It all started with getting my visa, which will allow me to come back to China after my month-long stint in Taiwan. I was able to get all my papers in order for that, or so I thought, but when I went to my visa appointment I was told that my new school, Xi’an International University (XAIU) was unable to get my Foreign Expert Card on time, so it would be submitted late. This led to my visa maybe being ready by Friday (the day that I leave), well that just leaves one other thing until the last minute.

I still need to be paid by SUST, desposit that money in the bank, submit my grade sheets, make sure everything is moved out of my apartment, move a good portion of my stuff to XAIU, leave a few things in my colleague’s apartment, and finally say good bye to quite a few people before going to the airport. It all sounded easily doable, but when the visa office, and the financial office at SUST decide to delay until Friday afternoon, things start to get a bit stressful.

Fortunately, everything seemed to workout, albeit with a lot of stress involved. There was a constant drizzle falling from the sky as I arrived at the Xianyang airport, a couple hours before my flight. I hoped this wouldn’t delay my flight too much, waiting for your flight for 45 minutes is already boring enough. Well, once again, a stroke of bad luck, my flight to Shanghai was delayed for 6 hours! Instead of leaving at 8:00 PM, we left at nearly 2:00 AM! I was sorta lucky that I had an all night layover in Shanghai, otherwise every other flight would have been messed up. On the plus side, Shanghai Airlines handed out 200 RMB to every passenger on that flight to Shanghai to apologize for the lengthy delay, bringing my flight ticket down to only 480 RMB (~$70)! You’d never seen an American airline company handing out cash like that!

Upon arrival in Shanghai at nearly 4:00 AM, I was welcomed to an empty airport. I looked for the airport hotel I had heard about, a decent and relatively cheap hotel right in the airport, which I would have gladly paid for the night for, if I had arrived at 9:30 PM when I was expected to. But now it was 4:00 AM and I had about 5 hours before I should grab a quick breakfast and be on my way to the gate for my next flight. So I simply asked the hotel for their hourly rate (a very common thing in China), and was told that they could only rent me a room if I paid the full night price of 500 RMB. We argued for a bit, me telling them that the night was nearly over and I wouldn’t pay 100 RMB per hour for a hotel room, them telling me that they “couldn’t” and that hourly room rates didn’t start until 9:00 AM. Often in China, getting what you want just takes a little bit of work by convincing them they can do what you want. Well this couple front desk attendants were particularly obstonant, resulting in a loss. I made them an offer of money, they could have made some money off of me, but instead the refused to budge and I said fine, I can spend a few hours surfing the internet in 24 hour Burger King.

When checking in for my flight from Shanghai > Hong Kong > Taipei, I was told that I would have to be quick because technically my flight tickets were against their rules of at least a 70 minute layover between flights. My layover between Hong Kong to Taipei was 60 minutes. This wouldn’t have been so bad if flights could leave on time, but Shanghai to Hong Kong was delayed by 45 minutes, I was sure I wouldn’t have enough time to make it onto my flight to Taipei. So I consulted with the agents at my gate, they did a little searching and told me that all the flights to Taipei were full so I would have to wait until I arrived in Hong Kong and possibly fly standby. Not a great option considering I’m supposed to be picked up at the airport, but perhaps my only option. Upon arriving in Hong Kong I hurried off the plane, prepared to find a departues board and start sprinting towards my gate. To my surprise I found a young and tiny Asian woman holding a board with Burkle/ShanePaul on it. “That’s me”, I told her. She then told me, we’ve got 15 minutes to get to the other side of the terminal, we’ll have to run. So this ticket agent takes off running in her heeled shoes, I could keep up, but damn if I wasn’t impressed, she was no slouch in her ticket agent outfit. We arrived at the check-in counter just in time for me to check-in to my flight, though they informed me that more than likely the gap was too short for my luggage to get on the plane so I’d have to check with the lost luggage counter in Taipei. Fantastic, that was just icing on the cake.

