Day 2 – Arrival

Friday, June 1st 2012

The flight was extremely exhausting. We left one hour late and I sat between two middle-aged women from China. Most of the people were Chinese citizens, and boy do they like to talk. Boarding the flight was chaos, as a lot of Chinese people don’t like to listen to instructions or form lines. They boarded seats 50 to 62 (the back) first, which seemed to be a concept hard to grasp in the frenzy to get on the plane. Anyways, my seat was 38B, the seat right after the Emergency Exit; at least there was a big space behind me. On my left, was a lady who was very tired, and on my right was a lady who was extremely talkative and nosy. Unfortunately for me, she started periodically asking me direct personal questions like how old I was, my mother’s job and age, how many uncles I had, if my brother was married, etc… It was extremely annoying, but I didn’t want to miff her because I thought that might be rude coming from an American Chinese girl at least half her age. Respecting elders is a big thing in Chinese culture.

Dinner was rice and chicken, some bread, a cup of blueberry yogurt, and some ham and lettuce. I was trying to watch the in flight movie, but my seat’s headphone jack didn’t work. At one point when one of the ladies got up, I used their outlet for a bit. I didn’t see much though – the movie was something about fighting. The other movie which I tried to follow without sound was Real Steel with Hugh Jackman. I tried to sleep a bit but it didn’t work out. Plus I was being squeezed on both side by those two women. Overall, it was a very uncomfortable flight.

Somehow I made it through the flight. We got off the plane around 7 pm Beijing local time. I took a bus to the arrival terminal and a shuttle to the Customs and Baggage Claim. I got my bag pretty quickly and soon met my mom after passing through the green “nothing to declare” aisle. Shagua! (literally, “stupid melon”) my mom jokingly commented upon my appearance. I was glad that there was no trouble. We bought some train tickets and transferred to the subway (Line 13 to Liu Fang) which brought us to my Grandma’s house.

~ end entry 10:56 pm, Hao Hong Yuan