We arrived in Changchun in Manchuria yesterday afternoon. We are here to visit my wif'e's brother's family. Our experience in the Beijing airport with China Southern was pretty bad. We got to the airport early in order to make sure everything went smoothly, however, things went poorly because China Southern's service is terrible. First of all, our daughter's ticket "wasn't found" in the electronic kiosk, so we waited in line to get her ticket and check our bags. The guy at the ticket counter was a jerk and we couldn't check our baggage because we were too early. I couldn't believe it. We had to wait a half an hour before we got back in line again to check our baggage. I had our cart unloaded (2nd time now) and a bag on the conveyor belt when the 2nd attendant told us our flight was cancelled. He isn't able to issue a ticket for us and sent us on a wild goose chase to find the right place to get approval to issue a new ticket on the next available flight. It was insane. My wife went to 3 different places before we found the right one, which wasn't in the same room as all the other customer service windows. Then while she was at the window getting things set up some crazy guy walked up behind her and started giving her crap. He started yelling at her really loudly so I walked up and got between them but I couldn't tell him what I would have liked to because he couldn't speak English. I said some things to him which I m sure he didn't understand, but he did back up anyway because he knew she wasn't alone. I had been standing a few feet away with our luggage and with Shuya. One of the other passengers at a nearby window tried to calm him down and finally he went away to another window. Anyway, then we had to go get in another line and get our tickets. All this time we were under the impression that we had to check the stroller because the manager that we spoke to earlier told us we couldn't bring it through security. The manager was the biggest jerk of them all. So we tried to check it and the lady said it had to be wrapped. What a joke. They told us a bunch of lies. We asked another guy and he said we could bring it through, so we wound up bringing it to the gate. On the plane they even put the stroller in a closet on board instead of stowing it with the luggage. It was really painful! Thanks for letting us vent! If there was a Better Business Bureau in China... On board the plane was cool - on a short flight we even got hot food. Service, food and drinks were good and the plane was fairly new and comfortable. The flight left on time, about an hour later than our original flight.
Shuya is doing well and everybody comments about how beautiful she is. I don't think she understands Mandarin as well as I thought. She doesn't respond to many things that people say to her. Only occasionally. We'll keep trying to immerse her but it's hard because my wife and I are always speaking English when we talk to each other. I can't read the blog, I can only post. Apparently Big Brother is preventing me from reading our blog. I have had trouble reading my Yahoo email. I've been able to access it twice since I've been here. I am always able to check my Outlook email at work though and that's much more important. Changchun is a major city in the north but it's only about 3 million people per Wikipedia. The airport appeared to be small and is several miles outside the city (about 18 km) in farmland that is fairly flat, with gentle rolling hills and trees in some places breaking up the fields. It was very green when we arrived on this trip with lots of humidity. It was about 23C so it was a little uncomfortable but not too bad. The hotel room was uncomfortable because the central AC was turned off. Apparently it wasn't hot enough yet to turn it on. My wife says they grow the best rice and wheat here in this region. Also, Changchun is the "Detroit" of China, meaning it's the auto industry city (not the crime capital!).
We had an incredible dinner at a restaurant that uses recipes from the Qin dynasty (when the Terra cotta warriors were built and buried with the empore in Xian). The food was so good I couldn't believe it. And the restaurant was really well decorated. Better than any we had been in in Beijing. And I ate way too much, as usual. Dumplings, deep fried chicken served on a skewer and prepared with flavorings reminiscent of sausage, beef with peppers served in a pot full of oil boiling with the flame underneath it (so good), fried stuffed eggplant with a meat-based stuffing, fried pumpkin and sweet potatoe, and an incredible soup with mushrooms and chicken and wintermelon, and all with some local beer. The beer was like Tsing Tao beer, light beer good for a warm evening.
We are staying in a 4 star hotel called Qiang Jing and it's pretty nice (other than the AC not working). It looks great and we got a great rate through my wife's family connections. It has a translucent glass half wall in the bathroom so when a light is on in the bathroom it lights up the bedroom so I had trouble going to sleep last night while my wife was preparing to go to bed. It looks great but that bit is not well thought out. The shower is a walk-in shower with a glass wall and it worked fine, except this morning the water was barely luke-warm. I don't think the boiler was on. The Chinese seem to all take showers in the evening, but I need a shower in the morning to help me wake up (the cold shower did that this morning!) and to fix my hair! If I go without a shower my hair would look terrible, one way or the other, all day long. It sounds like the window in our room is open. We can hear the road noise (lots of horns honking for instance) just as if a window was open. There is a big window but when I checked, it wasn't open. It must be thin single pane glass so noise and heat pass right through. Still the room is very nice, the internet connection is fast, and the bed is comfortable. There is a little fridge, and a pot to boil water so I can make my own coffee. We both got a pretty good night’s sleep. Breakfast was a little weird this morning - all Chinese food. No alternatives. There was something that might have been scrambled eggs but it looked more like custard so I didn't bother with it. The coffee looked like muddy river water so I didn't even try it. It looked scary. I suppose they already put milk and sugar in it but it looked so weird I didn't even want to try it. Besides they had some black tea that was great. The orange juice was really strange but it was ok. It tasted a lot like Tang! Anyway I found enough things to eat and only the tofu I put on my plate was undesirable. Everything else was ok. Driving in China is hazardous. I have already experienced passing a car going the wrong way - forcing us into the other lane to get by, and that's just a sample. It is crazy. I don't understand why there isn't an accident at every intersection. They pass on the inside taking a corner, cut each other off, beep the horn just about every time they pass someone, and like I said before, they go the wrong way in the lane. It's nuts. I am really surprised that I have only seen one accident since I've been here. It's remarkable. At least the cab drivers in Beijing were all sane and my wife's brother and his son drive really cautiously. Today we went to the film studio theme park, like Universal Studios, only different. I mean if you were to compare them, with Universal Studios being a 10, this one would be about a 1. If that. I was so disappointed; I couldn't believe how bad it was! It was lame. And it cost 240Yuan each to get in. It was so weird - the park was just about empty on a Saturday morning and all run down even though it just opened in like 2003. Everything I saw was so cheesy it was almost hysterical, except that it was so sad. We found a couple of rides (that we had to pay extra for) that Shuya liked. I was grateful for that, after all, that's the only reason we are here - for Shuya! I couldn't wait to get out of there. It was actually depressing. And we left just before noon to go get some good Korean food for lunch! When we pulled up to the restaurant my wife translated the sign for me; "South Korean Dog Meat Restaurant". She asked her brother not to order dog. She said she has a pet dog at home. I told her that was good because I wasn't ready to try dog. The food we had was very good. We had fish, rice in a hot stone pot with all kinds of goodies (egg, vegetable and BEEF I am sure!), some black rice served with something like ketchup, and something like cooked kim chee with potatoes that was very flavorful.
