took my very first trip to Hong Kong last weekend with J. In an effort to save money, we convinced ourselves it would be a good idea to go to Hong Kong via Shenzhen. It was not a good idea. It wasn't even a bad idea. It was perhaps the worst idea ever. In saving what ended up amounting to less than $100 total we spent over 16 hours traveling (round trip) in one of the most circuitous routes ever.

Three highlights from the journey there and back again. One there and two back again.

1. THERE: The stop over in mystery city en route between Shanghai and Shenzhen.

We were made to get off the plane (the only one in the entire airport apparently) and wait in a one room building that resembled a bus station:


The state of the art flight board:


2. BACK AGAIN: Running at full speed, pell mell, family-in-Home-Alone-2-Lost-in-New-York style, through the Shenzhen airport after getting off at the wrong terminal with only 40 minutes to check in and board our flight.

We made it, panting and sweating only to sit on a plane that was delayed on the runway for 20 min. To add insult to injury, in between us sprinting from our bus (OHHHH yes, we took a bus from HK to Shenzhen, we are SOOOO cheap...) to terminal A to terminal B to gate 2 to plane seat 35 D/E, neither J nor I got any food prior to our 10pm flight and as the adrenalin slowly drained from our systems we started to realize just how hungry we were. So hungry that when the Air China snack trolley rolled by, we both actually cried, "WHEEE!" at the sight of these:


They tasted about how they looked but we ate them anyways. By God we ate them... and then drank tomato juice pretending it was tomato soup. Sad.

3. BACK AGAIN: Getting locked in at the Pudong International Airport.

The Pudong airport in Shanghai is a major aviation hub in Asia occupying a 40 kilometer square site. It's sends off and lands in an average of 60 million passengers a year and provides the world's first commercial high-speed maglev service to downtown Pudong in 7 minutes and 20 seconds. It is big, it is new, it is shiny and it is supposedly open 24 hours a day.

Last night J and I learned an important lesson about airports: just because one is "open," it does not necessarily mean it is functioning as we found ourselves, plus 300 other Air China, passengers locked inside Pudong Airport.




After 20 minutes of calling people within the airport and being assured that someone would be there "right away," the crowd decided to take matters into their own hands and in a scene worthy of Lord of the Flies should it have been set within the confines of an airport, anarchy broke loose:


Amidst the crowd came cries of, "Don't, don't! Too dangerous!" someone climbed up onto the railing in a futile attempt to climb over the glass wall. Fueled by the first man's subversive spirit, another rallied the crowd to yell for help in the vain hopes that if we made enough noise, the airport had to notice.

Man: "ONE! TWO! THREE!"
Crowd: "SAVE US AHHHH!"
Man: "ONE! TWO! THREE!"
Crowd: "SAVE US AHHHH!"
Man: "ONE! TWO! THREE!"
Crowd: "SAVE US AHHHH!"
On the second round of yelling for help, someone (or maybe multiple people) kicked the door open with brute force.
Crowd: "YAYYYYYY!"

We all surged out in one heady swoosh and ran for the exit but alas, the freedom was a false one. In between us and freedom stood a row of customs desks flanked by confused but stony faced custom officials. Some of our 300 tried to pass only to be rebuffed by officials since our flight was not an international one. J and I broke about fifty international flight laws by claiming we had come in on an international flight hoping to get in on the merit of our foreign passports. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Unfortunately neither her nor I are very good liars and were similarly turned away. The fleeting sweetness of freedom pricked even sharper in the face of this bitter defeat.

In the 60 minutes that ensued J and I saw one man pounding at the fire alarm, grown men kicking things like 4 year olds losing it at the grocery store, a group of smokers sullenly smoking in the middle of the terminal, people running up the down escalator (ok, ok, me and J running up the down escalator...) and a lot of angry people yelling at various officials. In a crisis you really start to realize how the majority of people are, at their core, all the same. Despite the yelling people being from obviously disparate groups in terms of age, dress and social hierarchy, they screamed the same five words/phrases: asshole, ridiculous, one hour wait, you ARE responsible, I'm going to get you fired as if they had rehearsed for this moment their entire lives. Once they had exhausted their five thoughts, they started over and repeated the list in a slightly different order, their voices rising an octave with each successive remuneration. Once in awhile someone would think of a new insult and the others would quickly add it to their repertoire of verbal barbs.

While it was easy, at the start, to feel bad for the hapless airport attendees, none of which were actually at fault for putting us in this situation, as the minutes dragged by we felt less and less sympathetic. Towards the end I was filled a gleeful stab of malicious pleasure every time I heard a new abusive epithet hurled. Finally, one official led the crowd back to our original holding pen. The door on it had closed, ironically keeping us out from the very place where we were trying to break out from just an hour prior.

A group of enterprising passengers, high on presumably on righteous anger, attacked the glass door yelling, "GIVE US THE PIN CODE OR WE'LL TEAR DOWN THIS DOOR!" and then, just when I thought things could not get more surreal, I watched as the guard lean down to his walkie talkie and say this to the person on the other end, "Hurry up and give me the code or the crowd will tear this door down." World goes insane, the mob rules supreme. A reply came back crackly and indistinguishable from the other end but it was too late, the door few open with a crack and bang and all 300 passengers flooded into the pen where they had once flooded out.

The culprit to all of this? Someone had opened up the international corridor rather than the domestic one. The domestic corridor door was pried opened and we ran towards freedom laughing like madmen. Finally at 2am, I sat with J in a cab watching the lights of the Pudong airport fade behind us. Welcome home.