"The difference between loving it and hating it is knowing the language." -An expat we met on the subway

Lauren, Traci & I at the airport this morning at 4:45am. We thought the matching, official-looking garb and credentials would help us pull some strings at the airport... but it didn't quite work out that way.

Bomb-sniffing dogs scour each bag that comes inside Beijing’s Peking Capital Airport as of July 20. As I sit here in reflection of my past, hellacious 24 hours, I can see two or three what appear to be cocker spaniel mixes at each door. To clarify, we’re NOT talking about the security you must pass through to enter a boarding gate. Every person entering the airport from the outside must be searched for explosives. At the doors without dogs, crews of Chinese security officials pick through each purse and bag with white gloves. Before letting anyone pass, bags are wiped with a special cloth that is then scanned for explosive residue, i.e. gunpowder. Each visitor also walks through a metal-detector.

Once you’re inside, there’s a lovely little café overlooking a slew of entryways. Here I sit this Friday morning watching the crowds go by. You probably wonder how exactly I wound up at the airport this early morning. A complicated and not so interesting story it is, but the facts are as follows.

A day at work resulted in another five days off, so a small group of us got adventurous to visit the city of Shanghai, the NYC of China. We book flights from a cheap Chinese booking website that came recommended from some Chinese friends. None of us have ever booked a domestic flight in another country, nor have we booked a flight less than 36 hours before it was set to take off… but what the heck, we’re in China! Let’s do it! I throw down my credit card and passport to one point person without even thinking. She books the flights with little to no issues, and we’re Shanghai’ed Friday through Sunday.

Drama ensues Thursday morning when the point person wakes up to TWENTY-TWO text messages from the booking agency… all of them in Mandarin. Three of our five passengers flights are screwed up. We call and talk and call again. They speak English, but not well enough to discuss a complicated issue. We speak Chinese to the extent of “Hello,” “Thank-you,” “Too expensive,” “I don’t understand,” and, “Communication University of China.”

Bottom line is this: due to the language barrier, we were not able to communicate our needs to the booking agency. Therefore, I got up this morning at 3am, trekked it to the airport, and made it just in time to cancel my flight and receive a respectable refund. I wasn’t dealing with it anymore. The mini-vacation was too expensive for me to embark upon without the comforts of a larger group, and the draw to Shanghai for me was not as magnetic as that of others in the group. Lauren and Traci were off for the “Paris of the East” this morning at 7:30am, while I was hitting Starbucks in the airport for some comfort frappuccino and quiet reflection time.

So let us briefly discuss this massive language barrier that goes beyond the wordly world and delves deep into the realm of charades and cartoon drawings on notepad paper. So far in China, there is no way around this “Great Wall.” Not only can we not speak Chinese words, but are also unable to repeat them back when someone dictates them to us. I have concluded after three weeks of trying that my tongue does not move in the way that it must to formulate Mandarin dialects.

So what is the solution? Drawings? Hand motions? Acting things out? All have failed miserably time and time again. I drew this lovely sketch of McDonald’s, the world-renowned (or so we thought) gold arches with the Chinese word meaning “yellow” (drawn by hand in a manner that a 3-year old would laugh at, no doubt), and a box of French fries with an “M” in hopes of telling anyone on the streets of Beijing that we were hungry for some McDonald’s the other day at 5am after watching the flag raising at Tian’anmen Square. No luck. People stared and stared at my drawing, looking back at me like I was a fool. It wasn’t until we ran into a nice old man who spoke some English that we learned there was a McDonald’s within walking distance.

This language wall is unbreakable, unscalable, and completely unbearable. We’ve resorted to pointing at pictures taken on our cameras of the things we want. Even with this fairly successful method, our navigation abilities are quite limited. This brings me back to the reason I’m in the airport right now watching bomb-sniffing dogs violate the personal belongings of those making routine stops at Peking Capital. I climbed a fence, hailed a taxi, and fought through airport confusion this morning to find out that I couldn’t cancel or transfer my flight through the airline. In fact it was never that difficult at all! All I had to do was call the company I purchased it from (the Internet booking agency) and ask to cancel my reservation. At 7am I spoke with the only English-speaker on staff, and she took care of the issue in seconds. I received a refund and a, “Have a nice day, ma’am!”

--POST BREAK--
--The rest of this happened upon leaving the airport this morning--

As I strolled out of the airport to hail a taxi, I held the elevator door open for a girl who was running to catch it. She thanked me in English! I asked her if my card from the dorm I'm staying in had the words, "Communication University of China" written in Chinese characters, as obviously I could not read it. She confirmed, and when I showed excitement in that I would be able to point and communicate with the cabbie, she seemed concerned. "You are going to CUC?" she asked, "We have a bus!"

Long story real short... I rode home from the airport FOR FREE with a bus load of Chinese folks headed my way. Picture me, in the orange shirt above, on a bus FULL of Chinese people all wearing the same blue uniform and khaki pants.

Glory be to China.

XOXO