Return

To finish already. The return trip began by taking the train from Jiayuguan to Lanzhou. Bunks again, but the boarding of the train was less chaotic than in the previous trip. I fell asleep very fast again and I continued sleeping, even if somebody in one of the bunks around me was snoring so loudly that he was probably heard from Beijing. I was too tired to care.

We went back to the hotel where we had left our luggage on the way out when we arrived to Lanzhou, to have breakfast in the restaurant. It was the easiest option. Even if it was mainly another chinese breakfast, there were some sweet things, even some milk, and it tasted like heaven after having breakfast that seemed lunch for a week. Chinese breakfasts are something from another world.

The more adventurous part of our trip back began when we took the taxis to go to the airport, which is located far from the city. We were about 20, counting the taiwanese, koreans, and people from other places. We took six taxis, with at least one mandarin speaker in each. I was in the last one, with a guy from the Philippines and another from Malaysia, but from chinese origins. So, when our little convoy started, I had a little bit less than two hours before my flight, and soon we saw that it would take some time to get out of the traffic nightmare of that city.


After a while, it was clear that we were not following the same route that we took on our way in: we were in the right direction, that is westwards, but we had not crossed the river yet nor taken the desert highway. When the malayan guy told the driver, they began a very curious conversation. It wasn't clear if they were quarreling or if that was their usual way to talk, as sometimes happens. The driver said that there were two ways to go to the airport. So, why did he take that one?. I don't know, we guessed later that maybe they were saving some money off the highway tolls. The ride had its own charms though: we stopped once midway in a gas station to refill the tank — and because the taxi used that compressed gas, we had to wait outside the car, standing, for security reasons; yeah, that was the last thing we needed— and later in order to fill the tires of another taxi (yeah, when they were already warm). We could also see the more industrial and poor side of Lanzhou. So much so, that the filipino guy said when we were crossing some streets, with roadwork all around, muddy and with humble houses, that it looked like the worst neighborhoods of Manila. There was also a thick smog all over that made everything look dirty and polluted, very different from the clean looking appearance of our way in.

We got into the airport highway in the end, and when I was beginning to wonder if we would ever get to the airport, we were almost there, with time enough to check our bags and say goodbye to the other groupgs. Of course, our flight was then delayed for a little over an hour, because the Changsha airport had been closed. I could then enjoy another great exhibition of how to jump the line made by the locals and also to savour the blocking abilities of one of the taiwanese students (she was as good as an NFL tight end).

There were no further problems. The luggage zone at Changsha in the domestic flights terminal was literally a madhouse —I'd better not describe how packed and "watered" was the men's room— with people running around everywhere, who knows how many thiefs. But they checked that the bags you took were really yours. The international terminal was the complete opposite, almost the definition of peace and quiet. It was closer to a hospital.

The flight from there to Hong Kong was as placid as can be, and we could see a beautiful sunset and the show of the clouds with a storm far away (I could see wonderful lightning inside the clouds). In the end, dinner in Hong Kong while we waited for our flight to Taipei. Some kind of dumplings with bubble tea. Tasty.


When we arrived to Taiwan, and thanks to the students it was easy to find a taxi to take me home, I was really tired, from the trip and from so many intense experiences in so few days. A very interesting trip. And a lot of fodder for the blog too.

Passports

I am sure that due to the unusual international status of Taiwan, there are probably many curious, strange or just plain ridiculous procedures and situations in their dealings with China and other countries of the world. I say that because I have already experienced several.

The citizens of the ROC (Republic of China) have two passports. One is the passport they use when they go around the world, Hong Kong included. With dark green covers, it's a normal passport. But if they happen to travel to China, they cannot use it and then they carry as identification a kind of passport, issued in Hong Kong, with light green covers, which is the one they must show to the chinese police. I would say that the people from Hong Kong have something similar. Of course, both documents have different numbers.

So, we were in Chengdu airport, checking our luggage again to fly to Lanzhou, when four of the taiwanese students of our group found that, because of a mistake of the travel agency, their electronic tickets had the taiwanese passport number. Well, to be more precise, the sour-grapes-faced woman who was doing the checking told them and added that they did not recognize that number, and that was all (translated, screw you).

