I woke up about noon – B asked if I had enough time to pack. I got up and brew some coffee, then I cooked shakshuka, which turned out exceptionally yammy – oyster mushrooms always taste great, and I got the right balance of sour lemon juice and spices. Then, while drinking loads of iced tea, I was packing. My method is to 1) have a list of things to pack in Apple Notes, and use the lists from previous years to compose a new list; 2) put everything from the list to the suitcase; 3) if I can’t close the suitcase, then push it hard.
B had a different system with vacuum packing and labeling, but I felt like all this smart packing stressed her out more than me. Well, maybe she is just anxious in general about the trip.
Around 7 we ordered Uber to JFK, it was about $70 for a 50 minutes ride, watching from the window the Bronx projects, Queens, Brooklyn.
The check-in computer terminals at the airport were all empty, and the line to the check-in assistance was long, so I thought, as it was back in 2000s, I would use the terminals; back then no-one knew how to check-in online but saved so much time. Trying scanning the passport once, twice – nope, not working. Tried another terminal – okay, passed the passport scan phase, then it was asking a US visa for some reason even though we were traveling outside of the US. So we ended up in the line as everyone else. Those terminals are just broken. Then, staying in line, I was observing another guy patiently trying to scan his passport again and again, – so determined, – in 5 minutes he looked pretty frustrated. He had to join the line with everyone else.
Then the nearby bathroom was closed down, and I spent another 15 minutes trying to find another bathroom. Oh, JFK, you could've been a better airport.
On the flight I read Liang Qichao’s memoirs. He was one of the first Chinese students studying in the US in the early 1900s. “Uncivilized people live underground, half‑civilized people live on the surface, and civilized people live above the ground” – stuff like that, pretty ridiculous for today, but still interesting. He feels ashamed of his Chinese culture of that time, which now reads quite outdated – all cultures are important, right?
Westerners walk together like a formation of geese; Chinese are like scattered ducks. When Westerners speak, if they are addressing one person, then they speak so one person can hear; if they are addressing two people, they make two people hear; similarly with ten and with hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands. The volume of their voices is adjusted appropriately. In China, if several people sit in a room to talk, they sound like thunder. If thousands are gathered in a lecture hall, the [speaker’s] voice is like a mosquito. When Westerners converse, if A has not finished, B does not interrupt. With a group of Chinese, on the other hand, the voices are all disorderly; some famous scholars in Beijing consider interrupting to be a sign of masterfulness — this is disorderliness in the extreme. Confucius said, “Without having studied the Book of Songs one cannot speak; without having studied the rites, one cannot behave.” My friend Xu Junmian also said, “Chinese have not learned to walk and have not learned to speak.” This is no exaggeration. Though these are small matters, they reflect bigger things.
London, Heathrow. It was about noon.
I remember those long walks in Heathrow, transitioning here back when I was a kid in 2008. I felt like walking in some place from a dream. Yeah, those long all glass walls, long walks, the bus between the terminals – strangely I still remember it, though I say all airports look the same; I never recall it, yet it's still with me. Why in the world this airport is so big? I dislike large airports – they don’t serve their function well; they feel like a shopping mall. Why do I have to go to a shopping mall every time I want to travel? We don’t need more shopping malls, we just need efficient airports. Oh, well.
We took a bus from terminal 3 to 5, then decided to eat something. There was a Japanese ramen place. The prices looked reasonable – of course, it’s cause it's the British pound. An airport worker talked with a perfect Cockney accent, made me smile.
Then another check-in – the terminals were the same as in the JFK, and still broken. We joined the assistance line. Then, a lady came by and said “May I ask you why you are staying in the queue, sir?” Wow, I wanna speak like British now. She nice to tell us that we were staying in a wrong line.
Then, lots of walks along the all glass walls, and, so, we got to the security check. An Indian lady told me to get rid of water – but water was in a water bottle, I couldn’t throw away the bottle. I asked the lady where I could pour the water from my bottle. She said there is no way we pour it to the trash bin. She looked a little intimidating She suggested just to drink the water. I said it was little too much to drink it all for us, but she looked at us as we were just too prickly to do what the airport prescribes. Well, I guess it’s not only JFK can’t organize everything neatly. If we can’t organize airports, how can we even hope to organize entire countries?
Then the security check. A lady, that looked like a guy from some British sitcom, asked me if I had any paper or tissue in my pockets. I said I did. Her voice was so calming, she told me to just hold the tissue in my hand and chill. She wouldn've been a good doctor – making people relaxed and not worried before surgeries.
I could hardly keep my eyes open by the time we got to the gates. There were many asian people around the gate for the flight to Beijing. One girl came to B and asked her something in Chinese. In 30 seconds I've heard her talking about F1 and visa. Chinese are direct people. She was a PhD in computing from some university in Charlotte. By the time of boarding we knew quite some about her. Chinese are warm people.
