They must have held the flight for me. Yesterday I'd done what I have never done before and jumped off the bus without my suitcase, eager to get to the hotel to have a rest and shut everything out. I didn't notice that the thing was missing until the taxi had left. There wasn't going to be any relaxation that night, let alone anything to eat.
The receptionists didn't know what to do. Waiting for something to happen, I dozed off in one of the chairs in the lobby until some time after three to find them both asleep as well. I had to wake them up to ask what my room number was because I had lost it somewhere along with the wallet and the ticket stub and my mind. At least the key card was still in my pocket. They eventually showed it to me and—to my surprise—at that precise moment John called. I felt like Amy Pond getting the Doctor on the phone from somewhere beyond the Horseshoe Nebula. It was the first time that I had heard his voice in over a month. Maybe I had managed to tunnel through another dimension and was, in fact, already back home.
Eventually a man who seemed a little more awake appeared. I'd arrived on the last bus which had left Hangzhou at 16:30 and the first bus would not leave until 8:00 that morning. The man scribbled something on a pamphlet from which I surmised that I should turn up at the airport bus station before then.
Despite not being able to sleep I dozed through the 7:00 departure of the hotel shuttle. The receptionist took my money for the next one, but as it wouldn't leave until 7:40, this would be too late. So I took a taxi.
I raced through the airport, pushing and shoving and shouting at people to get out of the way. Shanghai Pudong is a huge airport with lousy signage. By the time I reached the coach station I was ranting openly. There seemed to be nobody in charge who might have understood. Eventually it was down to friendly bystanders. I think this is what I'll miss most about China: the friendliness of bystanders—at least those who are too polite simply to stare.
"Five minutes later," one of them said. "And you would have been too late."
Things did not improve from there. My e-ticket did not specify the terminal. It was hell trying to find a place where I could obtain printouts of my flight details which the machine disgorged at a snail's pace after I had managed to switch to English rather than typing in commands in random gibberish spewed forth by the default pinyin translator. After that I had to cross the entire airport again. But at the terminal there was someone who took charge and liaised with the check-in staff and people working behind the scenes. The terminal felt like part of another world, a world of four-star hotels and international airports where the staff speak English.
While I gnawed my nails to the quick, the man arranged everything. The bus which had my suitcase in it pulled up directly at the terminal building ten minutes before the flight was due to close. The check-in staff checked the thing through without as much as blinking at the scales. It was ten kilograms overweight.
I managed to join the longest queue at security but things proceeded quickly until it was my turn.
"You have four lighters," the guy at the x-ray machine said. I was adamant that I had not. I'd had to buy a new lighter just the day before because I couldn't find the other one, but I did now, after some rummaging, and handed them both over.
He shook his head.
"That is all. I swear!"
By now three people were rifling through the bag (me included). I almost lost both of my e-cigs because the security staff could not decide whether they were lighters or indeed phones. Eventually we found two more lighters at the bottom of the bag which I swear have been half-way around the world with me, at least twice.
They waved me through in the direction of a woman who was containing her fidgeting in a professional manner. We ran to the gate, her heels clack-clacking just behind mine. For a moment I regretted that there wasn't any time to buy more dirt-cheap cigarettes or a bottle of water or change any of the money which bulged in my pocket so that I would arrive with more than ten pounds. But catching this flight had been the right decision. They gave us some wine and green tea and food to eat. There was back-seat entertainment and an English voice making the announcements.
Flushed with relief, I looked past the Union Jack at the endless expanse of the Gobi Desert unrolling 35,000 feet below us. Relief gave way to sorrow. I wondered who lived down there, whether they needed English teachers and whether there would ever be a way that I could come back. I stared at the bleak plain until they made us close the blinds, wishing that all this wasn't happening, that the plane was going the other way and I'd wake up in Hangzhou tomorrow
I had found my place, but because of anxiety and the sheer alieness and isolation that I'd felt, I hadn't been able to keep it. I had stopped eating properly, couldn't sleep at night or get up in the mornings and had begun to fight, rather than accept, my situation. Even now I was wishing for one thing with my head but I knew another with my heart. Or is it the other way round?
I kept sneaking peeks at the wing tip through a gap in the shutter. England may not be my country, but it is my home.
The bus rattled past the green expanse surrounding the West Lake when the driver of the packed 194 stopped with a jerk, eliciting a collective groan from the crowd. I must have dozed off—it was hot and the drone of the engine was soporific—but when I opened my eyes I was staring at a curved plastic wall and the air was as chilly as in a morgue. There was a crack of sunlight coming through a window shutter and when I peered through it, the bottom dropped away from underneath me. There was nothing but sky between us and the ground. No cicadas were whining. There were no trees and no lotus ponds or pagodas or newly-built skyscrapers. There were no streets and no people.
Hangzhou still has me, but I remembered dreaming about London during periods of fitful sleep. I remembered passing a billboard each day that showed a park with a cracked path curving over a hillside that looked exactly like Hilly Fields. Every time the bus rattled past, it gave me a stab.
Can people live in two worlds at the same time?
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