The flight to Taipei was very nice, and despite being the absolute last peson to check-in for the flight, I still had a good aisle seat rather than the terrible, middle-of-the-row seats. The A330 was actually pretty comfortable and had nice video-on-demand screens, unfortunately the flight was too short to finish the movie I had been watching. Upon arriving in Taipei and getting my 30 day visa I went to look for my luggage. The luggage was coming up from, what was presumably the basement, like a magical geyser spitting out gray and black boxes instead of water. There on the conveyor belt was a wooden board with English words on it,

“MISSED LUGGAGE CONNECTION

BURKLE/SHANEPAUL”

This confirmed that my luggage hadn’t made it on the plane, so I went to have a chat with the luggage service counter. They asked me to fill out a form or two, and they then took down my information. Then they asked “where are you staying?”, to which I replied, “I really don’t know”. A couple phone calls later and they had most of the information they’d need. The friendly luggage agent then asked me to check the carousel one more time for my bag, just to make sure. I strode to the carousel  expecting to see boxes of every shape, size and color, but nothing belonging to me. Lo and behold, the 2nd bag I see, looks an awful lot like mine, a quick weight check and glance over and I know it’s mine. All the fuss for nothing, my bag is right here!

Despite the time-crunch, it seemed that my flight from Hong Kong to Taipei had been successful all the way around.

Following breakfast we walked wandered around the park just west of Jinli street where I saw many retirees dancing, and practicing Tai Chi with fans, and swords. We then looked at a small temple, nothing too amazing, but some very nice scenery.

After the park we headed to Du Fu’s Thatched Cottage, a site that my Chinese father had suggested we see. The cottage was the home of Du Fu, a very famous Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, over 1000 years ago. Along with the cottage remains, is a beautiful park, as well as the Gong Bu temple. Seeing the remains of a Chinese homestead from over a 1000 years ago gives an interesting perspective as to how the people lived in that time.

Finally it was time to head for the airport, our plane was leaving in 2 hoursand we didn’t want to miss this it. We headed back downtown near Chunxi Lu and found the bus to the airport.  The rest of the trip from the airport to home was rather uneventful, but I was certainly happy to be home. Chengdu was great fun, but who knew tourism could be so tiring?

See the Chengdu pictures here.

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of posts about my 4 day trip to Chengdu. The remaining posts will come in daily intervals over the next week.

Traveling to Chengdu this past weekend was my first time “jet-setting” across the country just to spend a weekend hanging out and experiencing another city. Chengdu is actually in the Sichuan province just south of Shaanxi, about 700 km away by car and about an hour in the air by plane. You may remember hearing about the Sichuan province due to the massive earthquake that occurred about 80 km northwest of Chengdu in May 2008.

Due to the fluctuating cold and warm weather lately there has often been quite a bit of fog in the mornings, and Saturday when the flight was supposed to leave was no exception. Upon arriving at the airport I discovered that there were people that had been waiting up to 36 hours to get on a flight out of Xi’an. This didn’t look good.

After being delayed for about 2 hours, they decided they could let flights to Chengdu check in. First come, first served. Fortunately Jinfei was able to work some magic and bat her eyelashes enough that the ticketing agent checked us in almost immediately while others continued to wait. We left the Xi’an airport in chaos about 90 minutes later.

An hour later the Airbus 319 landed in Chengdu and we caught a bus for 15 yuan to the downtown area. Upon our arrival we met up with one of Jinfei’s best friends, Zhu Mangqi. Zhu took us a few blocks to Chunxi Road, while it is

Chunxi Road

a real road, is is most commonly known for the large pedestrian mall with a variety of shopping, and typical “only in Sichuan” snacks directly next to it.

On Chunxi Road I had amazing snacks such as spicy duck neck (very spicy, very excellent!), as well as an assortment of super spicy pork on a stick, and tiny, deep-fried baozi (typically a stuffed, steamed bun). The people of Sichuan province are known for their amazingly spicy food. In fact even in Americanized Chinese restaurants you can usually get some kind of Sichuan or “Szechuan” chicken dish, and it’s probably one of the spiciest things on the menu. Because I love spicy food so much, this was almost like a dream come true. I tried everything, just to see which one was the spiciest and how spicy it would be before I couldn’t handle it. Glad to say I never got to the “can’t handle it” point, but who knows, maybe they were going easy on me because I’m a laowai. Guess I’ll never know.

By taxis, I mean guys who happen to own a van and will drive places for a fee.

After getting my fill of spicy snacks we headed for Zhu Mangqi’s university. I thought my university was out of the way, but her’s was worse. It didn’t take as long to get to, but it was more of a hassle. There’s only one bus to take, and it only goes about half way there, so we had to stop at a bus stop area where taxis often waited. By taxis, I mean guys who happen to own a van and will drive places for a fee. These taxis would drive us the rest of the way. So getting to her university was a bigger hassle and also cost quite a bit more than the 1.5 yuan i’m used to paying on the 336 to SUST.

After the long day of waiting around in the airport, and walking Chunxi Road, Jinfei and I found an inexpensive hotel near the university and got some rest for the next day.