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.