Transitioning back to Beijing

(written Sunday, June 17)
How can it be a week since I have written? I had a pretty laid back ending to my time in Yengisar. We had lunch with a Uyghur couple who lives in the building and we had a pretty interesting conversation about a wide range of topics, some more sensitive than others that I'm not free to share on this public blog. We also went to the market and bought a whole chicken from the guy who had just killed it and took the feathers off! The market is an interesting place: the Uyghur women get all dressed up wearing fancy dresses and high heels with their heads in varied stages of cover, depending on the mandate of their husbands. Keep in mind, the market is outside and usually has a gravel or dirt "floor" with various umbrellas for shade. It is a lively place where friends greet one another and a good opportunity for the women to socialize among themselves. I also got to meet some of the Uyghur women who run the stores near the apartment - such delightful women who were welcoming to this stranger. I also got to see the farm that keeps James busy - what an amazing place - they grow many kinds of fruit and have an irrigation system that conserves water, just directing it at each tree (it is an Israeli irrigation concept). On Thursday afternoon, we made our way back to Kashgar and spent a little time at the bazaar doing some shopping, had a quick dinner and went to the airport. After an uneventful flight, I arrived in Urumqi about 10:30pm and I got in the line for a taxi (important tip - never go into a taxi with someone who walks up to you, who is not in the taxi line-up - usually it means you will pay much more!). Anyway, I'm waiting in line and this driver comes out of his taxi and takes my luggage ahead of the other Chinese men in front of me. He put the meter on (something else one must be diligent about) and I gave him the card with the hotel's name in Chinese (I had stayed in the same hotel a week earlier) and then as we were on the way into the city he takes his phone and shows me an amount of 200 for the cost and says OK? I said No and then he shows me 150 and I started loudly saying "dabeow" (the word for meter) several times...so after he figured out I wasn't going to pay him an outrageous amount, he took a very long, indirect way to the hotel and I paid 37 RMB more (about $4.50) than I ended up paying to the driver the next morning with all the rush hour traffic back to the airport. It really made me mad, but I was glad to be safely at the hotel, arriving about 11:15pm. I had a quick sleep and was back at the airport by 10:30 the next morning. I had an interesting experience checking in -there were no English signs to indicate exactly where to check in, so I got in one line and when I got to the front, the agent indicated I had to go to another line - so I get there and when I get to that agent and she weighed my suitcase, it was 2.5 kg overweight (mind you, it was exactly the same when I flew from Kashgar to Urumqi, but no one said anything. So she said I had to pay 70 RMB extra for the weight. I told her I would take a few things out - I knew exactly where the heavy stuff was and started taking stuff out until I got to .5kg over and then she waved me to stop (because by now there was a line behind me, but I didn't care ...the inconsistent treatment drives me nuts here, so I decided to take my time!). Anyway, after that, I had to rearrange a few things so I could get all my stuff as a carry-on or in my purse. One other thing I have learned in all my airline travel in China is that it pays to be close to the front of the line when one is trying to board, because the Chinese bring a lot of carry-ons (they do not get stopped for it) and they don't put stuff under their seats, so overhead bin space is at a premium. The other thing that happens is that as soon as someone decides to start a line to board, magically, a whole group of people start to crowd around and push their way to the front, so I decided to be at the beginning of the ever-widening line, so I was one of the first ones on the plane (there is no boarding order for any plane I have been on - it is a free-for-all! Because of that it takes a while to get everyone on the plane and seated because it is completely without order. So we take off and I'm looking
out the window I was sitting by the window) watching us leave Urumqi and head away from the mountains and then I am reading the paper and about 20 minutes later, I look out and notice that we are now much higher above the ground than we were even though the plane has made a couple attempts to get through some turbulence of going through the clouds. I started thinking to myself that something was wrong with the plane because we were not where we should be after almost 30 minutes. Then, sure enough, some Chinese is spoken and there is a lot of muttering and a couple women are loudly almost crying a couple rows behind me and then the English translation comes on and they say we are turning back to land in Urumqi due to mechanical problems. Well, I started praying, for a whole host of reasons - I was supposed to meet my friend Kristen at the Beijing airport who was flying in from Manila to meet me and I had absolutely no way to contact her - and then I thought how far out Urumqi is and there are no extra planes and I started thinking about other times in the States when I had been on planes that had mechanical problems, but fortunately, once we arrived back on the ground, there was a whole team of people there to
work on the plane, and they announced that we would be ready to take off in 30 minutes, after which they served us lunch and we barely finished eating and the plane was ready to fly. It was pretty incredible. Furthermore, the weather had cleared by then and I had the most incredible view of the snow-capped mountains as the plane easily rose to its cruising height. We were an hour-and-a-half late to Beijing, but aside from Kristen"s three-hour wait for me after being up since 2am the night before, all was well. We got to the hotel, went to KFC for supper (have I told you Kentucky Fried Chicken is everywhere in Beijing?), talked for a while as we unpacked and then got a good night"s rest. Our hotel is right in the middle of the central, commercial area, not far from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. It is a fun place to be and quite accessible to a lot of places. We walked a lot on Saturday and saw the Drum Tower, climbing the 69 very steep stairs to the top. It was so worth it, as there were about 25 huge red Chinese drums, (and by huge, I mean they were bigger than I am!) which they played for a couple minutes every half hour. I got it on video - it was SPECTACULAR! :) We also did some shopping and had dinner with our Beijing tour guide for our Wheaton trip - it was great to see her again. This morning we attended a huge International Church in Beijing, there were probably about 1,000 at the service - I couldn't see them all in the balcony since we were in a theatre. There were people from everywhere in the world - Africans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Koreans and other Asians, Caucasians - you have to have a non-Chinese passport to get in - and you have to show it at the door (it is against the law to have Chinese come to church where there are foreigners...). Anyway, they have services in English, bilingual (English and Mandarin), Cantonese, Filipino, French, Indonesian, Japanese and Russian and they have an African Outreach Ministry that also meets on its own. It was a meaningful service and it made me think about the great variety of church experiences I have had in the course of my time here (which I will elaborate on once I get home..). Then this afternoon, we walked around near our hotel, looking for some places in our guidebook we wanted to see. There is so much change in Beijing, lots of tear-downs and renovation, some because of the Olympics and others just because this is a growing city. We did a little shopping but ran out of steam - it was pretty warm so we had a late dinner and a quiet evening. Tomorrow we will head out early while we have some
energy and before it gets too hot and go to the Forbidden City. We have plans to go see some Peking (Beijing) traditional opera, visit the Bell Museum, the Pear Market and a few other places in the days ahead. It is supposed to cool down a bit, which would be very welcome, as the temperatures are in the low 90's.. OK, that's all for now!