The Last Leg

Landed in Beijing just before ten a.m. As a rule, I generally don’t check bags when I’m flying, just carry-on. But I’m bringing one back for Tom, so now I’m tethered to baggage claim watching luggage go round and round. The bag arrives and I head over to the international terminal. My flight is at 5:30 p.m., but I might as well see if I can check in really early. I look for Kong on the way to the Air Canada counter, but he’s nowhere in sight. Too bad, I would have had him serve as tour guide in Beijing, would have been nice to hang out with an old friend :-). Air Canada doesn’t open for several hours, so I need a place to leave three bags for several hours. The information desk points me to the ‘Left Luggage” counter. Three bags for six hours for ten dollars. Not bad. Babacar had Pancake write down the name of the shopping area he coached me about. As I’m leaving the airport, I’m thinking it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to have Beijing airport written down on something for the return trip. Especially if I get a cab away from a tourist haunt. I head back over to the information counter and they write it for me on the back of a business card. Here’s what it looks like. They also have a map of Beijing, I show them the writing from Pancake, they find it on the map of Beijing and circle it, they also circle Tiananmen Square.

I show the cabbie the writing from Pancake and he’s all over it. It’s supposed to be a 30-40 minute cab ride from the airport. He says how about 100 RMB. From Changchun that sounds about right, I say sure. We get in the cab and head out and he doesn’t turn his meter on. Hmmmm… It’s a cash and carry deal. We get there just before noon, I pay him and head in. Compared to Changchun, it's positively balmy in Beijing. Nearly 40 degrees fahrenheit and sunny. As I get out of the cab, a lady peddling 2008 Beijing Olympics hats accosts me. She won’t take no for an answer. She keeps stepping in front of me and I finally get around her, but she keeps following me, I pull my camera out and she keeps following. Halway across the parking lot I record the last nine seconds of her sales pitch as she finally gives up and heads back to the street to catch the next cab arriving.

If you want it, they have it in this shop and then some. I spend almost three hours shopping, a new record for me. It’s getting a little tight now for sight seeing and returning to the airport. As I head to a cab, the Olympics hat lady follows me again and is more aggressive, if that’s possible. I can’t close the door to the cab, because she won’t move and the cabbie’s just offering a sympathetic smile. Finally, after pulling and pulling on the door, I get it closed.

I ask the cabbie about Tiananmen Square, point to it on the map and he nods. I’m not sure of the scale of the map, but it is quite a drive to the Square, by the time we get there I really have to head to the airport, it’s getting a little late. Tiananmen Square is over 108 acres in size, it’s the largest urban square in the world. It is really impressive, I wish I would have timed it better to enjoy this and the Forbidden City adjacent. Maybe Tom will get a job coaching in Beijing next season and I can make a return trip.

Beijing is a huge city, flat and immense. The streets are very clean and the driving is more like in North America, cars in their lanes and signals being used and obeyed.

I ask the cabbie to take me back to Beijing Airport and he just looks at me. I show him the business card and he nods. The ride back to the airport is all of 40 minutes. I get there right at 4:00 for a five thirty flight. The cab ride has been an hour and a few minutes and the total is under 120 RMB. Less than twenty dollars.

It takes only ten minutes to grab my bags and get to the Air Canada check in counter. I get to the gate ten minutes before they start boarding, gee why did I rush? There was plenty of time. The flight is full and they take one of my carry-ons at the gate for a gate-check. Pretty much the safest way to check a bag because they take it right down the steps and put it on the plane. Flight takes off at 5:30, we are scheduled to land in Vancouver, BC at noon on Thursday, five and a half hours before the time we took off in Beijing. Thursday is never gonna end.

My bags were only checked through to Vancouver instead of Seattle, so I have to clear customs twice. If they had been checked through to Seattle, I could have skipped Canadian customs and gone right to the US customs for a connecting flight. On top of that. I come up one bag short at the carousel. Everything I bought in Beijing, I put into a Jilin Tigers backpack that Tom had given me. I checked that bag along with Toms and then my carry on duffel got gate checked. That’s the one missing. Turns out another lady from the flight who had a gate checked bag is also filling out a claim for it in baggage services. A trend is emerging. In the meantime, I’m missing my connecting flight to Seattle. The lady gets her paperwork done and leaves. Just as I’m finishing my paperwork, she comes back and says her bag just came up the carousel. Sure enough, I check, and there’s mine. Ok, everything’s here.

I get put on a later flight. Instead of getting into Seattle one hour before the time I flew out of Beijing, I’ll be home a few hours after I left. Left Beijing at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, home at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

It never ceases to amaze me how things work out. When I was in Changchun, I couldn’t pull up blogspot on the internet there. I could post, but I couldn’t view my postings. I thought I had read somewhere that the Chinese government was doing something about blog sites but I couldn’t remember exactly what. On the flight from Vancouver to Seattle I end up sitting next to a Computer Sciences professor from the UW. Talk about dumb luck. He confirms that the Chinese government has blocked blogspot from the internet in China and other blog sites. That answers that.

All the bags arrive in Seattle and we head to the car. It’s raining in Seattle and after the weather in Changchun, it feels like a tropical rain shower. Then again, maybe not.