Shanghai Arrival!

Jets make travel far too quick and easy. Our bodies aren’t alone in struggling to adjust to the inhumanly rapid change wrought by plane travel, ---our minds are right alongside in confusion! A blog entry, a movie, and two hours of picture sorting and I was out of Malaysia and in China. But that’s not what it felt like; it felt like I was just in another big airport and another big city.

I’ve always thought boat travel was ideal for getting a sense of arrival. Day after day of endless blue, then distant specks of land, then powering past landmarks into port, and finally you pull up to a dock and you know you are really there. Maybe when I retire I can travel by boat. Maybe when I’ve seen enough of the world that I can afford a week or two spent en route. For now, I know I’m stuck with planes and their various lags.

We arrived and breezed through immigration and customs with hardly a word. We were met by people from our school and whisked to our apartment, conversing all the while in English. Then we unpacked for a little bit and went out for some dinner.

Like a rumbling of distant thunder, we heard it coming when we couldn’t read the signs. But we could still tell the relative class of the restaurant and make a guess at its quality by its busy-ness. When we walked through the door, however, the skies opened and confusion rained down. Every thought was translated into charades; every communication became painfully slow and awkward. There’s a dreamlike quality to being unable to speak the language, it’s the only other time we can so suddenly have all our capabilities taken away. Just like a dream, the frustration echoes in my head: Why can’t I talk? Why don’t they understand?

Then the answer and the feeling came loud and clear: You’re in China now.

The last week has been spent in remarkable inversion to the way we spent our days before we left. Instead of selling and packing, we are buying and unpacking. Every day features a trip to a store to find a different necessity of life. Much to my irritation, we are also cleaning up another apartment, as apparently “furnished” does not mean clean.

We love our apartment, minus the mess. It is huge: two bedrooms and bathrooms, an office, a large living room and dining space, a reasonable kitchen and plenty of storage. How ironic that we moved to China and got more living space. We’re on the fifth floor of a large building in a large complex. Hongqiao is full of massive complexes, often called Gardens, as they are somewhat centered on a courtyard. Ours has about 20 buildings. People talk about how this city built out and that city built up. Shanghai builds out and up; I suspect they’d built in and down too, if there were a way. Our walk to school takes us past row after row of these complexes, clusters of buildings twenty stories tall and teeming with signs of occupancy, ---satellite dishes, drying clothes, barbecues, patio furniture. There can be no doubt: There are a lot of people here. China doesn’t need to brag about being the most populous nation on earth. Step into Shanghai and it's an inescapable conclusion.