Airport Riots in Shanghai

This post was originally going to be the first of a series detailing the hectically fun week Corey and I spent traveling with my family. That post and the series to follow is still forthcoming (tomorrow at some point), but there was something that needed to preempt that that happened on our way back from the trip.

My family's itinerary took them from Yichang, at the end of the Yangtze River cruise, to Shanghai to continue their touring, but Corey and I needed to get back to Dalian to teach. Our flight from Yichang to Shanghai was delayed several hours for reasons never made completely clear. During the wait, we also found out that our connecting flight was not in fact at the same airport, but rather a different Shanghai airport approximately an hour away. After some hectic phone calls, we had our flight changed to the last flight leaving Shanghai to Dalian. We were supposed to arrive in Shanghai with two or so hours to spare, but now we were landing just in time to barely make the hour trip and make our re timed flight to Dalian. "Luckily" after the delays, we were able to make the hour trek to Shanghai Pudong with almost twenty minutes to spare before they stopped checking people in.

We check in and breathe a sigh of relief, but basically as soon as we arrive at our gate, we hear that the flight is delayed, and the new boarding time will be announced at a later time.

I don't care what country you're in. That doesn't sound good at all.

Our flight was supposed to depart at 9:40, it wasn't until after Midnight that they finally told us that the flight was canceled. The entire time all we had to go on was unhelpful staff members, and a constant reminder that the new departure time will be announced later (read: never).

The reason for the delay was terrible weather in Dalian, so it should be made clear that there were four or five flights to Dalian from throughout the day that had been canceled.

Imagine how pissed off and irate people would be at home. Now, multiply that by the stories I've (probably) told about the Chinese's temper. It got bad. There was a lot of yelling and screaming in Chinese, and the ground crew became too flustered to even acknowledge that there were confused as hell westerners.

While the mob began to form and yell even more, Corey and I started bouncing around to anyone that would listen to us, until we were able to piece together that there were going to be buses that would take us to a hotel for the night.

When our new flight would be was still a question mark, but we were reassured that we would get a call in the room. Uh huh... right.

We had to wait easily another hour to be bounced around to three plus buses before China Eastern was satisfied with the seating arrangements and allowed the buses to drive off.

I wasn't expecting a five star hotel by any means, but I'd like to think an English speaking staff wouldn't have been too difficult to find, even after 2:00 AM in the morning. Oh well.

Oh yeah, and mere minutes after going to sleep, the phone rang. No, it wasn't the airline telling us when our flight was, but rather a Chinese girl offering massages.

Literally less than ten minutes in the room, and I was already being solicited by prostitues on the phone.

Now that's service!

At six in the morning, after three or so hours of sleep, we get a wake up call.

"Hello."
"Hello?"
"Hello, good morning."
"Good morning. So, do you know when our fight will be?"
"Hello, good morning."
"No, no, no... do. You. Know. When. Our. Flight. Will. Be?"
-Click-

We head downstairs but the lack of English continues to frustrate. We eventually find ourselves on a bus (not before being switched around a few times of course)

After some quick confusion at the airport, we find out our flight is leaving at 9:30. Twelve hours after it was originally supposed to take off.

Hallelujah, it's over.

Or at least, it would have been if I didn't promise you riots in this post's headline.

Remember, that angry mob I mentioned from the night before? Well, aparantly they were so busy yelling and being generally pissed off about everything that they never got put up in a hotel. Also, most of them were probably from flights earlier than ours.

So they were well beyond livid this time. A huge mass of them had taken to blocking one of the terminal hallways. Their reasons were unknown, but after a long night stuck in an airport with nothing to due but listen about how our plane's new time will be announced later. Can't say I blamed them, but I left them to their Chinese protest chants. We had a new flight time, and a new gate number, far away from the mob.



We hung out at a central part of the terminal, and about a half an hour or so before boarding, we made our way to the new gate. On our way down the stairs, we noticed that the mob had dispersed. Looks like everything was working out. We had our new flight, and even the angry Chinese mob was happy.

Stupid. What a stupid, stupid thing to think.

The mob had conveniently relocated themselves right in front of our new boarding gate. They had moved the benches so no one could get through and were yelling and screaming at anyone and everyone. The part where it starts getting even crazier, is that they were now blocking a different flight to Qingdao that was supposed to take off from that same gate. They weren't letting anyone on a plane until they were happy and satisfied.

Obviously we were both frustrated at the time, especially since the person we needed to talk to was probably on the other side of the mob/blockade. The gate attendant.

Corey launched herself in, climbing over people, arguing with them in broken English along the way. A snippet worth repeating is a woman's explanation as to what the hell they were doing: "WE ARE AGAINST THE AIRLINE!" Followed quickly by an inquisitive: "ARE YOU WITH US?" Of course, Corey would say whatever she needed to get to the other end.

Realizing that being separated by an increasingly volatile Chinese mob was probably not for the best, I started climbing over people, shoving as necessary and maybe even elbowing this annoying woman in the head. By accident of course.

Stuck now on the other side with the flight attendants, they had no interest in helping us at all, or even exercising their already poor English skills. So we were stuck with nowhere to go.

The police showing up did nothing, as instead of trying to control the crowd, they figured it would be a good idea to just yell at them a bit. Nothing calms an angry group of people down as much as yelling at them.



