Infatuation
Infatuation
Infatuation
August 4, 2008
Our plane pulled up to the the striking terminal building in a scene something like the surreal airport scene from Steven King’s “The Langoliers” - a massive terminal with no more than three or four planes berthed at it’s fringes, shrouded in an otherworldly fog. It seemed odd for it to be so empty at 11am on a Monday morning, but, I couldn’t help but wish Heathrow was this unpeopled first thing on a Monday.
The second leg from Abu Dhabi had not been so comfortable as my first from London and I had ended up with zero sleep since I had taken off from London. The plane wobbled to the side as the jet way kissed it’s side, then the door bowed open and the heat boarded the plane. I have had a weather ‘widget’ on my desktop for weeks, so I knew what the temperature would be in Beijing. In fact, it was no where near as hot as Abu Dhabi had been, and we’d arrived there at 10pm at night, but after so many hours of recycled, conditioned air, it seemed to pack a bigger punch.
I was the first person off the plane and I followed a smiling airport attendant who gave a “...look as the size of this one!” look to her counterpart as we walked up the jet way.
I can’t emphasise enough how vast the Beijing Capitol airport is - and how titanic it feels. A great sweeping, variously curved roof, like the wings of a giant manta ray, made it seem as though it is the building and not just the aircraft nestled next to it that can fly. I looked it up and this thing I think is the airport is simply one new terminal - terminal three of the old Beijing Capitol airport. This terminal alone is bigger than the entire of Heathrow airport at over ten million square feet… and did I mention it’s almost completely empty?
This place was clean, so much so that the rubber soles of my Doc Martin’s seemed to violate the peace with their incessant chatter...but most strangely of all, it was almost completely empty, I knew my travel mates were emerging from behind me, but they too were eerily silent, soaking it all up - either that or all the children were in post-sugar-high comas. But in front of me, I was leading my plane’s compliment through a building that seemed from shining wall-to-wall, to be empty. Looking outward through the endless glass panes provided a strange perspective, it was no longer possible to see the plane from which I had just disembarked, it and everything else outside the glass seemed to evaporate into the fog.
I spotted someone as I looked ahead, on the next section of moving sidewalk, I put on my “I’m big, but harmless” face, something not reserved strictly for foreign places, but used every hour of every day to avoid frightening people...but he didn’t look up, he was crouching to wipe a strip of chrome and simply bowed his head even deeper as if to make himself invisible as I strode past.
Tap, tap, tap...click...STAMP...and I was through...that was it. I have never passed through immigration anywhere with so little fuss, except perhaps in England, where production of the little red book means a cursory glance and a swipe. Given my interaction with the Chinese embassy in London and my status as an Olympic ambassador for Amnesty International, I expected, well, I have no idea, something different...at least something more antagonistic.
Everybody even tangentially associated with the Olympics smiles at you here when they meet you. Not some people, not most people, but everybody. It is as intoxicating as it is disarming. I can literally feel myself falling in love with these people one smile at a time and I haven’t even made it to baggage claim.
We quietly move through the airport, have I mentioned it’s vast? Empty? It feels bigger than Heathrow and JFK combined, only cleaner, quieter and hermetically sealed off from the outside world. Why is obvious: in any place that’s exposed to the atmosphere it’s hot and humid beyond belief. The air conditioning in the building seems to be fighting a daily battle with the environment, by American standards it was warm inside, giving the impression that the daily battle was at best a stand-off. I sweat - not perspire - but sweat at the drop of a hat, but as looked at the inversion cloud of pollution through the windows, I felt that the price for dry arm pits was already way too high.
When I arrived at the baggage carrousel, so clearly marked that even I found it with no difficulty amongst 49 other carrousels! It was pre-lined by luggage carts and as I sidled up to one I had just started to calculate from in my extensive air travel experience that it would take quite some time for my baggage to follow me the distance I had just travelled from the plane. Just then it whooshed into life.
