Friday, July 28 Flight to Hangzhou

 Woke up around 5 am from the cold wind from the window. Then pulled a warmer blanket and slept more, happily, till 8:15 am. Last day in Hulunbuir.

Half of the day I was gonna hang out by myself. Everything was familiar in China, until those rare moments when I was left alone and realized that I could not communicate with anyone without someone’s help – no one expected me to speak Chinese, even if I knew how to say something in Chinese; no one understood or wanted to understand my sign language; people often just freakout seeing me alone without a Chinese person around – what a terrible day came to them! A foreigner trying to talk to them. Why could it not be an easier day? 

I learned how to use WeChat to hail a taxi (or rather “local uber” – called Didi) – in theory – click this and that, pick the destination, decline ads and coupons, then tell the driver the confirmation number, “er liu ling san” or the like, and confirm the payment. In practice, the driver looked at me standing at the empty intersection as if I was a tree, searching for the real passenger that called him, refusing to accept that a foreigner alone could hail a taxi in WeChat. I got in the car, and seeing the driver was shocked; he didn’t ask me for the confirmation number and just drove me to my destination. I think I got a free ride, though I’m not sure since I didn’t know how to check transactions on WeChat.

My stop at a pharmacy store was the opposite of this taxi ride. In the pharmacy, I wanted to find a deodorant, and an employee lady came asking me what I was looking for. I translated “deodorant” in Google Translate; I don’t know what exactly it translated it to, but it quite puzzled the lady; she went for help. Soon I was surrounded by four or five other Chinese ladies trying to understand what I was looking for. I didn’t know how to translate “deodorant”. I translated in Google, but it only puzzled them. I said it in English; I said it in Russian; I gestured. I said okay - that is okay - just leave me alone – that did not help; they sincerely tried to understand me and help me, but no one spoke English. They kept trying. I finally saw a body wash, declared that, o miracle, I found what I was looking for, and ran away with the body wash. Life is hard without B; with B everything is familiar – China feels quite a lot like the US; until I’m left alone.

We were flying to Hangzhou in the evening. We ate dumplings before the flight – it’s the local tradition here to eat dumplings before traveling; I was fine with that since it was mild food that wouldn’t upset my stomach. Our friends brought us coffee candies for the flight; I realized they see us drinking coffee every day the same way as they see people smoking cigarettes: some people drink coffee, some smoke cigarettes, and others do both; our friends did none, nor understood any of it, but they were empathic to our habits. Bringing cigarettes from another country is a common gift here, but I refused to bring American cigarettes as I didn’t want to gift anything harmful to anyone. Our friends were creative: they brought us coffee candies; it’s like cigarettes; it’s like what modern Americans do. 

The news came about a strong hurricane in the south, near our destination in Hangzhou. A video showed palm trees heavily bending and the wind blowing trash from everywhere. "Geological hazard," – Apple's weather app said. But the flight was not delayed.

A Friday evening flight from Hulunbuir to Hangzhou – what a social event! It was rowdy – many kids yelling, so much excitement everywhere, and all the people on the airplane chatting. Chinese are social people.

Hulunbuir from the air plane.

I read Lu Xun on the flight. Nora, what happened to Nora when she left home, he asked. She could end up working in a brothel, or she could go back home after all - all cause she had no money, he says, a dirty idea in many people’s minds, but there can be no emancipation without money. That, and fighting the bad culture reproduction by the means of collecting memories:

When a cruelly treated daughter-in-law becomes a mother-in-law, she may still treat her daughter-in-law cruelly; officials who detest students were often students who denounced officials; some parents who oppress their children now were probably rebels against their own families ten years ago. This perhaps has something to do with one’s age and status; still bad memory is also a big factor here. The remedy for this is for everyone to buy a notebook and record his thoughts and actions from day to day, to serve as reference material in future when his age and status have changed. If you are annoyed with your child for wanting to go to the park, you can look through your notes and find an entry saying, “I want to go to the Central Park.” This will at once mollify and calm you down. The same applies to other matters too.

Hangzhou felt wet and hot. The remaining hurricane had passed just hours before we arrived. It was late and dark, nothing to see outside. I was tired. We had a scheduled program starting the next morning at 9 am.

(Written in August, edited in April)