Fueling Despair

The taxi driver who took me to Pudong airport last week was a talker. He made a pretense at inviting a response at the every one of his pronouncements, but this was just a platitude and it was clear he preferred to hear himself talk. Unfortunately, he talked a lot faster than he drove and I was worried I might not make the plane.

Although he rambled a lot, the driver kept coming back to the gas situation and dwelling on the problems of getting fuel. According to him, gas had increased by 8 jiao (about 10 cents) over the last two months. . However, cab fares seem to have stayed the same, so this is undoubtedly squeezing profits and making it even tougher for drivers to eke out what is already a tenuous existence. Beyond this price increase was a shortage that was having increasingly serious consequences. Drivers have begun lining up at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning to make sure they could get enough fuel. There have also been a number of cases where a number of gas stations had been shut down because they were found to have been mixing water with the gas and then selling it at gas prices

No Satisfaction

I knew the 60% off the plane ticket to Wuhan was too good to be true. It was cheaper than the train. The problems started when I got to the airport for the early morning flight. The agent at the passport control station waved my ticket in front of her colleague and snickered “look. This guy’s used a Chinese name”. “What’s so funny about that,” I retorted. The agent looked abashed and explained that the problem was not with my Chinese name, but that the name used in my passport was in English and technically a different name than the name that appeared on the ticket. They couldn’t let me on the flight. Only the travel agency where I bought the ticket could change the name in the reservation system. In desperation I called the agency’s hotline. Naturally, it didn’t work. I called all the numbers listed, there was no answer. No one came to the office until 9:00. My flight was at 8:30. I had to take a later flight and pay full fare.

I stopped by the travel agency a few days later to explain the situation and get a refund for the ticket. The young man at the counter understood the situation, but explained that ultimately the fault was mine and so there was no obligation to reimburse the ticket. It didn’t matter that the young lady who asked me to fill out the standard agency form with my name, contact details, etc. didn’t point out that the name I used on the information form would be used on my ticket and, more importantly, that this could lead to a problem if the name in my passport were different. They are just travel agents who generate tickets and provide schedules. I should have known better since after all this wasn’t the first time I have taken a flight, was it ?? [Actually, I fly very rarely within China] It was my fault for not bringing my passport with me in the first place when I purchased the ticket. I should have compared the ticket with my passport and realized there was a difference. It was my fault for not checking.


I asked to speak to the owner, but he couldn’t be reached because he was “wai di” – living outside of Shanghai (in essence an absentee owner) and the rules were that his contact information was not be given out to customers. God forbid he should have to deal with a customer problem. His job, according to the young man at the counter, was to manage the company, a function that apparently did not include speaking to customers. The young man explained that customer service and resolving customer issues was his responsibility and that he was representing the company’s official position so there was no need for further discussion. The case was clear. I demanded to speak to the office manager. “I am the office manager,” answered the young man smugly and without another word gathered up all my tickets, receipts, and forms, replaced them neatly in the envelope the agency had provided, and handed them back to me. Another case successfully closed

Presidential Decison

Liu Dao Yu was President of Wuhan University in the 1980’s. I really didn’t know him well, but he was the one who made the unheard of decision to let me move from the Foreign Experts Building to a student dormitory on campus. After all this time I still wanted to know why, so I tracked him down and invited him for lunch.

We met in the lobby of a hotel on the East Lake. In the twenty years that had passed he had devoted more and more of his time to educational issues and moved further and further away from Chemistry, his original area of expertise. He was also dismissed from the university at the end of the 80’s apparently for initiating programs and reforms that were just too progressive making me realize that his decision let me move into a dormitory was just the tip of the iceberg and was actually perfectly consistent with his worldview.

We exchanged gifts. I gave him a pen. He gave me a copy of his autobiography “Memoir of a University Dean” and he got into a taxi to go home. In the end, I never did learn why he decided to let me move.

The American Dream

The Chinese couple I was sitting next to liked American Airlines 288 en route from Chicago to Miami because the flight number had two lucky “8”’s. What’s more, the “2” that came before the “8’s” meant that should be twice as lucky.

