By Ailien Tran
29 July 2008
My first trip to China was marked by few terrifying experiences, but the most important one was the fear of not being able to leave Beijing by the unreliable service provided by Air China.
I traveled to China for my best friend’s wedding on 6/22. I paid $800 to Fidi Tours in Vietnam for a 5-day package including room, board, airfare, and a tour to Beijing and Shanghai. Fidi Tours sent a Chinese-speaking Vietnamese tour guide and a group of 12 tourists, including myself, to Beijing. We met a local tour guide at Beijing airport, who guided us for the duration of our time in Beijing. As we were exiting the airport, we were greeted by a murky sky and a smoggy view, so we asked the tour guide about the weather. He explained that it was not pollution but just moisture from the lakes, since there are many lakes in Beijing. And yet even when there was hot sunlight the next day, the sky was still grey and the view was still blurry.
After a long journey from Vietnam, where we boarded Air China at 4:00AM in Saigon, to Nanning and then Beijing, we didn’t have any chance to check into a hotel for a shower or a brief rest. Instead, we were guided straight from the airport to the first stop of the tour. Needless to say, we were all exhausted since all of us had left the house around 1:00AM in order to board the plane at 4:00AM. Those who had never traveled by airplane before felt especially tortured, unable to relax. At our first lunch, we weren’t able to tell whether the food was good or bad because we all were so tired that no food could taste good in our mouths. We kept moving from place to place for the whole day until nightfall, when we finally arrived at the hotel and rested.
As tired as we were, all of us were still very impressed by the modernity manifested through China’s freeways and tall buildings around us. We were all appreciative for the opportunity to witness these significant images and to be in the place that we had heard about all the time. China, a five-thousand-year civilization has been one of the most attractive places for many curious travelers, and was even more beautiful before our eyes.
That night, after taking a shower and having dinner, I followed the tour guide to Liu Li Chang Cultural Street, a historic site famous for its tradition in antiques, traditional papers and bamboo brushes. I was mesmerized by its historic and traditional beauty. I walked along the road and saw many Westerners strolling and appreciating the architecture of the shops.
I took a turn into an alley, which was very narrow and completely dark. My tour guide warned me that this was not a good idea. However, my curiosity didn’t let my rational mind listen to that warning. I kept walking and walking until the alley opened up a little and I started seeing lights and hearing people talking and laughing. It turned out that this was a residential area separated from the tourist area of Liu Li Chang Cultural Street. Alongside this ally, there were houses of local people. They were so small to the point that a small person like myself (5 feet tall) could reach to the roof, and when I straightened my arms, I could touch both sides of the house at the same time. There were small shops of vegetables and meat along the way, and there was even a local tour ticket office. All were very small and rundown. I found a bigger house, and it was lit pretty bright, and my tour guide said it was a public restroom. I asked my tour guide why there was a public restroom in a residential area, and why it was bigger than all the houses around here. He explained that the restroom was built by the government since all the houses around the area had no private restrooms. According to him, this was already a progressive action of development. There used to be no restroom in the area and the people had to store their defecation in containers during the night. Then, they put these containers in front of their house every morning. A collector will come and empty these containers into a big container on his sled. The tour guide was not very happy after so many of my questions. He urged me to leave that area and drove me home. We stopped by the side of the road to talk. In the middle of our conversation, a group of police came to our car and asked for our IDs. The tour guide was taken away for a long time, and then came back looking very upset. I asked him what had happened but he refused to answer; he just briefly mentioned that he was not allowed to travel at night with foreigners.
The next day, we shopped at a market place. I had heard about the bargaining system in China, and the tour guide repeatedly reminded us about it, and yet I got lured into a rip-off deal. A merchant told me a bag I was interested in was $96 US, so I bargained down to $49, and it turned out that the bag was fake merchandise and it should have cost just $5 US. Furthermore, when I exited the market place, I was about to pay for the DVD sold by the tour guide who recorded our trip, and I found out that I didn’t have any money left. I couldn’t explain this. I didn’t remember how much money I had at that time, but I did remember that I should have at least some money. People in the group and a couple of merchants around told me that there were cases of people getting voodoo in the market and therefore giving away all their money to the merchants. I wondered if that was the case for me. I had to borrow money from people in my group to pay for the DVD, hoping that I could bring it home and let my mom see what I saw on my trip. Unfortunately, when I got back to the US and tried the DVD, it was empty. So, I paid $20 for an empty DVD, which costs less than 50 cents.
