Landing in China

We’ve been in the air for three hours and the three-year old boy that is seated in front of Red is finally sleeping, after spending the first half of the flight screaming in every direction. He kept repeating the same words over and over again. Of course, we didn’t understand anything. Almost everybody else did. There are may be five other white people in this plane, the rest are probably Chinese.

As we are starting the descent, we make our way through the clouds and get our first sight of China. Lakes, rivers and ponds are all over the landscape, and snow is sprinkled on the ground. Rectangle-shaped ponds of every size are almost overlapping.

As soon as the plane stops moving, everybody rushes through the aisle to get off. The plane is on the tarmac, meaning we’ll have to take a bus to the terminal. We are greeted by a cold, humid breeze as we get off the plane. Fortunately, we already have our thick scarves on.

In line before going through immigration, we get excited as we recognized the Chinese characters 谢谢, which mean “thank you”. The young couple in front of us, very nicely, teaches us how to say “you’re welcome”.

We show our passports, the immigration officer looks at it for about thirty seconds and gives it back. Our bags come right away on the belt and, as we have nothing to declare, we move toward the exit. Hard to believe, but in five minutes, we are already in the arrival hall, waiting for LJ, our contact at the university, to pick us up.