The Best Worst Case Scenario

Update: This blog post was written on Sunday, January 9th, at 11:45 pm EST. WiFi issues and traveling needs kept this from being posted until Tuesday, January 10th, at 2:15 EST.

What seemed like a travel disaster ended up being an awesome start to my research adventure. I woke up at 6am in Back Bay to make an 8:30 flight from Logan Airport to Toronto. There was no line for check-in and I zipped my way through to the gate by 7 o\’clock. Even after going through a long checklist with my parents over the phone, I still had so much time to spare that I was even able to fit in a full Mandarin speaking audio-lesson. However, with five minutes before boarding time an announcement was made. Due to mechanical repairs, the 8:30 flight to Toronto Pearson will be delayed by at least 4 hours. Groans of exasperation rang through the waiting room before a fifty-foot line formed at the info desk. Damn.

Using the calling function Peter showed me on WeChat, I called Jia\’s Inn in Kaohsiung to leave a late check-in notice. Adam had warned me that Kaohsiung does not speak much English – this instance he was right. Although I used my one semester of Chinese to insist that I was an American and requested to speak to him in English, he was unable to switch over. So, we did the whole thing in Chinese. We actually got the point pretty quickly – in a minute or two we both understood that I was going to be checking in on January 10^th, a day late, and would be arriving at the hotel around midnight. However, a five-minute call became twenty due to two problems: the lobbyist could not spell my name, and I didn\’t know how to say the “@” sign in Chinese, nor how to explain it, so he was unable to send me an email confirmation. At this point I\’m relatively certain we still didn\’t get it right, but at least I got some correct info on record, so I although my first true Chinese-speaking performance may not have gotten an A+, I think it passed. I\’ll learn some vocab and call them back later.

While trying to persuade the help desk to bump my delayed flight up to first class, I met a middle-aged Chinese lady woman who would be on the same flight as me. After we both finished pleading our case, excited by another opportunity to speak Mandarin I introduced myself to her. Flattered by the effort, she entertained a friendly exchange that could have been found verbatim in a chapter of my Integrated Chinese I textbook, and ultimately led to an hour-long conversation. Coincidentally I discovered that her name was Gao Fei, which is funny because my Chinese name is also Gao Fei (although Fei is written differently in each of names). Because of this I joked that she was my aunt, the idea of which greatly amused her. Ms. Fei explained that she had moved to the United States thirty years ago to study biology in Connecticut, and was thankful she did as she was able to avoid the all political commotion that ensued during that time. We had a fairly thorough discussion of China\’s history in the past century and direction for the future, coming to the agreement that Chinese is a language worth learning for anyone looking for work. Professor LaFave would have been proud.

During the conversation, I had not even noticed the woman sitting next to Ms. Gao. It wasn\’t until Ms. Gao passed me the woman\’s phone to explain the circumstances of our flight delay to this woman\’s daughter, as the woman could not speak any English at all. I passed the phone back to this lady that for the past hour I had not even realized was there and all of a sudden she seemed even more talkative than I or Ms. Gao. Later on my new Chinese aunt introduced me to the woman, Ms. Xuezhen, and encouraged another Chinese conversation. This one was a bit more difficult than the last, as Ms. Xuezhen spoke much more quickly with a thick Shanghai accent, but I was able to gather that she had come to visit her daughter who works in Boston, as well as go on a cruise along the east coast. At the airport, she met Ms. Gao, who extended her help to navigate her home. Since we all were flying to Shanghai, it only made sense to go with them, and so between two older Chinese women and a white American college kid, a team was formed.

While we all endured “fifteen more minutes” for another five hours, the three of us encountered two more people worth mentioning: Ms. Li and Seraj. Ms. Li was a Chinese woman who was currently living in Chile, but visiting her fifth grade son who attended the Hareside Primary School in Boston. She was very nervous to use her English, but was able to speak Spanish with perfect fluency based on a phone call we overheard. She was very enthusiastic to tell us how proud she was of her son, who could already speak three languages and aspired to work for NASA. Seraj, three days away from his tenth birthday, was a French-Canadian boy of Indian descent who chimed into the conversation boasting his ability to count to ten in Chinese, which garnered applause from all three women. For a moment, the five of us, having no prior association, were all laughing together while speaking Chinese, which seemed to perplex quite a few others in the waiting area. To take a break I went over to sit with him, and he invited me to play a Atlas with him, which is a game where one person has to come up with a place – city, state, or country – using the last letter of the previous place mentioned by the other person. I was shocked to find this game lasted more than twenty-five minutes. Really sharp kid. When I asked how he knew of so many places he told me he had been to a lot of countries in Europe and Central Asia, both for vacation and because of his dad\’s job, which he couldn\’t really explain. He also mentioned that he reguarly visits his grandfather, who he claims has a mansion in India. He told me that he wanted to be a doctor because his mother says its a good job. He is definitely ahead of where I was at ten, as he was already learning algebra in school, which he was returning to Monday. It was obvious that he was privileged, but he was as charming, curious, and bright a kid as any one I had anyone I\’d ever seen. Although he\’s thinking doctor, I wouldn\’t be surprised if I saw him as a senator someday.

Finally, we boarded our repaired plane at 4:45 and took our 90-minute flight to Toronto. I watched The Magnificent Seven with the fifteen-year-old kid who sat next to me. Definitely would recommend it. Once the flight was over, Ms. Gao, Ms. Xuezhen and I reconvened to go through customs and receive hotel vouchers at a nearby Crowne Plaza. I made calls to parents, Adam, and a couple friends while at Toronto Pearson Airport, then sat down to wait for a shuttle to take us to the hotel. All the while, Ms. Gao was telling me all the benefits of doing a graduate program at Fudan University along with finding myself a nice girlfriend from Shanghai. At this point, I really started to believe that Ms. Gao may actually be my aunt.

When we boarded the shuttle, the three of us met Bill, who seemed epitomize the Canadian stereotype – a laid-back, eh-uttering fellow exuding neighborly warmth in the -12 degree centigrade weather.  During our ride we discussed the Canadian political system, which Ms. Gao took a particular interest in, and Trump from the perspective of the northern border. \”In Canada, we don\’t vote \’em in, we vote \’em out,\” Bill chuckled as he summarized the electoral system.  In respect to Trump, as could be expected, he expressed a balanced and tactful opinion, acknowledging popular sentiments of the president-elect, while insisting that we still need to give him a chance to do well.  Ms. Xuezhen to the right of me leafed through her flight documents, although it seemed she could not read any of it.

Now we\’ve all arrived at Crowne Plaza and are more than ready to get some well-needed rest.  Before we all prepared to go to sleep, we got dinner together and just enjoyed some down time.  Amazing that after just 12 hours it feels like we actually kinda know each other.  After eating we planned out tomorrow – wake up at 8, eat together at 8:30, then catch the shuttle at 10 to fly out at 12:20.  It seemed that Ms. Gao had become tired as she reverted to Chinese to make these plans, but just after a day of travel with these two, I felt more comfortable than ever comprehending what she was saying.  太好了。

Looking back, today actually might have been the perfect way to begin this trip.  Got to interact with people of many different cultural backgrounds and perspectives, but good company all around, and all the while beginning to take the training wheels off the Mandarin I\’ve been practicing all break. Plus, now I have an upgraded seat on my plane to China.

Ms. Gao (left) requested this picture, yet she\’s the only one not smiling.  Guess that\’s the cool thing to do.