Chinese Life - Continued

Kunming Airport:

A domestic airport that has 60+ gates is worth mentioning. And Kunming Domestic airport is huge, much bigger than our pride, Bangalore and Hyderabad airports in India. Highly impressed I try looking for a place to sit myself for the next 4-5 hours which would be my waiting time before I board my next flight to Shenzhen. But that’s where I get my first blow. China believes in having 1 chair per 100 people, and I was definitely not that lucky 1 out of the 100! There were hardly any chairs left anywhere in that huge airport and it seemed to me every Chinese in the world was travelling that day. It was about 6 am in the morning and the airport was jam packed with similar looking Chinese all over. I was sleepy and tired, so I stationed my luggage trolley in front of a huge screen where flight details were coming up, and sat on it. This reminded me of my childhood vacations when in the railways station we would sit on our luggage while waiting for the train. I was happy doing what I love doing the most… observe people ie. Chinese are very colorful people indeed and I discovered their favorite color is PURPLE. I am not joking. Every 1 person out of 3 was either wearing a purple dress or carrying a purple suitcase. It has to be their hot favorite…and I was wondering it would be RED for all obvious reasons. Before I get onto my hurdles, let me tell you the commonalities between Chinese and Indians in behaviorist matters.

· Both the nations don’t much believe in keeping our public places clean. I saw Chinese spitting all over the airport (thankfully they don’t chew PAN PARAG, but spitting nevertheless!)
· Their kids don’t like the idea of peeing in the loo. They love doing it under the open sky! Just like ours.
· Chinese women love to deck up and how! At 6 AM their ladies toilets were full of women of all ages, applying lipstick and foundation. The loos were empty though! Some things are independent of national boundaries… and women definitely belong to that group of things!
· The toilets in the airport are worse than that in Kolkata airport – now that’s really something. When I “had to” visit the toilet in the Kolkata airport I certified it as the worst ever possible (worse than our school toilets) toilet I had ever been. But that changed when I entered the toilets in the Kunming airport, actually I didn’t enter. I preferred having pressure in the bladder as a better option than releasing it in their toilet!
· When 2 Chinese people fight, you cannot differentiate them from any 2 Indians fighting, apart from their physical differences. Ah yes, when 2 Chinese fight, others mind their own business unlike in India where every body else within 1 km diameter from the place of dispute, makes it their own business someway or the other.
· Their traffic, though much better than ours, reminds me of my country nevertheless.
· The balconies of the flats where people reside have clothes all over for drying. That reminds me of our country.
· Two Chinese in love, holding hands and walking together in the malls is no different from 2 people in love anywhere in the world, for that matter. Love, like women, has no boundaries!

While I get carried away in my emotions, it will be worthwhile to mention here that Chinese people love to confuse others with their announcements. In any case, there is not much difference in their native language and the English they speak and I understand none. What makes it worse is that their flight numbers are very jumbled up. Whether it is intentional or otherwise is something that I don’t know. But what I do know is that my flight number was MU 5759 and at that very moment there were the following flights scheduled as well

MU7579
MU5957
MU5579
MU7759
MU5795
MU7559!
And against each one of them there were destinations mentioned in Chinese! I thank my lucky star that I somehow managed to board the right flight and reach my right destination.

More about Shenzhen, where I am staying right now, later. Like I said, I have come here to WORK.