After leaving Zhaoxing I got the high speed train back to Guangzhou and stayed in Foshan for the final few days of my trip. Despite spending just over two weeks in China it seemed like I was leaving all too soon; little did I know that I wouldn’t be saying goodbye to China quite as quickly as I’d thought.
Foshan and Guangzhou are both sub-tropical (just) and spring is the rainy season – this was graphically demonstrated on my last day when a thunderstorm settled over Guangzhou, deluging the airport runway with too much water for it to be safe for planes to take off or land, not to mention the risk of lightning. There are no direct flights from Guangzhou to Manchester so I was flying back via Beijing and Amsterdam but a two hour delay at Guangzhou meant I was almost certain to miss my connection at Beijing. The check in desk attendant refused to be drawn on this though, even when I pointed out to her that the delay meant I would only have 10 minutes to change planes. Her helpful suggestion was that I should “have a try.” I should also “have a try” at taking my full 65 litre hiking rucksack through security and onto the plane as ‘hand luggage’ because if by some miracle I made the plane in Beijing, any checked baggage definitely wouldn’t.
I successfully made it through security accompanied by the world’s largest hand luggage (I brought home so much tea it felt like I should have asked for an import license) only to find that my flight was now running three hours late. Luckily, like any good Chinese traveller I had my thermos flask and tea with me so I made a beeline for the boiling water dispenser and settled down for a cup of tea and some baozi I’d bought that morning. A four hour delay to my plane was then announced but confusingly another announcement told us to go to the boarding gate. An airline official was there and he told us that because of the long delay we’d be taken to a hotel for dinner. Almost before I’d had time to wonder why we weren’t offered vouchers to eat in one of the airport restaurants, we were being led back through security, out of the airport and ushered onto a waiting bus. The bus was still waiting in the same place an hour later. There were farcical scenes when other confused passengers got on and asked what hotel the bus was going to and when it was leaving and we (someone had decided that the most efficient use of scare transport resources was to allocate three passengers a full 49 seat coach) couldn’t answer. At least this prompted an intervention from the airline; a different official came and told us that a driver would be with us in 10 minutes. 15 minutes later the same guy came back and took us to a minibus where a family were already waiting. He jumped into the driver’s seat and we set off for the hotel and promptly ground to a halt because of traffic chaos caused by the rain.
We eventually arrived at the hotel at 9pm by which point the restaurant had closed. Not to worry though, we each got to check in to different rooms in the airline owned hotel and had a room service meal. I’d love to say that egg and seaweed soup, two fried eggs, tofu, pak choi and rice from plastic boxes never tasted so good but I don’t like to lie. I bolted the food down in 10 minutes as if the traffic was anything near as bad on the way back to the airport I thought we’d only have about twenty minutes at the hotel. So when it got to 10pm and the promised call from reception still hadn’t arrived I was getting very nervous. When I finally got a call to say the bus was outside I rushed downstairs but needn’t have bothered because, whilst the bus was outside, it was another ten minutes before the bus driver actually showed up. The driver quickly made up for lost time though by, quote, ‘driving it like he stole it’ and racing down the motorway back to the airport. I’d been watching F1 highlights in my hotel room when waiting for the call from reception; overtaking, undertaking, late barking, screeching tyres, wheel to wheel action – that drive to the airport had it all.
Having arrived in one piece we then rushed to check the departure times only to find out that our plane had been delayed yet again so all the boy racer antics had been for nothing. I managed to get my ‘hand luggage’ back through security fine and, despite a few concerned looking glances from fellow passengers and stewardesses, I got it onto the plane an in an overhead locker too. Well, there was no way it was going to fit under my seat.
We arrived in Beijing about 2.30am by which time my plane to Amsterdam was probably somewhere over Central Asia and the next one wasn’t til 11.50am the next morning. The guy at the transfer desk was very apologetic but said that he couldn’t book me a seat on it and that I’d have to wait until the ticket desk re-opened at 8.30am the next morning to do that. He then swept his arm around to indicate the massive baggage reclaim hall at Beijing Capital Airport brightly lit with harsh strip lighting, baggage carousels rumbling round and plane loads of people rushing to collect their things and said “you can sleep here.” It would be fair to say that I wasn’t exactly overcome with joy at the offer and, perhaps sensing this, the guy the admitted that I could go to a hotel instead. I jumped at the chance and after a much smoother journey from airport to hotel than in Guangzhou, I checked into my second hotel room of the night, this one 1,400 miles away from the first.
A Chinese student was in the same situation as me and after a very disappointing breakfast the next morning ( I ceratinly wouldn’t have chosen it as my last meal in China but it was the only thing on offer, and free too) she was able to rebook our seats without any difficulty and I was finally able to get rid of my oversized hand luggage. All in all, a suitably crazy end to my trip but one that did nothing to damped my enthusiasm to revisit the sometimes beautiful, often bewildering but always brilliantly special country that is China. So, and in one of the few things I have in common with Arnold Schwarzenegger, “I’ll be back.”
