Buying a plane ticket in China in November 1993

I picked up my luggage and went to airport to buy a ticket to Beijing.

Can you believe that what I saw there was one of the most astonishing and depressing experiences I have ever had? Chinese people, though having had a 5000 years old culture had not learnt yet to queue. They would just go to the ticket window without making up a line and all at once trying to get attention of the vender behind a very small window protected with iron bars. Violence was beyond any description, everybody was pushing each other in different directions in order to get closer to the window. I was terribly shocked and down, I would not know what to do, I did not even dare to move. I was about to cry thinking that I would never leave that place as I would never leave my luggage and enter into that terrible turmoil . After a long while looking in despair at the amazing spectacle, I started to move around.

Later, when in China I had lot of opportunities to notice that problem Chinese people have. For instance, when in the Beijing universities, waiting everyday for the self-service meals you would need to get closer to the one before you as to put the bodies together and the one behind you would do the same. If you would let some space between you and the one before, somebody would, and would feel entitled to, to enter in between. It seems there at the universities were taking place the first steps in development of the queuing systems in China.

After a while I met a Russian guy, he was one of the people I had known the night before (I suspected he belonged to the Russian mafia, as he tried to convince me that mafia in Russia was very beneficial and playing a well needed role considering the circumstances in Russia by then). I asked him about how to solve the situation; it was so easy: actually, given that situation in China, foreigners were allowed to buy tickets in the hotels, I just had to go to Harbin city (30 kms away from the airport) and buy the ticket in a hotel there. Great. We picked up a taxi and I bought a plane ticket to Beijing. Later that day, I should leave. I checked in and expected to leave.

Second landing in the Middle State

One day, my luggage came back to Khabarovsk. And I was finally able to enter in China again, this time to the honorable town Harbin, one hour away from Khabarosk. The plane left at about 7 pm, I almost spat on the ground on my way to the plane swearing myself never to have deals with Russians again.

But when I arrived to Harbin it was really dark there, so many Chinese with rucksacks, luggage, pushing you rudely and ruthlessly, there was kind of an airport but all was so confusing you would not tell. I felt so lonely, so afraid….. What to do? Where to go?

Yeah! To the Russians. Yes, to the Russians. I went to them like a dog asking what to do? where to go? Then it was fun again. They led me to a hotel nearby very similar to my childhood boarding school, with so many beds in the same room. I am not joking, probably 50 or 100 beds per room. But my Russian friends asked for better rooms. And we got them, now just double rooms. Then we had dinner, we relaxed and we were all happy.

Early morning next day, however, everyone had dissapeared.

How ordinary people saved my life

Of course, in the end I did not die. Some people arrived there at about 3 am with a car and invited me in. It had heating, Gott sei dank.

I was the first one to enter in the Chinese Consulate, picked up my visa, and went straight to the hotel to pack up my things and then to the airport (it was funny, it was there an international side very well equipped). Paid my ticket, checked in my luggage but when passing the police control and they checked my passport they stopped me. Your visa is overdue, they said (and funny, I assume, they thought). I explained to them what had happened in detail, but he added another argument; I had not sealed my visa in any place in Russia, every foreigner had to have his visa sealed in an office called Obir in Russia -or SU. I knew that, but as we stopped in Moscow just for about two days and flew to Sakhalin almost inmediately I had forgotten it.

I could not leave. My luggage, however, left for China with all my things, all my papers, clothes, including my shaving machine. Just the money was with me. The police told me to go to the local police station there and ask for a way out.

The local police made me write a declaration of my case, made me go to the bank to pay a reasonable fine and from that day on I would go round the airport all day waiting for my luggage to come back before using my ticket for China. It would not arrive next day nor some days after. My beard was growing long, and my state of mind started to become a little bit moved.

I would call to my wife in Moscow and to my family in Sakhalin. My parents in law send me some money and a big pot of caviar from Sakhalin with a friend. I would eat it with the spoon (and with bread too, of course).

How I truly thought I had arrived to my end

Three days left. I had two possibilities then; this is to say; two Chinese consulates where to get visa; in Moscow or in a new one set up in Khabarovsk. Even if my wife was in Moscow; Khabarosk was closer to Irkutsk and to China and I would depart immediately. So I bought a ticket for the next plane to Khabarosk. The flight was kind of leaving Irkutsk at 11 pm and arriving in Khabarosk at 3 am. The seat I was in would let the back fall down behind, so I had to keep upright without back support and my neighbor in the row was with a big dog which was also lying down in my side. I just could not believe it, but I was alone, I could not tell, nor complain.

Well, the plane landed in the middle Siberia, in a field of snow (most of the time was snowing), we got out of the plain and walked a long way until we reached a kind of house with just a deck but kind of without wall, doors or window, there our luggage arrived. 3 o´clock am, everybody left, I left too, where? I did not know (nobody was there to be asked), I was again in the field of snow with nothing to see just all dark around. Then a young guy turned up and offered me to lead me to a hotel for $20, I said $10 would do, I do not really remember how much I paid in the end. He led me for about two minutes and a hotel for crew people was there to be seen.

I lodged there and some hours later I went to the Chinese consulate. I duly arrived there at 9 o´clock. All the visas for the day were already given. East Russian were very busy doing business with China and it was very difficult to get a visa there; people would queue there during the night and get the visas just within the first 30 minutes after the consulate opened.

By chance, next day was holidays, so I lost one more day. Then I did not sleep in the hotel and in the late evening I went to queue at the Consulate door.

Khabarovsk is a city pending on the Amur river and the Chinese consulate is right at a park at the Amur side, right in the deepest. It started to freeze. I did not have suitable clothes, It was getting colder and colder, it was all dark, nothing was there to be seen miles away, it was really too cold, I had arrived to my end, I thought.

