My First Day in China, Part 2.
The next morning I stood around my hotel room hoping to make comfort last, but in due course, went downstairs to check out, then over to the airport to sit down for a long damn time. The flight was for late afternoon. Having now properly calibrated, or at least broadened, my sense of what was needed to get on a plane in somewhere bigger than my hometown airport, I, in due course, did just that. The flight was quick. And it landed in darkness in the stoneage.
This was early March, 2003. Cold. A bit wet. And it was Changsha airport. The flight debarked onto the tarmac and we, the few, the chosen, strolled through the dying of the day into, basically, a large concrete shed. The tiny conveyor produced items of baggage, mine included, for which I heaved a sigh of relief, and I wondered if they hadn't been trundling around that small circle for the last 24 hours. A handful of steps further into the tiny hangar of a room, was a counter behind which stern persons in green uniforms sat, three to a window. One trio scrutinized my documents with a focused attention. One man, the centerpiece of the display, held the items. The two younger fellows sat behind him, one at each shoulder, close enough to touch. Perhaps they were trainees. They looked at my documents - passport, boarding pass, possibly some other stuff - much more than they looked at me. Then I was waved through.
"Through" meant literally about twenty steps further into the room, and that took me past the scanning machines into the throng of greeters and, I hoped, people who were waiting for me. I appropriated a trolley for my weighty baggages and a grandly cheerful man approached. I said hi. He laughed and helped me forward and toward the front doors. I'm [Calach Pfeffer] I said. And he laughed and agreed and walked me outside to his taxi and began putting my bags in the trunk. And I'm like, wait a damn minute, what is this, are you from the university? We laughed, but I guessed maybe he wasn't so I, laughed and joked more, and took back my bags. A scrum of other taxi drivers agreed we were having a good time.
Back inside the small hall some girl came and said are you [Calach Pfeffer]. My team of welcomers, including a professor, a teacher, a driver, and possibly some other people, were lounging in some side room and could see through some mirror windows. When they saw me leaving with someone else they figured I wasn't me. Perhaps I wasn't. Then I came back and lo, it's me. So I received my welcome, which consisted of briefly letting me know I was supposed to be there yesterday, and we stepped out to the van they'd come in.
It was, they all said, too late to drive back the rest of the way so we'd be going on to another hotel. And so we did. It stank of cigarettes, was dark, and the view outside my window was unlike anything else. The city was dark like in movies without streetlights, but high rise construction was everywhere. Huge cranes with giant lights swung to and fro atop giant slabs of shadowed building sheathed in masses of green. A high red haze stood close in and covered everything. I had, I decided, walked into a Bladerunner world.