Well,
a bit of nostalgia this morning.
Sitting here having very bad espresso from the “Kiss and Bake” coffee
shop off to my right. A shot of
espresso is twenty-two kuai, which is
reasonable. And a double shot
isn’t on the menu and so the two ladies reckoned this would be fifty-four kuai, which is absurd. I tried to explain the logic of adding
shots to two women who never have and never will drink coffee. I offer the comparison of Starbucks
pricing, where in a double shot is nineteen kuai
and you add four-kuai to every shot
thereafter. They look at me
incredulous, like this must be some kind of a scam. Sitting here with my nine-dollar cup of dishwater, watching
all the travelers come and go, this is not what I’m nostalgic about.
Rather, I’m waiting in Beijing Capital Airport’s Terminal
Two. Last night I headed to Terminal
Three, the gleaming manta-maw of modernity in the pouring rain. Expectations were low for an on time
departure and they plummeted for any departure at all, when the thunder claps sounded. I called my friends at CTRIP to ask if
the plane was cancelled. “No
sir.” Ten minutes later, after my
wife dropped me off and headed back home, standing at the Air China counter,
the woman confirmed that all flights out of Beijing had been cancelled. Lovely.
I tried my wife to ask her to loop back, but she didn’t have
her phone with her. The change
ticket lines looked like the queue for bank runs in Shanghai in the Thirties. I went downstairs to the cab queue. Interminable,
or more accurately forty-five minutes or so, of standing, fending off people
who thought they might like to slowly nudge past me, texting everyone I had
planned to see in Shanghai about by delay, canceling hotels, booking a new
flight, I nearly got the head of the queue when a fight broke out at the head
of the line. Who knows what
transpired but the cabbie and a woman were standing in the pouring rain
yelling. He called her a “stupid
cunt.” Not to be outdone, the
woman called the gentleman a “stupid cunt”, as well. This thoughtful exchange continued with each escalating the
same assertion till the handy staff came and broke it up and, having 狗血淋头[1],the
woman presumably got a different cab and the driver found a less dim genitalia
to drive in to town.
Altercations though make one wary. Cab drivers at the airport who wait 2-3 hours for a thirteen
dollar fare in to town don’t like it when you tell them you’re heading to the
New Convention Center, the most obvious landmark, near where I live. That would be a five-dollar fare. In fact, by the time you get to my
house, it's an eight-dollar fare, but that takes some explaining. Technically, for a nearby fare like
that they can get a ticket that lets them cut the line back in. So, rather than discuss this before
getting in, you plop your luggage in the back sit down and then have the
destination discussion. I was
expecting the worst when I finally mounted my appointed cab.
Sure enough, a grizzled guy who probably wasn’t much older
than me, barked at me with a Beijing brogue, inquiring where it was we were off
to. “New Convention Center” I
said, being sure exaggerate the third tone for the dip in the final
syllable. Now he upped the ante
and barked, “where!?” Accordingly
I barked back, with even greater ferocity, “The New Convention Center, if
you’re not familiar just go, I’ll tell you how to get there. Just go.” Having established a gentlemanly rapport of mutual
annoyance, we headed out into the pouring rain, splashing through rivers formed
in the streets with their poorly designed, poorly maintained drainage.
This morning I sought to have a cab ready at 5:00AM to head
back out to the airport. Up early,
it was still raining and this did not bode well for flying out this
morning. By 5:20AM I caved and
asked my wife to drive me out, again, and just as were preparing to go, we got
a call that a cab was available after all. My years-old routine has, over the summer I believe, been
disrupted by the Uber phenomenon.
Everyone has an app to call a cab now. In Beijing there are a plethora of me-too local companies
like Di-Di Da Che. None of them
appear to have their apps easily accessible on the iTunes store. I’ll have to devote some time to
cracking this and secure the app, or I’ll increasingly be left frustrated and
cab-less.
This morning’s guy, doesn’t care that it’s only an eight dollar fare, as he has not
waited hours building out some twelve-dollar fantasy. He was hopelessly lost in my neighborhood and bewildered by
the back road approach necessary to reach Terminal Two from my neighborhood,
but whatever. I still tipped him,
and walked the underpass to the arrival section of the terminal, in search of
the China Eastern Airlines check in.
Finding it and a long line I tried my luck in the business class line,
which must have looked nice and clean when it first opened. I have no frequent flyer privileges
with China Eastern, the young lady, who already looked exhausted at 6:00AM,
didn’t seem to mind and slapped a ‘first class’ tag on my bag.
Then the nostalgia began in earnest. I remember when this airport opened and
it seemed modern. It was modern
compared to the worn down revolutionary airport the city put up with until the
mid-nineties, “Terminal One”. It
is still there, and perhaps it too has had a makeover. I don’t know of any airlines that
actually fly there. But Terminal
Two, which now looks like most of the Tier Three Chinese city airports across
the country, is full of memories, of arriving, meeting friends, seeing people
off, in that lost, innocent China that isn’t around any more.
Frank Wess isn’t a name I can place, but he’s joined me this
morning since the cab ride out.
I’ve got him on a disc playing with Thad Jones, Elvin and Hank’s younger
brother. He is always a fine trumpet to sample. Frank Wess must be the man on the tenor sax on this mix and
it is a confident, late fifties swing, their swinging, here on this nicely
titled tune “Subtle Rebuttal” that is just about right for this flight down the
coast of eastern China. We’ll be
landing soon and they’ll be telling me to flip this laptop down. Later when I get to my hotel and am
back on line, I’ll learn a bit more about FW and this session. And it turns out that tenor sax and
flute were the man’s instruments.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1922, he came up in Billy Eckstein’s
orchestra and has played with just about everyone, before his death just last
year at the age of 91.
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