China - loving me and hating me at the same time

As my 3 month anniversary of living in China approached, I decided to take a quick trip to Korea for a few days to relax. Korea is everything mainland China isn’t. It’s clean; the people wait in line and respect the first-come, first-serve rules by which the rest of the world abides; almost nobody spits or picks his nose in public; you can expect more from the things you buy than a passing resemblance to quality. I really enjoyed my time there, and I made some great new friends!

However, all vacations must come to an end sooner or later. That’s okay, because for all of the irritating things about China, I can’t help but love it here. Somehow the whole country feels like it’s my awkward and socially inept, yet very lovable, kid brother. I’m glad to be back! The trip back was pretty interesting, to say the least….read on!

On the flight out to Korea, each passenger was issued a landing card. For those of you who haven’t ever traveled to a foreign country that requires a landing card, it’s basically a card that you fill out with your name, purpose of travel to the destination country, and information about where you’ll stay in that country. As the plane took off, I realized that I didn’t know where I would be staying in Korea, as a friend of mine helped arrange for me to stay with some of her friends in the country. I figured I’d just figure it out when I landed and settled in to relax for the short flight.

Upon arriving, my fellow passengers and I shuffled off the plane and into the terminal, and then we loaded like cattle onto the tram between the arrivals hall and immigration. On the tram, I heard a couple of flight attendants speaking Chinese, so I turned around to ask them what to do about my predicament. As is usually the case when foreigners speak to Chinese people in Chinese, the two women were surprised and excited to speak to me. That, of course, led to a discussion that no doubt plays out all across China at least a thousand times a day: “Where are you from?”, “How long have you lived in China?”, “How did you learn Chinese?”, “Do you have a Chinese wife/girlfriend?”, “What do you do for work?”, “Maybe you can teach me/my child/my friend/my colleagues English!”, etc. In the end, the women advised me to write the phone number of the people with whom I would be staying, and that should be enough (it was). The one lady – her English name is Jessica – was very excited, and when we got off the tram, she steered me to the elevator that the crew took to the baggage claim level, thus helping me avoid the long line on the escalator. How cool was that! She said that maybe her company could hire me to help them with their English, and she may want someone to teach her young daughter, so we exchanged phone numbers before parting ways at immigration. I figured that would be the last time I saw her for some time, if not forever…

But when I boarded my flight to go back to China, guess who was there right inside the cabin door to greet passengers? Yep. As soon as she caught sight of me, she got really excited!

“HI!!! How are you? Where are you sitting?” she asked.

“6F,” I answered.

“Sit here. This seat is empty,” she replied, motioning for me to sit in the front row of coach, right behind the first class section. Incidentally, on this particular airline, the only real difference between coach and first class is the curtain. “Are you thirsty?”

I answered that I was, and she immediately rushed off to get me a cup of water, shuffling past the passengers who were still boarding the plane. About 30 seconds later, she returned with a cup of water and a warm smile. Then she rushed off again. About two minutes later, she returned again, this time with two different Chinese newspapers for me to read.

“Chinese newspaper?” she asked as she extended her hands to me. “Have you eaten dinner yet?” she asked.

“No, not yet.”

“Oh, well, we’ll be serving dinner soon!” she replied, and then she returned to the front of the plane to prepare for takeoff.

When dinner time approached, she stopped by my seat and said, “When you get done eating, come up here to chat with us. My colleague wants to meet you.” I said that I would and then started eating. I wasn’t hungry, but as all people are told in the West when they’re young, there are starving kids in China, so I did my duty and ate the food.

After I finished, she again stopped by and asked, “Are you done? Come up to chat with us!”

A little taken aback by all the attention and feeling a bit uncomfortable, I explained that I needed a few minutes for my food to digest, but she just laughed off my excuse and said, “Let it digest up here! Come with me.”

I could tell that she wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I dutifully stood up and followed her to the other side of the curtain. She motioned for me to take a seat in the back row of the mostly empty first class section and then rushed off. Her colleague came up to me carrying a cup of water and sat backwards in the row in front of me to chat. Jessica came back carrying a can of 7-UP and a Pepsi. She looked visibly disappointed as she realized that I already had a cup of water, so she put the cans down beside me and asked, “Do you want some cake?”

“No, I’m fine,” I replied. She disappeared again for about 30 seconds and then on her way back to coach extended her hand. There was an apple in it. Not wanting to be rude, I took the apple and started eating. About a minute or two later, she came back again and sat down beside me.

Jessica, her colleague, and I all chatted for about 45 minutes about life in China, how I learn Chinese, my advice for learning English, the Chinese education system and how it relates to learning foreign languages, and various other topics. I tried not to make a lot of eye contact with Jessica because at one point, she rested her cheek on the seat she was sitting in and stared at me with that doe-eyed look. When we were getting close to starting our final approach, she said, “Let me go get your carry on bag for you!” and then rushed to coach to grab my very heavy backpack from the overhead bin.

She came back, put it in the seat beside me, and then ran up to the front of the plane again. She came back carrying 12 bags of peanuts, saying, “Here, take these!” and stuffing them in my bag for me. Then came the question, “Do you like tea?” I hesitated and then nodded, and she produced a can of Chinese tea, also putting that in my bag. Wow.

When it came time to leave the plane, I warmly thanked the two of them for being so nice to me, and we discussed my possibly teaching the other flight attendant’s daughter English during the summer months. I felt rather guilty for getting such good service, and apparently some of my fellow passengers in coach weren’t too happy about it; I received a couple of dirty looks as the other passengers left the plane. No matter. It could just as easily have been them, and probably would be in another situation. I just happened to have more guanxi (关系 – relationships, basically) in this particular case, so I won the day.

Of course, for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. China warmly welcomed me back with a gigantic hug while at the same time reaching around to steal my wallet…

When I got off the plane and made my way through immigration, I went in search of a bus back to near where I live. When I embarked on journey on the first day, I had taken a bus from a hotel near my house to the airport, and it cost me about 20 RMB and saved me a lot of time versus taking the public bus. I still had my ticket stub for that bus, so I wandered up to a desk right inside the terminal and asked the lady behind the counter where I could catch that bus. She said that that particular bus only takes people TO the airport, not FROM the airport, and she offered to help me get a car service to take me home. I asked her how much it would cost, and she said that it would be 150 RMB! That was ridiculously expensive, as the last time I took a taxi home from the airport, it only cost about 60 RMB. She said that today was a holiday, so everything was more expensive. I knew that didn’t add up, but for some stupid reason, I didn’t walk away and look for a taxi on my own. Instead I let her help me get a ride at 100 RMB. She said it was a taxi, but then her colleague showed up there at the desk and helped me load up my luggage into a black car. The color of the car should’ve been a clue to me that something was wrong – black cars in China are synonomous with rip-offs, as they’re illegal taxis. I don’t know why that didn’t sink in until later. I got in the car, and we were on our way.

The driver seemed quite nice (as did Ted Bundy), and we made polite conversation for about two minutes. Suddenly he pulled out his cell phone and started talking to what seemed like another driver. Then, he pulled over and ran to a taxi behind us. He was gone for about 45 seconds. Then he came back and told me to go with the taxi driver behind us, that he had already paid the fair, and he helped me get my luggage into the taxi. As we took off, the taxi driver asked me how much I paid the man. I told him 100 RMB. He smiled ironically said irritatedly that he was only given 50 RMB, when the trip should have cost at least 55 RMB. In other words, the company that just conned me into taking this black car service had just made 50 RMB in about 2 minutes. I was extremely irritated, but I consoled myself with the fact that I had just received many more times that amount in free peanuts, drinks, and service…