At the security checkpoint at SFO on my way to Beijing, an airline official encourated people to take off their shoes by shouting over and over, "$100 shoes, $5 million plane. You make the call, people." What does that even mean?
On my flight to Beijing, the man seated next to me complained that his tray table wasn't perfectly level. He obviously doesn't fly much. The flight attendant looked at him with an exasperated grimace. "I don't know what I can do about that."
United Airlines' first class is nothing special. I tried to flip my miles to one of the Asian carriers like Cathay Pacific, to no avail. The name "first class" itself is a bad one because it's accurate. Only people in first class are treated like first class citizens even though you'd think that in this day and age everyone who flies would be treated that way. The airlines should have named coach "first class" and first class "luxury class" or something, but the truth is that the economics of the airline industry are such that people in coach fly like second or third class citizens, human sardines in a Boeing tin can.
If I ever run for Premier of China, I'm running on a platform of "toilet paper in every bathroom." One of the things you quickly realize in China is that toilet paper in public places is a luxury; I visited exactly two restaurants that offered it in bathrooms. If you're fortunate, you're warned of the nationwide BYOTP (bring your own toilet paper) policy before the first time you've finished your business while squatting over a hole in the ground. At least once a day I experienced a cold sweat when some quick mental calculus revealed that a few factors could converge in an imminent and horrific perfect storm: no kleenex in my inventory, no nearby store to purchase any, and a possible need to visit a public toilet. There are never any towels in the bathrooms, either, so after you wash your hands you end up looking around like a fool holding your wet hands out in front of you as if they were alien appendages you suddenly discovered at the ends of your arms.
The traffic in China feels chaotic, but it's much safer than you'd expect, as I'd read and written about a while back here. Road signs, street lights, painted lines - all our more suggestions than hard and fast rules. Every inch of the road belongs to the first one to occupy it. This is second generations traffic calming in its purest form. Its effectiveness arises from forcing all users of the road to make eye contact, read body language, and interact with each other on a constant basis rather than blindly obeying dumb street signs and signals. It seems to work. Early on in my visit, every time I rode in a cab I thought the driver would hit and kill a cyclist or pedestrian. This happened at least three times every ride. Yet during two weeks of travel through some of the busiest streets in China, I only saw a handful of accidents. Four or five times a day in China, I'd play a real world version of Chinese Frogger while trying to cross the street, and by the end of the trip I'd obtained the native boldness that allows one to walk into the path of an oncoming cab with utter faith that it will halt. Imagine Neo at the end of the first Matrix movie, holding up his hand and freezing bullets in their paths with a zen-like calm: "No."
China is still much more of a cash economy than I though it would be. I only brought some $200 U.S. over in the hopes of covering most expenditures with my credit card. That didn't work out well for me until I reached Shanghai, where credit cards are more widely accepted. The rest of China remains wary of debt. In Beijing, where many ATMs rejected my card, I had to repeatedly hit Eric and Christina up for cash. Christina had to make four withdrawals from the ATM in one visit just to collect enough cash for her rent payment.
Yes, it was very hot in parts of China, and yes, I'm now going to complain about it. Are humans the only creatures who employ their advanced communication skills 25% of the time to discuss the weather? Do bees or whales or dolphins do this? Have scientists analyzed animal communication from this perspective? I wouldn't be shocked if sometimes when pigs are grunting they're actually saying, "This summer heat is killing me. I could just die in this sty. I'm sweating like a pig." Actually, I'm fortunate in that the weather in both Beijing and Xi'an was, for the most part, comfortable. My first step out of the airport in Guanzhou, though, was like walking into one of the inner circles of hell. In Shanghai, I had to ride in from the airport in quite possibly one of the oldest cabs in the entire country, and its air conditioning couldn't have possibly been worse unless you stuck a blow dryer in my pants and turned it on high. I begged the cab driver to turn his A/C on higher, but he sheepishly admitted that it was already at its peak setting. He then went on to complain to me about how hot he was and how tired he was of driving a broken down old cab all these years. "Wo lei shi le!" he lamented, over and over ("I'm exhausted!"). This is like hearing a torturer complain about a callus on his hands while he flogs you.
While we're on the topic of scorching heat and stifling humidity of summer, this trip convinced me that cotton is nearly useless in such climates. For all the advances in fabric and fashion, it's surprising that no one has come up with a fabric that combines the feel and look of cotton with the wicking quality of technical fabrics Dri-fit. I want summer clothing that makes me feel as comfortable as I do in my backpacking gear from Patagonia but that looks like something you'd see in Esquire. Cotton is good for towels and for the cooler climes of spring and fall. In China, wearing cotton outside in the summer is like wrapping yourself in one of those steaming hot towels they give you on international flights to wipe your face.
It's only when I travel that I realize how long it actually takes to read a book. 13 hour plane flights will do that. On average I read about 40 to 60 pages an hour depending the number of words per page. My book selection on the flight out was The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. I have a fondness for white collar crime nonfiction, and this paperback was much lighter than Kurt Eichenwald's hardcover Conspiracy of Fools, on the same topic.
The Chinese believe strongly that luck, both good and bad, can travel through phonetic similarities. 8 is a lucky number because the Chinese weird for 8 (ba) sounds like the Chinese word for 100 (bai), a term that conveys wealth. Our Xi'an tour guide James explained this to some of the people on our bus on the way in from the airport. At that very moment, I looked up and saw a giant billboard advertising the phone number 8888-8888 on behalf of some travel agency. Many company phone numbers in China end in 8888. Meanwhile 4 (si, fourth tone) is an unlucky number because sounds like the die (si, third tone). Eric and Christina's apartment did not contain any floors with the number 4. No fourth floor, no fourteenth floor.
Chinese people love them their massages. I had four massages while in China, all an hour long. The most expensive of those cost $15, meaning massage is affordable to most people in the growing middle class there. I'm not sure I'll ever be fully comfortable receiving a massage, though. Unless you're a masseuse to a famous athlete like Lance Armstrong (so that your massage is actually contributing to his performance on the bike) or a masseuse to a supermodel (something you'd do for free), I can't imagine that the work is that enjoyable. Of course, I'm no masseuse so I may very well be wrong. On occasion, the massages were just plain painful. At one point I think one masseuse had her full body weight pressing down on her elbow, digging into my spine. My eyes were watering from the agony. For the most part, though, the massages were a perfect nightcap, and my economic valuation of massages may be so skewed that I'll never pay for a massage in the U.S. again.
Another job I'd like to apply for in China is that of country-wide English copy-editor. As part of my duties, I'd wander the country with a giant red marker and mark my corrections on public signs and documents (like this one). But I'd be judicious. Some of the Chinese to English translations have a certain haiku-like elegance and wit.