Fortunately, in the age of internet and electronic tickets, they could phone to Taiwan and ask the travel agency to correct the numbers of their tickets. They went back to the same counter, already when the checking should have been closed (but it was China and you know...), and the same woman checked their bags without making any comment. They must make a point of it, of course. As if we didn't know already. Incidentally, my last name was wrong in all my electronic tickets (they interchanged the r with the t), but nobody said anything about it. It is not so strange, if we take into account the different alphabet and how difficult it is for them, but they don't care, I am not important.

It was even funnier when we had to check our luggage to go back to Hong Kong. The students showed the chinese document to the air company lady, but she told them, no, no, I want the other one. They had to show the chinese one to cross the last control, of course. The nice things of these non-nationalist people!.

Rainy night

Little things. Last night, it started raining, very hard. It's not anything I have not seen before, but it had been weeks since the last time I had heard raining that it wasn't in the afternoon. In fact, I could not really tell at first if what I heard was the rain falling onto the little roof of my balcony or maybe a truck. And it sure did rain a lot. There was a torrential rain for about half an hour, as many I have already seen here. After a grey and cloudy day, I did not imagine that it would finally rain like that. It kept on raining this morning for a while, and it had also been many days since we had had a day so foggy as today. It seemed that I was in a different place and in a different season, because the temperatures were also lower.


Going back to last night again, the street turned into a kind of river and the cars and buses were splashing all over. It stopped raining before midnight, while I was finishing, really eating up, a Raymond Chandler book (The Lady in the Lake). Imagining that Marlowe is Bogart, following the characteristic rythm of Chandler's stories, and enjoying his always excellent dialogues and plot twists could not have a better backdrop than the sound of the tires of the cars rolling over the wet asphalt. It does not matter that it's not LA, you cherish that feeling so vital and distant at the same time, with a little touch of loneliness and emptiness, that a good 40s film noir movie is always able to convey.

Eclipse

At about 18:15, the eclipse began, with the known sequence already familiar from partial eclipses. In spite of that, I could feel how my excitement was growing. I guess, everybody's. The solar disk was progressively dwindling in the next hour and a gradual darkening could be appreciated in the air about us. My excitement reached its peak when the eclipse attained the maximum. What a difference!. To be able to look at the Sun with the naked eye and see the black disk of the Moon circled by the dazzling corona of the Sun. Near by, Mercury! and Venus. I took a couple of pictures, but they are not very good.


I have managed to get this one, from one of the guys in our group, which probably gives a better idea of how it was.

It wasn't completely dark, particularly because the whole horizon, which we could see very clearly, was lighted. There was a very strange light in the air, as if from below to above. Everything seemed very quiet at the same time. I can't really say if it was because of me or maybe the few birds around had really fallen silent. I remember a great feeling of quietness, while I was bursting inside. It was something that I had wanted to see for many years and I could finally gaze at it now. It may be somewhat ridiculous, but I was filled by all kinds of emotions and memories. A truly unique and spectacular experience; I think I can understand why people were so upset by it in the old ages. Even knowing what was what I was seeing and making sense of many things, I could not escape the feeling of enormity of the things happening in front of me.

Suddenly, a ray broke the edge of the black disk, and we had to put on our dark glasses again. The ocultation had finished, and the eclipse was beginning its way to the end. Two minutes that lasted so long and so little. I would say that there was a big explosion of euphoria among people at that same moment, and everybody was talking about it, taking pictures of everyone and everything, things like that. Sharing the experience. Happiness.

But, sadly, my bus had to leave an hour later to go back to Jiayuguan, so we could take the train that would return us to Lanzhou. Last pictures, many, many good-byes. Many mixed emotions and last unforgettable looks. The sunset that made us company at the beginning of the way back was a beautiful closing to a very intense day.

To the site

I might as well start finishing this unending series of stories about my trip to China. So, the last day, after visiting the western end of the Great Wall, we went back to the hotel; the ones who had to leave on that day, such as me, checked out; we had lunch; and boarded the buses to go to Jinta, the place where we had the permits to see the eclipse. We were asked for our papers a couple of times the days before, I guess to write down our names in the list of people who could enter the site. The so-called security. GPS devices were not allowed and we were repeatedly asked the question if we had any GPS gadget. My answer was always the same: the more advanced thing I have on me is my (analog) watch.