Eventually, four flights to Dalian were announced at a nearby gate, and the crowd dispersed. To beat each other up somewhere else to get on a plane. By Eleven, we were in the air, well over half a day later than we were supposed to. But hey, not to worry. Everything is ok, because on the way to the plain, a customer service representative (none of the ones who refused to talk to us all night and morning of course) handed us each 300 RMB cash to let us know how umm... sorry they were.

Nothing buys my happiness like petty cash, but hey, I'm still gonna try to whine my way into a free flight to Beijing or something.

What can you do? T. I. C.

See you tomorrow, where you'll see a bit of the less insane bits of the vacation. Until then, I need to get some sleep.

- Shawn

Off On A Whirlwind Family Vacation

I'll keep this post nice and brief, since I need to run to the airport momentarily. My parents and my sister arrived in Dalian yesterday, and we're leaving today for an insane week trip through... I dunno... everywhere in China. I'd start listing it all but I'm sure I'll miss something, and hell, might as well leave some element of surprise for next week's guaranteed onslaught of posts.

Catch you on the flipside,
Shawn

Fare Thee Well Kid's Movie Class

This past weekend saw the end of my least favorite, yet most ridiculous class.

The "Kid's Movie Class" is a two hour class (of which I am only subjected to an hour of). The first hour sees the Chinese Teacher drilling in lines from a thirty second clip from some inane cartoon movie. I wish I kept some examples of lines from these movies to illustrate how... useful... this technique is, but alas I did not.

Then comes the second hour, where I come galavanting in, and try to keep the kids excited for another round of repetition. Did I mention these kids speak no english, so my goal here is to get them to mimic sounds, and not understand why the cow is using three syllable words and out of date slang? No? Oh, I should have.

After my first lesson, I quickly realized that it would be impossible to fill a full hour considering there are words and concepts in these clips that would be difficult for some of my higher level classes, let alone a class of disinterested and bored kids who don't understand an single word.

I tried talking to Tommy about this early on, but he assured me that it's simply a cultural thing. "We are two separate cultures, working as one." Or something like that. Oh, my bad... I thought I was wasting their time or something. Good to know listening to a prehistoric sloth lisping (Oh, Ice Age) is culturally valuable. Riiiiiight.

So, I took a very advance teaching method approach to this class. I spent the first half an hour of the class poking the kids in the head, making sure they stayed awake and upright as I made sure that they could at least kind of, sort of make the sounds I wanted them to.

Then? Then it was time for games. Musical chairs, telephone (interestingly referred to as Chinese Whispers in China), and my favorite time waster: The Basketball game.

The Basketball Game consists of me pausing the 30 second clip at a certain line, and getting a student to repeat it. This is difficult because if I miss the pause cue, I'm five lines away from the one I wanted. Oh well, rewinding will shave another few seconds off of the class. Then, the student gets to try and throw a ball into a basket from various positions in the classroom, resulting in more points for their team. And if they speak Chinese? Minus twenty points. This is especially hilarious, since their English vocabulary limits them to screaming "Good, good, very good!", "NO!", or the occasional breaking into song with Ricky Martin's "The Cup of Life". I couldn't make this up.

And then, bam. The hour is up, and I go eat lunch.

This has been going on for the past 18 weeks, and you know... I may miss the mind numbing pain of the movie class. Sure it was harsh watching the kids struggle with words they had no business struggling with, but where else would I get to watch a kid falling asleep next to another who is absentmindedly eating clovers off of a potted plant on the window sill.

Again, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

So goodbye Spongebob, goodbye movie class students whose names I never even got to know since I never had a role call and they never answered me when I called their names anyway, and goodbye half eaten plant.

You'll be missed.

At least until I get over it during my newly found hour off.

- Shawn


Pictured: The delicious potted plants, the kid who eats them, another bored student, the basket!, and Mr. Squarepants.

Independence for the Ex-Pat Masses

As a warm blooded American, I couldn't imagine spending a Fourth of July without the essentials: beer and BBQed meat. So, using the magic of Facebook, I invited 10 or so of my friends to a Fourth of July Beer-B-Q, where we could mock our British friends, and talk about how great America is. Ahhemmm.

Anyways, when I got to the party (fashionably late of course) it quickly became apparent that the word had spread on the shindig. By the end of the night, there were easily over a hundred ex-pats from America, England, Ireland, Canada, South Africa, Spain and even Mexico pouring out of a small Dalian bar. Who would have thought the international community would feel the need to celebrate America's independence that strongly? I thought everyone was supposed to hate us these days.

Or maybe it's the old "any excuse to party" frame of mind. That's probably way more likely.

And like any good it involved the Chinese police showing up and trying to convince everyone to go inside. Of course, they were completely unprepared for a mob of foreigners, so we started setting off firecrackers anyway.



happy belated 4th everyone,
Shawn

Eviction Notice

The other day at our weekly staff meeting, Tommy informed us that next semester we would have the pick of the litter for moving into a new apartment. This sounded pretty cool at first, but after a few seconds of consideration, Corey and I both realized that while our apartment is rather out of the way for most of the city, it isn't too bad, and it surely isn't bad enough to warrant the hassle of moving.

We said thanks but no thanks, and were promptly informed that we misunderstood (read: it was miscommunicated to us). Our apartment will no longer be rented by the school at the end of the semester, so we're out if we like it or not.

I guess it's a good thing we've got first dibs on a new pad.

All things considered, I'm letting myself get excited by the move instead of being annoyed. I won't settle for a worse apartment, so there are no worries there. It'll be nicer, and if the rumors are to be believed, in a much better and more central location.

More on this story as it develops.

- Shawn