I’m at the end of day 1. That is to say, the sun tells it’s been a full day, but I can’t tell when it’s time to eat from when it’s time to sleep and can’t tell whether I’m hungry or tired or not. I guess that’s what you get when you travel for 30 hours to get halfway around the world. The time difference here is 12 hours – which on one hand probably gives the worst possible jet lag, but on the other hand, you don’t even have to change your watch!!
I first flew to Newark, where I had a three hour layover and spent some of it with my uncle and has family. I got a goodie bag of fresh tomatoes, some good questions about what I was about to do and other varied, energetic conversation. I recalled that for many of my ventures I have flown through Newark or New York and met with family over a layover, which has always been a nice way to start a journey. This time it didn’t even make much sense to go to Newark (what? Go east and then go west??) but it turns out the route sent me north, sort of through Canada and over part of Russia. I don’t think we actually crossed over the pole, though. I sat next to two ladies from Montreal who were going on a three week tour that they had organized among friends and friends of friends. So on the way to China I practiced my French. During the 13 hour flight, I don’t think I slept more than 2 hours. My continental plane had a new video system installed (as had my Virgin Atlantic flight back from London a month ago) allowing you to choose movies, TV shows, and games at leisure. You could start and stop then at will and choose among 200 films and a lot of other programs. There are still some bugs they need to work out, such as that fast forwarding is too slow and the games load frustratingly slowly. Also, continental didn’t offer any new releaseses. On Virgin Atlantic they had a cool system where you could send messages to the screen of any other passenger (thought it didn’t do me much good travelling alone) and you could challenge others to a game of tetris or bowling or play a trivia challenge with others logged in on the plane. So I kept myself busy watching a French film about a lighthouse off an island in Brittany, a Chinese comedy/drama about a woman with breast cancer, Sweet Home Alabama, and a number of Simpsons and America’s Next Top Model shows. Seriously, not a bad way to fly.
Once I arrived in Beijing, I was not looking forward to another flight, that’s for sure. Customs in China didn’t take long at all, and my visa was accepted no questions asked (even in England they had requested to see my admissions letter to Cambridge). I was too early to check in to my next flight on China Eastern, so I went to find some iced tea (the airport was not air conditioned. Actually one of the first things I noticed when I got back from England was the excessive air conditioning in the US. We sure like it cold inside). Finally, I checked in and all that good stuff and sat waiting for the flight. I looked around and didn’t feel so out of place - there were lots of foreign looking people there. A few minutes later, though, most of them got on a plane to Xi’An.
Finally aboard my Bejing-Lanzhou flight and despite the scarcity of foreign passengers, I ended up next to a Scottish ecologist who was going to Lanzhou for a few days to meet with a potential collaborator for research out in the highlands and mountains west of Lanzhou. What a nice fortuitous encounter – I had thought about contacting biologists with research in the area but I never did. And, for the first time, after a conversation throughout the flight between bouts of trying to sleep (but between nerves and excitement unable to despite my exhaustion) and trying to read and trying to eat the meal served, I exchanged e-mail addresses with someone met on a plane. Maybe I’ll end up on a field expedition next year, or at least in touch with biology students or professors at the university.
My flights were particularly interesting, which seemed to me a good omen. They finally ended in... Touch down in Lanzhou!! Indeed, just outside baggage claim there was somebody with a “Lanzhou University” sign. The ecologist was already there chatting with him but we figured out that he was there to get me, and shortly after someone else showed up to pick him up. There were two people there to greet me actually – a driver and a CSL (?) teacher. We waited around for another flight to get and in the end there were two other foreign students coming as well, one from Hungary and one from the Philippines. They were both there on an exchange arranged by the Gansu provincial government, though I think they will be in the same Chinese classes. Anyway, I tried to sleep on the ride but was still too nervous/excited to get any quality Zs. After an hour and a half or so, at about 10pm, we arrived in Lanzhou. From (really) tired eyes, I saw the Yellow River with just a couple bridges across it, and lots of people out on the street.
Luggage cart at the Lanzhou Airport
We arrived at the university campus, where only cars with business there are allowed to enter. My first impression was just that it wasn’t well lit, but that nonetheless there were people walking around, and there were a few restaurants or shops within the campus limits. We parked at the place I was to have a room. The front desk looked kind of like a hotel reception area, with a counter and clocks showing the time in different cities around the world – Beijing, New York, Tokyo, Moscow...). It was sort of a nice touch, except that all the clocks were wrong except for Beijing (n.b. about a week later they fixed most, but New York is still wrong. I’m not bothering to tell them though because after the change for daylight saving time it will be correct). I paid a deposit for my key and located my room, on the first floor. My roommate, Yuri, was getting ready for bed, but greeted me warmly and started telling me a bit about the city. Yuri’s Korean and doing a year-long study abroad here for a Chinese and International Studies major.
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