The bus ride through almost completely desertic places, specially in the last part, was another show of the condition of the roads (not so bad as one could imagine) and the general driving style. Chaotic.



We were stopped for a long time in a road control before reaching Jinta. There were many buses, full of tourists, and somebody from each had to go to some tables set under some parasols, where policemen checked all the permits. Everything went ok until we reached Jinta, where it looked like, for some reason, they didn't want to let our bus through, when the other bus of our group had just gone by without any problem. After a while, a policewoman arrived with a car, did something and we went on some 500 m, where another control did not want to let us go into the parking zone. Immediately, the same policewoman arrived and they let us through. I asked some of the taiwanese what had happened, specially because of their comments only in mainland China, because I could not understand anything that was said, of course. It looks like the first control found that even if our bus had a permit to go to the site, it didn't have a parking permit. In the second one, they complained that there was a stamp missing in the paper we had been given two minutes before. Oh, well.


As soon as the bus stopped, people started setting up the telescopes and the supports for the cameras

and we prepared ourselves to wait a couple of hours before the eclipse began. Meanwhile, well, time to take pictures, to go up and down —I was not allowed to go to see a small reservoir that was nearby; I think I was to western-looking for my own good— and to hide from the scorching Sun of that afternoon. Fortunately, we had some food and drinks (cans of chinese stout beer?) and between jokes and stories it wasn't too bad.

Anybody out there?

These things happen to me sometimes, but I think never so much as this week. It sounds worse than what it really was, because it's not been bad at all, but since saturday night, when I came back from Jiufen, until yesterday evening, I did not have a conversation longer than 5 or 10 seconds with anybody. That's almost five days. Ordering lunch, using a few more or less mispronounced words, or exchanging a couple of sentences with a rushing-by student, do not count as real talk. I am alone in my office and the routine turns out to be going to work and coming back home, specially when there was not any interesting activiy at the IAA.

That does not mean that I was completely isolated from the rest of the world. The possibilities of computing allow me to be in touch with people far away, but in any case, it's not a feat I should try to exceed. Yeah, you know what happens with records.

Air raid drill

What can I tell today?. Well, this afternoon, between 14:30 and 15:00, there was an air raid drill on this side of Taiwan. At least, in Taipei, because I saw it. It's not really funny, if I think about it, specially coming from a continent with a penchant for dropping all kinds of stuff on the heads of people, but it must be an unpleasant sign of how things are. The funny thing is that when I heard the sirens, I realized that I had misunderstood the mail that I got yesterday or the day before. Is that why nobody came to my office for the weekly meeting?. I wouldn't be surprised, because I am always the last to know.

As soon as the sirens started, they stopped the traffic and told people to get into the nearest buildings. There were policemen riding scooters or bikes, goind around to make sure that there weren't any cars moving or any people walking around (knowing them, that's hard work, as I could observe). I could also see from the windows of my floor, how there wasn't anything moving in Roosevelt Rd, nor in any of the elevated lanes of the freeway that surround us. Even the bridge that crosses the river was completely empty. For half an hour.


It is weird to see such a big city so empty, as in a 70s disaster movie. All in all, disturbing.

Smokers

I saw them the first time I passed through the Hong Kong airport, but I didn't take any picture. Three months later, when I was going to China, I did.

I saw them too in Taipei's airport, and they look even more futuristic. Like something out of a space movie.

What are they?. Smokers' cabins. It's not allowed to smoke in the airport or, at least, in the boarding zones. So, to smoke, you must go into one of these cabins. The first time I saw them, I thought they were mini-bars, because I saw people crowding inside, smoking like there was no tomorrow, while seating in one of the couches or bar-like stools, and watching the flat screens. Umm, maybe the idea of a bar is not that bad.

There are some windows to look outside, but it seemed more to me like a place where the vicious components of society are shown to the rest to make an example. They really looked like caged animals. Maybe we will get there seeing how things are going. And it will be difficult to argue that they did not earn it.