Day 3: Sunday from Shanghai to Changsha

Jetlag at 3:20am, or too much sleep on the plane. Guess this is a good time to keep the journal/blog writing streak going.

After checking out a few online tips, it turned out that I had to manually enter the name of the APN (Access Point Name) on the cellular network setting.  After a few tries (data was slow so some time I didn’t realize it was working before switching between different APNs), the data worked. After all, the two phone cards purchased on Taobao are pretty good.

Went back to bed for another hour or so then packing up for flight to Changsha. The hotel staff was nice. They told me that it will take about the same 40 minutes to the airport either by taxi or by subway and I should take subway, which was way cheaper.  I did follow their advice but the trip was almost an hour.  There is no traffic at 7am on Sunday.  Cab would have made it to the airport in 30 or less. I left a bag at the hotel for GD to pick up later today when he got back from Hangzhou.  He did that around 9pm.

The new terminal in the old airport (SHA) was nice. Check-in the bag (had a bottle of wine in there) then went for a morning noodle soup.

The flight was okay.  The seating on the 737 seemed new but very uncomfortable without lumbar supports. A blanket helped a bit. Since I was not so much in the mode of sleeping, took out the laptop started writing the entry for Barney’s Version.

Cousin Y came to pick me up.  The bag came out after about five minutes waiting. Not bad.  The road in front of the hotel I stay every time was finally in full gear for construction after three years (how’d that happen in China?), so it’s so messy, they couldn’t find how to drive to the front door so we went lunch with her family. After lunch, we tried to drive to the hotel (it's only 2 blocks from their home) again. This time, we got lost in a parking garage right behind the hotel. It’s the most scary parking garage I’ve seen. It’s dark with unfinished concrete flooring and many dusty cars.  Almost like a scene in a horror movie.  We eventually decided to park there and walk. The suitcase was heavy and it was raining, but I managed to get to the hotel. While we were circling the parking garage, cousin Y told me a good joke about OBL:

OBL was initially also trying to target China. So he sent some guys over to blow up things. 

It was China new year, No. 1 saw a huge crowd at the train stations and he decided to blow up a loaded train. After a month of trying, he came back empty handed: he couldn’t manage to get a train ticket. OBL killed him and send No. 2.

No. 2 saw there are as many people in supermarkets and you don’t need a ticket. So he packed a bomb in his bag and went in. However, he came out of the supermarket frustrated: his bomb was picked up by a pick-pocket the minute he got in. There goes his head.

Then OBL sent No. 3, his best guy. He was careful. He got on a crowded bus, left his bomb in a backpack there and then got off.  Minutes later, the bus blew up in the middle of the city, along with a government building. He went back to see Osama with a “mission accomplished” smile on his face and was executed. 

Why?

They can’t find any news about this bombing on any news sources. 

When they sent back someone to investigate the “supposed” bombing site in two weeks, there’s a huge 10-story building standing there like nothing happened. It turns out the government was good covering the news and building a new building in a week.

So China was safe.