The Flight to Yunnan

I woke up at six and took advantage of the hotel’s thirty minutes of complimentary Tai Chi Chuan, which seemed like a Chinese slow-motion Aikido. Very relaxing. I then spent about an hour engulfing the larger part of the breakfast buffet while reading most of the China Daily, where I learned that Barrack Obama had just arrived in Shanghai for an eight-day visit throughout East Asia. Then, firmly decided not to let the stress and alienation of modern life overwhelm me, I took a nap, then went for another swim in the 85th floor's infinity pool. Eventually I made my way to the airport.

Shanghai Pudong International Airport is served by the world's fastest train, a german-made MagLev with a top operational speed of 431km/h that takes 7 minutes and 20 seconds to travel the 30km separating the airport from Longyang Road station, a.k.a. the middle of nowhere. Had the line been 5km longer and reached the center of Lujiazui, and had airlines allowed you to check in before taking the train, it would have been super-useful, but as it is now it almost only serves the kind of people who like the idea of riding the world's fastest train – i.e. people like me. At least now you can enjoy my comprehensive review: it's fast. It works.

All the swimming and napping had stretched my planning somewhat, so I checked in barely forty minutes before my flight's scheduled takeoff time, and was told to hurry to the gate. I duly hurried, and ten minutes later I was at gate C54, where a gleaming white China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 was conspicuously absent. Every single plane we'd flown in China had been late – and I mean really late, from half an hour to several hours or more. This provides just enough data points for a statistical analysis to reveal with high confidence that China's airline industry is fucked up. (The most likely cause is that it's growing faster than pilots and ground crew can be properly trained.) After boarding, the plane just stood for 35 minutes in front of the departure gate waiting for additional cargo. Obviously, China Southern was afraid the cargo would go positively insane if it had to wait for the next flight, so it chose to make a hundred and thirty passengers wait instead. No one seemed to mind. Oh well, at least the flight was cheap, and while taxiing I got a glimpse of four USAF Presidential Airlift jets sitting on the tarmac just off  Pudong's main terminal. Apparently Air Force One alone is entirely inadequate for an eight day trip.

In the early evening I finally made it to Kunming, yet another sprawling metropolis. With a good idea of where the hotel was, but no friggin' clue how to explain that to a Chinese cab driver, I elected to walk there. I didn't really have anything better to do, and crossing Kunming's southern ring road stack interchange on foot proved unexpectedly awe-inspiring. After that, the hotel came as a definite disappointment: a 12-storey concrete block sitting on a forlorn side street, its rooms and corridors smelling overwhelmingly of mold and urine. Still, more than adequate enough for a few hours of sleep before catching tomorrow's bus.