Once Upon a Time in China
As our plane from Hong Kong began its bumpy descent into Shanghai’s Pudong Airport, we knew one thing for certain — making our connecting flight to Tokyo was going to be close.
We asked a flight attendant about the status of our connecting flight, but she didn't have any information, other than we'd be landing at 5:15 p.m. The connecting flight we were booked on was scheduled to take off at 5:25 p.m. Close indeed. Even though I was preparing myself to miss this flight, I was more concerned about our checked luggage arriving in Tokyo without us.
We landed, taxied, and eventually arrived at the gate. By the time we got off the plane it was 5:20 p.m. We were ready to make a mad dash through the airport — until we saw there was no jetway.
Instead we had to take a bus to the terminal from where the plane was parked on the tarmac.
The bus was already packed, but our flight attendant, in consideration of our situation, all but jammed us inside with the other now-annoyed passengers.
This bus ride felt like it took a long time. It probably didn’t, but as we cruised by the other gates I kept an eye out for any waiting China Eastern planes. I didn’t see any. Dread grew with every gate we drove by.
And that’s when it really, finally, concretely hit home — we weren’t going to be on a plane to Tokyo any time soon.
For some reason, inexperience mostly, we didn’t think we needed to fill out an immigration card if we were just transiting. But in China, we did. So I hastily scrawled our info onto four cards, and presented them to an immigration officer (who was very nice) after a brief wait in line. A short discussion later, we were granted 24-hour temporary visas.
Welcome to China
We went to retrieve our bags, but as we stood there watching other people’s luggage roll by, I began to doubt we’d see them. They had been checked through to Tokyo. As the last few bags trickled down the conveyor belt, ours were not there. So we weren’t going to make our flight, but would our bags?
There was nothing to do but head over to the transit area. When we got there, we handed over our boarding passes, and the woman at the counter said, “You will not make this flight, and there’s nothing else until tomorrow morning. We’ll put you in a hotel for the night.”
She punched a few keys and moments later told us we were booked on a flight at 9:10 the next morning, then asked us to wait while they arranged for a hotel. I asked about our luggage, and she pointed to the conveyor belt and said, “Here.”
Sure enough a short but still agonizingly long time later, our three bags popped out of the small door onto the baggage carousel.
Okay, so that may not have been the best travel day we’ve had on the trip, but we were all together and we had all our bags, so we didn't really need anything else. Except maybe a place to sleep.
We waited until a woman walked up to us and said, “From Hong Kong? Follow me please.” We gathered out stuff and started walking through the airport, following our guide. And walked and walked and walked until we went outside and she gestured to a waiting white van. We nodded and started to load our luggage in the back. When we got it all loaded up, we turned around to thank her, but she was gone.
We climbed into the van and we were off. But where were we going? About 10 minutes into the ride I started to really wonder. I looked over at Samantha and could tell she was thinking the same thing. But it wasn't too much longer before we arrived at the Yunting Holiday Hotel.
Yunting Holiday Hotel
We were checked in by a nice young man in a too-large jacket who took our boarding passes before giving us a room key. We definitely felt trapped.
Usually, the first thing we do when reaching a new country is take out some spending money in the local currency from an ATM, but we didn’t have a chance to do that. So we had no money and no idea where we were and no boarding passes.
He said a shuttle would take us to the airport at 7:00 in the morning. Our counter agent told us to get to the airport by 7:00, so we asked for 6:45. He nodded in agreement, then gestured to the elevator.
We asked about a place to get some food and the young man said, "We’ll call your room." We were a little confused about what this meant, but we ventured up to our room — and what a room it was.
Three beds, a bathroom, a television, and a pillar right in the middle. It looked like any hotel room (though somewhat poorly designed). There was an antiseptic sting to the air, yet it didn’t feel quite clean. It was just little stuff, like hairs in the bathroom sink and dust on shelves. I wish we’d taken pictures.
About 10 minutes after we got into the room, the phone rang. I picked it up. “Dinner is ready,” a voice said before I could say anything. I thanked the caller, hung up, and looked over at my family. “It seems dinner is ready.”
We went down to the restaurant, which had been dark when we checked in but was now brightly lit. It was set up like a buffet-style place, a few tables surrounded by bright purple plush chairs with empty chafing dishes on top of long tables in the back of the room.
