I headed to
China in October 2007 for attending a premier computer sciency conference – SRDS. China, the country constantly featured in the 30 second news bytes, brought to my mind all the trite surface things that I hear of with my morning granola and walnut-ie flakes, you know … things like the huge and rising trade deficit of the US with China and of the toys and toothpastes and animal foods wreaking first world chaos, perhaps in divine vengeance to the sweat shop injustice! Well I did get a chance to delve deeper piercing the veneer of the flaky newscast-y surface once in the oriental soils … my mind effortless-ly conjuring up images of dragons and old ladies playing mah-jong and knowing not what fortunes lie on the other face of the globe nor dream to … for they have but dainty dreams and simple pleasures of life that they seek to relish – like winning the next game and going home and smiling victoriously and singing to the triumphant tunes of their simple glories.
I cannot resist the wafting of my mind waves and the lurking temptation of peeking beyond the rising walls of the capital and seeing what rhythm keeps these 1.3B people ticking and thriving. Well, here was my chance and I embraced it with super spirits of learning and seeing sounds and images that I had only heard and caught flighty snippets of, for now I was the master dictating what I wanted to see and hear!
The Winsome Welcome to the Chinese Folk land
I land in Beijing after a 13 hour long flight direct from the western front – starting my tour from Chicago’s O’ Hare. This journey did wake up the child in me whence I slept off in one place and woke up in wide-eyed expectation to see a land so different. While in one of my slumberous dreamy detours, I felt a sudden tug and I woke up half awake only to receive a fantasy jolt. The Chinese girl, Naomi, Naomi Cheng, sitting next to me had added a karma point to her life by waking me up to catch a glimpse of the North Pole. For I was thankful to her for this noble gesture … after all you don’t fly over the North Pole all the time! This got us speaking and she spoke in broken English … told me that she was going back home after covering a story for the Chinese television channel. Alas! I thought those poor folks … folks who get merry turning on their radios to catch a glimpse of the world through the eyes of a total stranger … it all rests on the shoulders of the stranger to paint the picture without a splotch on the real colors but what is reel if not void of real! Naomi also taught me some survival skills that would make me smile long after she was gone – how simple thoughts and gestures make humans happy – the maya, the cosmic illusion, that the divine filmmaker cast upon her characters wryly with a twinkle in the corner of her eyes. Well, with whatever blessings I had in my tote I did bless her for waking me up to the sights and imagined sounds of the canvas below with the badge – North Pole. It was well worth getting up in the middle of my fleeting dreams to see a real dream and to feel it if not touch it.
The next thing I knew was the grumble of my belly and as if in continuation to my fairly tale mind modes, the smell of chole and kofta wafted in the air and as if by divine ordination my belly calls were pacified soon enough. I was fortunate or rather disciplined enough to select my cuisine mindfully because it is during these long flights that food becomes one of the most fondest of preoccupations, no! fondest alone does not emphasize it enough! In synchrony with my Indian bhoj, I felt like ordering the lime and honey mellowed drink with a hint of tulsi that made me feel relaxed at home à la carte on board but wasn’t that too much to ask for. I don’t still know the special something that gave it a mystique feel and that something S never reveals to me.
10 AM CEST with DST
No, my dear friends Chinese don’t create time divides in spite of their extremely diverse climatology and span of several longitudinal lines. So, my caption was just to get my knowledgeable comrades anxious! Yes, Beijing is to the East of the country but there is no Chinese Eastern Standard Time and no Daylight Saving Time. With the recent Fall Back to bias my thoughts I should not even try to comment on the benefits or flaws of having DST if you know how it feels like to get an extra hour credited to your wagon that lets you stop yonder and just merrily incline your seat-back 75 degrees and relish a little more of your bedtime read knowing the extra credit you gather for your noble deeds … deeds worth half a year before that lone sweet credit is snatched away again. So, I embarked on the Chinese soil glittered by the multiplying fortunes in colorful shades of ceramic or vinyl maybe, pardon my evasive floor memories. Chinese have finessed the system of gathering instant effortless public feedback which let me express my satisfaction level with the click of faces revealing varying levels of customer satisfaction. Yes the clean clad, crispy attired young girl had impressed me with her professional strides on the computer screen and so, being the weary-eyed, soft hearted traveler that I was – I credited her with the happiest face on the dashboard and winked. With the assistance of the deftly pocketed Chinese translation of the Park Plaza Hotel from the conference web portal, lo and behold I was enroute my first Chinese destination. Yahoo! I thought, the power of the tongue and how on earth did my long gone ancestors survive without the power that spoke!
- Inspired by Saurabh’s recollections of his flight to Beijing, China; SRDS (conference); October, 2007