Customs was a none issue, nothing to declare I swept through uninterrupted. Nothing like the scene I caused at LAX in January of this year as I tried to bring a six month supply of “proper” earl grey tea into America. In it’s 180 count vacuum-sealed silver foil sealed baggies that I had taken out of their branded boxes to save space, I think my customs officer thought he had made the drugs seizure of the century...even wen I opened one and told him to sniff the bergamot, he remained unimpressed, I barely escaped the cavity search.
No alarm or siren - literally a “whoosh” and I broke the silence by laughing out loud as my bags slid to a rest, one then the other, first off the conveyor...unbelievable...a man rushed over and checked my bags against the claim tickets and I was off...one last stop to xray cabin baggage and I was through, out of the serenity of the terminal into the heaving throng of the arrivals hall. The hall was packed with arriving guests, local and state media, and what seemed to be thousands of volunteers.
I caused a bit of a stir...it was a size thing...two young men in their volunteer uniforms waved at me...I waved back. “Did I just wave at strangers?!” My brain was annoyed. Exhausted, with a sore back and on no sleep and I was being pleasant to complete strangers. I told you this place - more properly these people - make you swoon….
I was met by Alice, a Mandarin speaking English woman who took me to a car and off to my hotel. I unpacked my bags into the boot and asked Alice what I should do with this…? It was gone, a volunteer had already silently taken my luggage cart away….
There, the buildings I expected to be amazed by were more dramatic than their pictures - hotel is next to the “birds nest” and the “water cube.” Both stand out and fit in, futuristic and in keeping with the landscape, much like the London Eye now somehow fits into the landscape of the Thames’ left bank.
As I say my final “good bye and thanks” to the attendant who brought me to my room, I now have a more pressing thought - I don’t want to insult a people on whom I have now have a schoolboy crush. However, at the very same time I am settling into my room, with a view so shrouded, that I could be anywhere in the world, I get a call from a journalist friend of mine who is in Tiananmen Square, watching protesters being removed by plain-clothes policemen. Protesters who are demonstrating their forced removal from the area and the destruction of their homes to make room for the venues I had so admired on my way in.
Mr Weimin, a representative from the Chinese embassy in London told me in our conversation only a week ago, that I just didn’t understand “the situation.” The implication was that because I am from such a “tiny” country, I don’t see that without “...strict control and rule of law…” there would be chaos in China.
Whilst I see the logic of that kind of conclusion from his perspective, I can’t help but think that one shouldn’t have to be compliant in thought and silent in public disagreement; completely unchallenging to the status quo to be safe and happy in your own country.
I wrote this entry in the lounge bar of my hotel (the Intercontinental Beichen) and the piano player is playing “Autumn leaves” - damn it - this country is serenading me again...and plying me with green tea at the same time - they know my weaknesses. It would be perfect if it wasn’t for that nagging buzz….
In every article I have been interviewed for prior to coming to Beijing and every op-ed I have written about coming to China, I have talked about being conflicted about being here. That overwhelming feeling remains, like tinnitus it rings in my ears...a constant background noise.
By the time I looked up from my pad of paper and scrawl, it was dark. I couldn’t see anything outside but blurred street lights, each with a halo around in the smog...I scan the lobby, looking at the staff, who vastly outnumber the six or seven patrons, smart, courteous, polite and self-effacing. I can’t imagine having with them, the same conversation I had as I checked out of my hotel at Heathrow, that receptionist blamed Gordon Brown for all British ills. I don’t necessarily concur, but it gave me comfort that he could say so. I can’t imagine any of these people saying anything negative about their line manager, never mind President Hu Jintao.
Maybe it’s just me, but just like in “The Matrix,” my mind rejects the idea of a uniform perfection. Actually, more likely, it’s because all my training and experience in psychology tells me that people anywhere aren’t themselves uniform enough for one-size-fits-all perfection...and where would a perfect society put all those they deem imperfect? If I were religious, I might call it purgatory...from what I have heard and see around the world, it might better be named hell…
I have a feeling I am not going to sleep very well tonight.
[In the paper I read this morning, the Beijing police denied these clashes - clashes I both heard about from a man on the scene and watched on the BBC in my room.]