By the time of boarding I felt like I could fall asleep in 15 seconds, if I let myself. Once boarded I quickly dozed off. The rest of the 11 hours flight felt like a dream. The passengers in the back talked loudly. He was an adopted kid coming to China for the first time since his childhood; I forgot what was her story. I was waking up form their conversation, then falling asleep again, then, partially sleeping, recalling what Liang Qichao wrote – how Chinese talk loudly disproportionately to what's needed to the other person to hear. The entire flight felt excited – everyone talked loudly; it was a late afternoon flight from London with so many people exited about their traveling ahead; but I was the sleepy passenger from New York not fully sleeping and not nearly awake.
I woke up around dinner time. I read a long article in the New Yorker about an American professor bringing his kids to Sichuan in China for them to pick up some language; mostly about his two years experience with the Chinese education. The math assignment are often very convoluted, with a lot of extraneous information not needed for the solution, with a nothing-to-do-with-math story, and unrealistic actual problem. Reminded me the coding problems from CodeForces. WeChat used for communication with parents, with many parents flooding the chat, and showing off their kids' progress – he calls it "passive-aggressive", though I didn't fully understand why he thinks that way. Yet, parents have ultimately no say, nor give any kind of feedback to the teachers for the actual education process. It ended pretty powerfully arguing that system actually works pretty well in teaching kids maths, and the teachers are respected and encouraged in their profession – unlike the US. "The Double Education of My Twins' Chinese School " by Peter Hessler, it is called.
Then, what – I slept and not slept at the same time, being in a dream like state. We flew around Russia, staying close but not crossing into it. We flew near the Black sea around sunset; I looked towards Ukraine, but it was too cloudy to see anything. The sunrise was around Xinjiang – looked like a dry land with many hills or mountains. Then there was a zigzagging very muddy-looking river, almost like a flood of mud flowing along in the deserted land; as turned out it was the Yellow River – it picks up a lot of clay on the way, and it is exactly why it is called Yellow. I did not see anything like that before. Descending near Beijing was spectacular – very green, dark green mountains seen from above low-altitude scattered clouds; I was said the great wall was somewhere there, but I did not find the wall, but it all looked impressive to see anyway.
The airport was big, but empty. Beijing Daxing International was completed in 2019, is the largest single building airport, but it remains quite empty – our flight was only one of a handful flights landing in the morning. After a short walk we got to the passport control. I went to the foreign passports line, and B went to domestic. The line was not too long, but turned out very slow. Most of the people in line were asian, speaking English with accent – Chinese have to give up their citizenship and get a visa in order to visit China again if they take another citizenship. Only two security officers were checking the passports very carefully and talking extensively to the visitors. Sometimes they called another officer, who, quite dramatically, picked up an old style wired phone from the booth, for some reason standing above the booth, the officer would call someone, and then, while standing above the booth and holding the wired phone headset, dictated something from the passport to the telephone. That repeated for some visitors. I realized the line will take at least an hour.
Meanwhile another flight arrived – this time from Moscow; many Russians joined our line. They all looked like what we call "vatnyks" – the same short haircut, colorful sport t-shirts and shorts, tanned faces, and this piercing direct eye contact that I am guilty of myself. I did not feel like starting a conversation with them and rather focused on trying to recognize any Chinese characters around the airport that I had learned in the past month in DuoLigvo. Poor China, I thought, now Russian chavs hardly can travel anywhere, China is receiving the dumbest of Russian tourists. Realizing how slow the line was they started complaining. "Look, each person takes five minutes to process. There are fifty people in the line, and two officers processing. Go figure yourself how long it will take," – one said. I was trying to make sense of the sign "Please step besides the yellow line" written in Chinese. 黄 "huang" is yellow, like 黄河 "huang he" – Yellow River. Why was 外 "wai" on the sign, like in 老外 "laowai" – foreigner? Turns out 外 "wai" means outside – so "laowai" is like "old outsider". Then I finally go to the officer. He asked me where I was from, and was going to explain how I was born in Russia and brought to Greece, and that I'm actually American, but I realized the officer barely understood a single word from me, so then I just said I was from America. B was waiting for me outside – she already made a friend talking to an old lady. Chinese are warm people. "Hello Laowai!" – yelled some kid at me.
Then we drove along a wide empty freeway. Even though it was a Tuesday morning there were only few cars driving. All that infrastructure is newly built for the airport, but the airport is still not loaded with new flights; I was told. Reminded me "The World" by Jia Zhangke – the same trees, the same buildings, all this clean roads like in the movie; all this new "world". It was about noon when I laid down and fell asleep in about 15 seconds.
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