 After Beijing, we flew to Shanghai and arrived at our hotel at 11:30PM, exhausted again. The next day, we visited a shopping area, built in the Chinese traditional architecture and a historic house. What a beautiful place! We genuinely enjoyed our time in Shanghai, and I got to attend my best friend’s wedding as planned. The next day we prepared to fly back home. We waited at the Shanghai airport from 3:00PM, but at 8:00PM an Air China representative told us that the weather was so bad and the fog was so thick that their planes couldn’t take off. Therefore, they had to drive us to the older airport across town to board another plane. We climbed up the bus and got the older airport after a 1-hour ride. The fog didn’t seem to be any thinner at this location, and yet we were able to board the plane and we flew to Beijing. When we arrived in Beijing, where we were supposed to make connection to fly to Saigon, our plane had left already. Air China gave us a bus ride to a hotel, cramped with people and suitcases to the point that there wasn’t any space left on the bus. Still confused and not knowing what would happen, the bus stopped on the side of highway, and the driver disappeared. None of us knew what had happened, so we all got off the bus. Many Chinese passengers were shouting and arguing for a while, then they all took their suitcases and disappeared in the direction that the driver took off. After a long wait next to the bus and a pile of suitcases soaked in rain, our tour guide came back and told us to follow him. We dragged our suitcases through a muddy road to an incline ramp where we found a hotel at the top. It was past midnight. We stayed in the hotel for the next two days because according to Air China, there was only one flight to Saigon every two days. We were all anxious to get home since we all had different plans for those two days. The days became so long that the hotel felt like a jail for unwanted inmates. We finally got to pack our belongings and boarded a bus at 6:00PM. We got to the airport around 6:30PM, feeling relieved that we finally got to go home at 8:30PM. We waited and waited and waited until 10:00PM, but there was no announcement about the status of our flight. We were all cold, hungry and thirsty since all of the shops in the airport started closing up, and many of us had spent all of our money on the trip and had nothing left for the way home. All of the sudden, we heard very loud fighting and shouting across the hall. It turned out that many Air China flights were in the same situation as ours; no status, no answer whether or not it was cancelled or rescheduled. Just silence. Many Chinese passengers were so upset that they started protesting the Air China staff, demanding food, drinks, and blankets. The fight went on for a long time until Chinese police came and the crowd subsided. It was midnight again.
Our tour guide told us that the Air China staff refused to inform us of the status of our flight, and we became enraged, since many of us had urgent situations waiting for us in Vietnam, and we were stuck for two days already. One woman was waiting to see her mother who was suffering from a severe illness and literally lying on her death bed. Another couple missed their appointment for their marriage license, which took them a long time to apply for, since he is US citizen and she is Vietnamese. One Chinese businessman had an important meeting waiting for his contract in Saigon. An Australian woman who had only 5 vacation days in Vietnam was stuck while making the connection in Beijing. Another young mother had 2 young girls who were freezing to the point that their lips turned purple and their skin was full of goose bumps. Many other passengers were middle-class professionals in Vietnam who had missed two days of work already. I missed my meetings with the head of the Ba Ria provincial hospitals, and Dong Nai Pediatrics hospitals, where I was supposed to work for my project during my five weeks in Vietnam.
The Chinese businessman told us that as a Chinese citizen, he had no choice but to fly with Air China. And this kind of experience is normal for him every time. He told us that he apologized for the shame that his countrymen created, and he joined us to pressure the Air China staff until we got to board the plane.
We decided to go and talk to the Air China staff to tell them all of these stories, hoping to get at least an answer. We went to the gate for our flight and started demanding an answer. There were two women and one man standing at the booth. They told us that they didn’t understand English, and their boss was not available. A couple of Chinese-speaking folks started pressuring them to call their boss, and all they would say was that their boss was busy with the passengers protesting for food and drink. We kept pressuring, and yet these three staff just stood there, silent like a graveyard, but with anger in their faces. The boss finally came, and it was 2:30AM. The supervisor was a middle-aged woman who spoke fairly good English. She kept biting here lips, and occasionally giving out different excuses about why the airplane was not ready for boarding. Her reasons varied from the food was not ready to the airplane was not cleaned to the weather was not safe to fly. And during this time, many non-Air-China airplanes were landing and taking off constantly. We started threaten her with taking responsibility for the negative consequences to the Olympics once this incident got the media throughout the world, and she started looking tense. She told us that there would be no flight the next day since there was only one flight from Beijing to Saigon every two days. This news just brought the tension to the climax. People started screaming, and I started taking their pictures. The woman with a dying mother started sobbing and collapsed on the floor. The kids were crying, coughing, and sneezing. Adults started shouting in different languages. The scene was chaotic. Whenever I brought my camera near any staff with a nametag, they tried to avoid my camera at all costs. I started collecting passengers’ names, emails, and testimonies. All of this seemed to gain traction as the supervisor looked more and more anxious. At around 4:00AM, she decided to let us board the plane. People were joyously happy as they ran to gather their belongings and they ran back to the line as if they were afraid of missing a journey of their destiny.
We all huddled into another bus which took us to the plane waiting at the runway. There were many other Air China planes parking around this plane, while earlier the staff had told us that their planes were not able to land due to bad weather. As we entered the plane, we were shocked by a strong smell of urine, which indeed lasted for the whole duration of the flight. When I entered the restroom, I found the explanation. The restroom was sticky from dried urine on the floor and even on the wall. It was beyond imagination. In addition, the flight attendants were so unfriendly and impolite. Whenever we requested anything, they brought the item to us with an irritated face and gave it to us almost violently. However, we paid less attention to this and focused on praying for a smooth connection in Nanning where there might be potential delay just like Beijing.
If you could have seen our faces when we landed in Saigon, you wouldn’t know that we just came back from a vacation trip. We were all happy as if we had just got off a ride from hell. The fear of not being able get home was so real and overwhelming, to the point that it stripped off all the enjoyment and appreciation of sightseeing in China. If there weren’t photos remaining in our possession, what was left in our memories probably was just fear.
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