I liked AA 288 because it was “juste”, as the French say. A perfect connection with the inbound flight from Shanghai we were on with almost no downtime at O’Hare airport.

We considered ourselves lucky indeed as 288 boarded on time and began to pull away from the gate. But without warning the plane suddenly jerked to an abrupt halt followed by a loud “crunch”, am ominous sound that signaled the beginning of the end for the power of Eastern numerology and the efficiency of Western scheduling.

The pilot came on to explain that the tow bar from the service truck had not been properly disconnected from the plane and had broken free shattering one of the safety lights on the front of the plane just below the cockpit.

After more time passed the pilot went on to report that there was no replacement light anywhere in maintenance inventory at O’Hare. This was followed after a while with an update about a flight from Denver that was on its way to Chicago and the good news that this plane could be repurposed after landing and used to take the passengers of the cursed Flight 288 to Miami.

I dutifully translated all of this for the Chinese couple who at first were glad to get the updates and were happy that they could understand what the pilot and crew were saying. But as time went by and the excuses mounted they made it clear that it was more information than they needed to know. I’m sure they were wishing that this was all just part of the in-flight entertainment and that they could just click off the sub-titles and go to sleep.

The couple were from a small town in Guizhou Province, an obscure place in China’s deep South. Their daughter was going to school at the University of Florida and they were on their way to visit. This was their first time outside of Guizhou, let alone China. I could see that they were beginning to wonder what they had let themselves in for. After all they had already been on the road for nearly 22 hours by the time they got to Chicago and were beginning to show signs of fatigue.

As we sat in the waiting room after more than four hours of delay at O’Hare the husband, Mr. Zhu, finally admitted that he was taken aback by the poor quality of service. From everything he had heard and from the movies he had seen, the U.S. was a model of service quality and efficiency. Here we had already been delayed for nearly four hours and the airline staff had yet to come by with something to drink, even if it was just water.


When it was clear that the airlines staff was never going to provide anything more substantial than periodic updates, I finally suggested to Mr. Zhu that we take a walk down to the food court at the other end of the terminal.

As luck would have it, there was a Taco Burrito place. Chinese people tend to be very cautious about embarking on culinary adventures, but I figured Mexican food might just work because chili peppers and hot sauces are also at the heart of Guizhou cuisine. I tried this out on Mr. Zhu, but he politely declined. It was just too foreign. Next to the Taco place was a McDonald’s. The pitch: McDonald’s in the U.S. was the same as McDonald’s in China – all part of the same McWorld and a low risk option. But Mr. Zhu had never eaten McDonald’s even in China and he certainly wasn’t about to start now. The Manchu Wok place on the other side caught Mr. Zhu’s attention. He figured this would be a place where the food would be familiar and the people could speak his language. It turned out that the Manchu Wok was run by a family of Filippinos whose Chinese vocabulary was strictly limited to the dishes they offered – “Kung Pow Chicken”, “Beef Fried Rice”, and “Pot Stickers”. To Mr. Zhu the dishes all looked about the same. Even worse there wasn’t a single chili pepper to be seen. The only thing that looked familiar, and therefore a safe bet, was the fried rice at the end of the counter. But the rice was sold as part of a two-dish combo and not offered a la carte. Faced with the selection of two dishes, Mr. Zhu held up his hand. “Just the rice, thanks,” he insisted. The kid behind the counter finally relented and pulled out that symbol of American Chinese take-out – a small white carton with a fold over top and metal handle into which he packed a handful or two of rice and handed across.

Following another delay on the second plane caused by a faulty hydraulic system, we finally landed in Miami at 4:00 AM and as we taxied along the runway towards the terminal the pilot informed the passengers that he finally had a piece of good news to report: There were no planes anywhere on the ground ahead of us and so there would be no further delays pulling into the gate. I turned to translate this for Mr. Zhu, but he had fallen asleep. Somehow I didn’t think it was worth waking him even if it was finally for “good news.”