Although dad resisted and wanted to just take a taxi, I wanted to bookend our airport trips in and out of shanghai with transport by metro. I should have taken it as a bad omen that we couldn't find a down escalator into the underground, but I forced dad to let me carry his small luggage as we continued the adventure. Tickets for both of us cost only ten RMB ($1us). Our luggage goes through xray security as always for shanghai metro. Then we decend into the train platform. There we see everyone is queued neatly into two lines for each train door opening, because there is a human at each door holding a sign to teach everyone how to orderly board a train! Each door on both sides of the platform (westbound and eastbound)!!! All of the lines are 4 to 5 deep, and when the first train arrives, it is packed. A few dribble out our door, and about eight folks push there way in. Dad and I are left standing amazed with our luggage at the door. The professional sign holders aren't laughing. The next train arrives in just one minute (as promised by the station tv display). It is also packed but since we are at the front of our little door queue, I coach dad to push his way in with his bag and I will follow. Amazingly, we make it. After two more stops he even gets a seat that someone vacates. The whole trip to the airport takes about forty minutes. I found the people watching fascinating. I saw two guys next to each other with the same eyeglass frame style. I noticed two folks watching video on an android tablet, and on an iPad. One girl had pierced her inner ear lobe. After we got to the airport I think the experience wasn't too bad. Thee was very little distance to walk to the checkin gate. I have never gone to a NYC airport by subway before so I can't compare that. I guess the question is whether dad will prefer a taxi on the way back through shanghai. I should note for those thinking about using these two airports for transfers that there was some way to checkin for flights at pudong while you were still physically at the Hongquao airport. The airport struck me as modern as most any in the states. Plenty of space, amenities and organization. Free wifi. Free drinking water; cold or hot. I liked the latest Porsches on display every fifty yards, each stationed with a friendly car show girl. However, the one assigned to the cabriolet was only focused on her iPhone 4.
As expected for a Chinese domestic flight, our plane boarded thirty minutes late. We arrived about a hour late. Dad recognized Songtao and Xiangching immediately after the baggage claim. We were very excited to finally meet each other. I felt bad Xiangching had taken the bus to get to Xiamen and then had to wait for our late arrival.
Songtao parked in the single line of parking just on the oth side of the road for arrivals. Yes, the airport parking lot is that small. Songtao takes the less traveled but new coastline highway. It is nearly empty for miles, for it is far from the city where everyone works and lives. When we do drive in the city, I find it is packed as you might expect for a city of 3 million people. The coastline reminds me this is a tropical resort town, with a sandy ocean beach. I see a windsurfer in the distance.
At the same time I see tremendous luxury condos and a development of Miami vice style mansions built on stilts fifteen ft apart. Songtao says land is just too valuable for more spacing. I think it's just that people have no expectations of privacy.
Actually everywhere is major commercial and residential building construction. The weird thing is that there is so little finished, that one could take advantage of. Our hotel, the Wyndham Xiamen, is an amazing modern first class hotel. It has the usual show of excess, like the Lamborghini dealership, artificial fifty foot waterfall with with a huge buddha on top. The inside has wealth with more taste than I saw in china before. It is surrounded on two sides with new high rises, unfinished. On the backside is the equivalent of slums, probably just waiting to be bought out and demolished for more development.
Actually, that is the theme of what I witness today in china. There isn't the obvious awkwardness we witnessed five years ago. There certainly isn't the embarrassing t shirts I witnessed twenty years ago. The architecture even in Xiamen is varied, modern and impressive. Songtao tells me there are three million living in Xiamen. It is Vancouver sized, but just starting their growth.
Songtao drives us around this city which i slowly grasp as the small town my father went to college in. We notice school uniformed kids just being released from school. It is five thirty pm. They go to school from 8am to 12pm, go home for lunch and siesta, return for more school 3pm-5:30pm, and then return for more school at 6:30-9pm! This is the norm in china! Not much time for anything besides studying. The evening school time is for practice work; no lectures at that time. They do not have homework. The time at home is usually for play.
My Chinese is highly stressed trying to have conversations with my cousins. It takes me a lot of concentration to understand a tiny fraction of what they are saying, and most of the time I find the topics fascinating. For instance, there is no income tax! I don't think I have paid any sales tax either. Restaurants often ask if you want a receipt; because they will give a ten percent discount if they don't have to report it to the government! I am exhausted by evening, and my understanding and memory for Chinese words very obviously deteriorates after dinner.
Songtao takes us to "the Eight" restaurant. It is in the park island in the middle of a wide river. The restaurants in this park have a feel of an exclusive club. You only come to this area for these clubby restaurants. In the Eight, they apologize they don't have a private room for us. The chairs have these huge backs, perhaps for private conversations. The prices have gone up many times since Songtao visited last. The dishes have gotten more esoteric. The serving portions are for individuals, for Chinese food mind you, and seem to be small for the price. I detect a bit of nervousness, and I try to indicate to him that we can leave and find a more reasonable place. I am a little worried he might feel obligated not to lose face. He says it's all okay and proceeds to order way too much food. The food seems to me very Chinese. The flavors are not at all western. Later songtao and Xiangching tell me this restaurant is catering to foreigners taste. I think this restaurant is the best introduction for me to what the chinese call weydow, flavor, as far as I can translate. Xiangching thinks American food, as demonstrated by McDonalds, does not have any weydow. It is very interesting flavors. And I think Susan might even like the flavors of most all the dishes, if she didnt have to see them.
[Songtao is on the left, Xiangching is on the right of the picture]
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