Imprisoned in Irkutsk

Indeed. We landed back to Irskutsk and the police entered the plane to check for our documents, asked for my Russian visa, I would not have it.

As it was late in the evening they held me and put me shut in an airport room (actually a waiting room) for the night. Early morning they put me queuing at the ticked window to buy a ticket for the next plane leaving for China. Yes, if you do not have a visa airport police will automatically deport you back to the place you come from. But I did not have Chinese visa and Chineses would also automatically deport me back to Russia. I speak Russian, I told the police what had happened and what would happen, they would not care.....(Later, somebody in Russia told me it was a movie with that plot; somebody get deported between to foreign countries without any way out)

I was about to reach the sales window when the crew turned up with the police and saved me. They had decided to tell them my unlucky story. Irkutsk airport police did not know what to do with me, they decided to call to Moscow for instructions but it was there six hours earlier and Moscow was not at work, they put me again in the room waiting for Moscow answer.

Six hours later I was brought to the police station, they had not received any bad information about me but either a way forward, they did not know how to solve the situation.

Suddently, somebody thought about checking the rubbish bin there. There was my visa in pieces. Soviet Union visas were not stamped in the passport but clipped in it. I had still three days permit to stay in Russia. They glued the visa pieces together and set me free.

Landing in China for the first time

Next day we learned that Irkutsk airport was bankrupt and every plane had to buy its own fuel on the spot and by its own means. They would give priority anyway to passenger planes and we had to wait there some time until the fuel tracks arrived one by one refueling the plane. Finally, after a couple of days, just one track was missing and we expected to be able to leave that night. In the evening we entered the plane and the airport police came to check our departure documents. My wife was not allowed to leave because she still had her old Soviet Union passport –and in it the Chinese visa we got in Spain- We decided that she would fly to Moscow to change her passport and we would meet later in Beijing. She left the plane, I stayed. Actually the track in the end did not turn up that night and we slept one more night together.

Next day she took the first plane to Moscow, later the fuel track arrived and I left for Shanghai. It was fun with the crew. We arrived in Shanghai Hongqiao airport. Right on the ground where the plane landed the coats exporting company representative, called Yura -I had a good relationship with him later- was waiting for us. He got shocked and terribly angry when he saw me. He started shouting at the crew. He said that passanger were not allowed in cargo planes at Shanghai airport, as Shanghai airport has the toughest regulations in China. He decided I would stay in Shanghai as a crew member and go back to Irkutsk after loading the plane (the crew would give me back later $500 my father in love had paid them).

I spent two days drunk with the crew members touring, shopping and enjoying Shanghai. When we went back to the plane and I got back my passport a pain in my stomach abruptly and bitterly finished with all the joy of the previous days. It was kind of a sudden indigestion after a heavy meal. My Chinese visa was sealed. I suddenly realized what I should have understood in advance and what it meant.

1993 - From Sakhalin to China

After living in London Ms. Thatcher fall in 1990 and in Moscow the putsch in august 1991, Mr. Gorbachow hijacking and finally the Soviet Union collapse I came back to work in the Japanese Pavilion at the Seville Expo 92 where I could make some money to continue my trip to Egypt, this time with my wife, from Sakhalin island, I actually married her in the Spanish Embassy in Cairo.

We married again in Spain in order to let my family to know her. Then we moved again to Russia, to Sakhalin, for her family to acknowledge me as her husband. Then we decided to move to China. I had started to learn Russian, Arabic and Chinese in Berlin when studying International Relations and Peace Research there and I would accomplish my plan this way before becoming a family man and search for a job.

My father in law arranged with a local cargo airline our trip to China. It was a big plane, I think an Antonov, it was full of Japanese cars we brought from Sakhalin to Irkutsk. From Irkutsk it had to leave for Shanghai to pick up a fur coats cargo. We arrived to Irkutsk at 3 am and were received by people with Kalashnikovs taking care for the cars downloading, once it was done we went then to the airport crew hotel to wait for our departure to China.

China from Berlin

I started to study Chinese at the Technishe Universität Berlin, TUB, in 1988. I had a Chinese girlfriend there. I met her right after she arrived from Guangdong during Chinese New Year 1989. I invited her to dance in a Chinese New Year event organized by Chinese students in Berlin. She was very pretty and the Chinese students would kick me when dancing with her.

We started to meet; everybody would say we were a nice couple. I had a funny relationship with her because I was a fully spiritual person then but one night she came for a rock concert close to my place, the rock concert was something really shocking for her and too exciting for both of us, she wanted to leave, it was heavily snowing that night and I invited her to stay in my place…

It is too difficult to tell what happened after, sorry about it – I cannot publish it in this blog, though it would really give you an insight about China….

We experienced together all the activities in Berlin against the Chinese government for the Tiananmen events…

At the end of 1989 I moved to London. She wanted to come over in 1990 but she did not manage. I met her last time in Berlin on feb. 1991 on my way to Moscow. She invited me to a Chinese party there and return me back some money I had paid for her in London.

你好!

你好!
I am Manuel Herranz,current Chinese name 妈慕白.
Thank you for your visit
I am very honered and pleased about it.

I am starting this blog on China to share with you my experiences and knowledge on China after many years of dealing with Chinese and many years studying Chinese language, economy, culture, politics and especially classical Chinese philosophy and/or Chinese thinking.

I am starting this blog focusing briefly first on Chinese classical philosophy, then in Chinese history and finally I will try to expose the characteristics of Chinese way of thinking and its difference with Western way.

But first I will dedicate some post on recalling my relationship with China.

You are welcome to exchange your thoughts about it.