What is wrong with the following picture? Got up at 2:45, Wednesday morning, after only four hours of sleep, cleaned up, had breakfast, and finished packing. Maria picked me up at 4 am and delivered me and my luggage to DFW for an early morning flight out to Chicago O’Hare. Had a good flight and sat next to Danny White from First Baptist Church and had some good conversation. Met my next flight to Shanghai and found myself sitting next to a Chinese man headed to Beijing. He lives in the US and travels to China every other month. His wife travels all over the world. On this trip he will meet her in Beijing. He is not an ABC or a banana but an FFC. ABC stands for American Born Chinese, who are described as bananas because they are white on the inside – western culture – but yellow on the outside – Chinese looking. My travel partner described an FFC as First Fruit from China; one that is born in China, but moves to America as a baby and lives with Chinese speaking parents. He is therefore fluent in both English and Chinese and knows both cultures. He believes he has an advantage over a Chinese raised in China and an advantage over an ABC who may not understand the Chinese language or culture well. In a way he feels native to both worlds.
The flight to Shanghai was long at 13 hours and 45 minutes, but smooth. In Shanghai my late afternoon flight was cancelled and replaced with an early evening flight. This added about two hours to my travel time. The flight from Shanghai to Wuhan was very rough. It was like riding down a dirt road, covered with a washboard and filled with potholes, in a vehicle with steel wheels. It is surprising how hard air can feel in an airplane sometimes. Got to Wuhan, picked up my bags, and met Jiajing’s parents for the ride to their home – I call it my home too because I have my own room there with my things in it. I have a set of clothes in the US and in China. The weight limit on luggage prevents me from taking most of my clothing with me. Even on this trip, as careful as I was, I was over my limit and had to pay a weight charge in China. It is not the things I bring along, but the things others want me to bring for them that adds the weight. To save weight I left my heavy coat home and now with this cold weather here in Wuhan I wish I had it, even to wear inside where we have no heat.
The ride home from the airport should have been a simple 40 minute trip, but it ended up lasting an extra hour or more. We were almost home and were on the bridge – shown below – which crosses the Yangtze River when the engine started to race as the vehicle began to show down. The shift linkage fell apart causing the transmission to shift into neutral. Here we sat on this four lane bridge, straddling the double white line with two lanes of traffic trying to squeeze around us in both directions. We finally got the vehicle pushed to the side and waited for a tow truck to get us off the bridge. It came and took us to the end of the bridge and parked us by the curb and left. We had to call another tow truck to take us from there. – You see he is the bridge tow truck. – While we waited a friend came and took Jiajing’s mom and me home so I could start getting ready to go to bed. When I finally turned the light off it was 12:45 Friday morning.
I got up at 2:45 on Wednesday morning and got back to bed at 12:45 Friday morning and then found myself wide awake at four in the morning. That is what was wrong with the above picture.
A number of years ago when China and Russia were close politically, Russia built the bridge. It is a nice bridge with four lanes on top and a double train track under the pavement. It would be nice today to have six to eight lanes on top to handle all the traffic that tries to cross the river at this point. There are times when only even or odd plate numbers can cross.
The above view of the bridge is from my bedroom window. It was one of those rare clear days when I could zoom in for a nice clear shot. Usually you can hardly see the other side of the river, as you can see in the first picture.
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