A man in a white chef’s coat gestured to four trays on a table in the back of the room. We each took one and sat down to eat. Dinner was a sectional plate, each with a serving of brown noodles, bok choy, white rice, and some sort of cooked meat. We were given cups so we could help ourselves to a vaguely orange soda.
As we ate, the hotel staff sat at a distant table, smoking and talking. After we finished and thanked the staff, we went back to the room. The place felt like a ghost hotel — there was no evidence anyone else was staying there and every footstep echoed down the empty halls.
It was still early, but there was nothing else to do, so we got ready for bed. This process, like it does for most people, involves brushing your teeth. And that always begs the eternal question when traveling: Can we drink the water? After a quick (well slow, we only had Edge network connections), we opted for no, we probably shouldn’t, and used bottled water instead.
The final surprise came when we got into the beds. You know how most beds are soft and at least a little supporting when you lie on them? Not these beds. These beds were hard and pushed back with a vengeance. Seriously, I hiked the John Muir Trail for two weeks and slept on ground softer than these beds.
As the saying goes, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and this day had been filled with discomfort. We all read for a little bit and turned out the lights.
But our strange, unexpected detour doesn’t end there ...
16 Hours in China
The room phone woke me up. I answered it quickly to keep it from ringing a second time, and before I could speak, a voice belonging to the young man from the night before told me that the shuttle would be leaving at 6:30.
The voice sounded tired. I said, also sounding tired, “Okay, thanks,” and hung up. Could we have overslept? We’d gone to bed so early it seemed unlikely. I checked my phone — it was 4:30 in the morning, which seemed a bit early for this sort of notification call.
I dozed for a little, then roused the rest of the family at 5:45 a.m. I figured 45 minutes would be enough time for us to get all packed up and ready for the shuttle.
As we were going through the morning routine, the phone rang again at 6:00 a.m., notifying us again that the shuttle would be leaving at 6:30. We were packed and wanted to get out of there, so we hustled down to the lobby.
As a stark contrast to the night before, the place was kind of busy. There were about 15 people (including us) standing around in the lobby.
As we walked up to check out, the driver of our van from the night before shambled by, heading towards the restroom. His bed head was in full effect, a lit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and he carried a coffee cup that held a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste.
Upon checking out, the young man in the too-large jacket from the night before gave us our boarding passes back. As he handed them over, I noticed he’d spent the night behind the desk. He’d slept on a makeshift bed of four chairs set up in a row and covered by a yellow blanket, which he still wore around his shoulders.
Yeah, this was a weird place.
We took our place in line for the shuttle. Along with us was a group of men from the Philippines who were in some sort of band and a woman from Hong Kong, who was the only one of the travelers who spoke Chinese.
The band was laughing and goofing around while the woman looked annoyed. At one point, as we were trying to fit everyone’s luggage into the van in a logical order, she muttered in English, “The employees here don’t even understand Chinese.” We had to take her word on that.
We all climbed into the van. Between the ten passengers and all our luggage, it was one packed truck. We made it as far as the end of the parking lot before the driver’s phone rang. The truck stopped. We sat there for a few minutes, through two or three stoplight cycles as he held the phone to his ear, before he popped the truck into reverse and backed up to the door of the hotel.
He left the van and went inside, where we could see him talking to the young man for about five minutes. Then they walked out together, and the young man stepped onto the van and asked, in English, “Who was in room 203?” No answer. “Room 203?” After a long and uncomfortable silence, one of the band guys raised his hand. The young man asked, “Can I have your room key, please?”
There was much laughter from the band, the Hong Kong woman looked even more annoyed, the room key was handed over, and then we were on the road to the airport at last. At some point along the way I realized the van was driving on the right side of the road, which felt strange after months of being in and around cars on the left side.
We checked in and one of our bags was selected for special screening. I went over to the inspection station and we took everything out, then put it all back in. Nothing appeared to be wrong, and I’m still not quite sure what they were looking for.
We didn’t have long to wait until our plane boarded, and we were soon on board and ready to fly to Tokyo. As the plane took off, we could see a thick band of gray pollution that hung over Shanghai like a shroud.
Events of Sunday, November 23 and 24, 2014. Days 95 and 96 of continuous travel.
Header Image: Detail of the front door to the Ynting Holiday Hotel. Image from the author's collection.