Trip Home
July 30 - Aug 1

Our trip home turned out to be more "memorable" than we planned for. Our flight was to be from Shanghai to Beijing for a change of planes (same flight number) and on to San Francisco, where we had a connecting flight to Chicago. We know this is not the most convenient way to get to Chicago; don't ask why we chose it. We left Shanghai about an hour late due to flight delays in the area. On the way to Beijing severe storms hit the Beijing airport; so the airport delayed incoming traffic and then finally closed. At that point we were diverted to Dalian, which is about 270 miles east of Beijing. We sat in the plane on the ground for six hours. At about 10 p.m. they announced that the flight was being canceled because the flight crew had reached the limit for the amount of time they can be on duty. They brought in buses to take us to hotels; they also unloaded all the checked baggage, placed it on the ground under the plane, and asked us to pick it up and take it with us on the buses. It was dark and you can imagine the chaos that resulted as 250 people stumbled around looking for their bags. We managed to find ours, get to the hotel, and get a room for the night.

The next question was, "When do the buses come to take us back to the airport?". Communication with hotel personnel was difficult since they didn't speak English and our Chinese is limited to a few very basic words like "hello" and "goodbye". This lovely Chinese American took us and some other Americans on the flight under her wing and served  as our communications link in Dalian and later in Beijing. Having been raised in Taiwan and living for the last 30 years in California, she is fluent in both English and Chinese. Her help is greatly appreciated.
 

The next day, Tuesday, we flew to Beijing, where chaos ruled due to all the delayed and canceled flights; we heard that 10,000 people had spent the previous night in the terminal because, either the airlines would not provide hotels, or they were all full. When we arrived at the terminal, the ground personnel took us to the baggage claim area, which created a lot of confusion as to what was going on since, in Dalian, our bags had been  checked through to San Francisco. But they showed up, we retrieved our luggage, and then proceeded to try to get on another flight to San Francisco. At one point I thought we were going to make it. The ticket agent printed out a boarding pass for one of us and our bags went into the checked baggage handling system. But the computer choked and refused to print the second boarding pass; it seemed all the seats were taken. So Nancy and I looked at each other and asked, "Do we split up and one of us get on the flight while the other stays behind, or do we stay together?" We decided to stay together. Fortunately, the ticket agent was able to get our bags back before they were loaded on to the plane. Finally I was able to find a Air China person who was in a position to help, was very good, and spoke very good English (most of them didn't). She got us booked on a United flight to Chicago for the next day (Wednesday). So it was another night in China.

Air China put us up in a hotel that night. We were amused to see on the little folder that they give you with the room key that it was the Advanced Training Center of the Chinese Communist Party. I guess that makes me a "card carrying communist", to use a phrase from the 1950s.

Getting to the hotel and back to the airport was an experience in itself. Air China provided buses, but no one to load the luggage. In the same predicament as us were many American tourists with far too much luggage; it looked like they were on a shopping expedition. Buses filled with luggage before they filled with people. In situations where people are tired, frustrated, and don't know what is going on, tempers flare, they start acting like animals and simple courtesy is forgotten. Air China compounded the problem by not providing any information, such as when are the buses coming to take us back to the airport, will they send enough buses, etc.? I shudder to think how they will handle the rush of traffic during next year's Olympics in Beijing.

Later Nancy asked whose name was on the one boarding pass that we had; it was hers.
 

The next day we got back to the airport, caught our flight, and made it to Chicago, 41 hours after we originally planned to get there. But we were back where we could read the signs and understand the language; it was a great relief.