Friends, grannies, extraterrestrials, I don't know whether this actually counts as a leave note either.
Granny, put that shoe down first and let me explain a few things, then see if you can refrain from swatting me like a cockroach.
My flight was originally supposed to leave yesterday. I checked in the morning, and Shanghai's weather was clear and lovely. I was pretty happy and trotted off to Pudong Airport, thinking I could find an empty corner while waiting to board and sneak in some writing. I had it all planned out. I was willing to buy a lounge pass just to write an update.
After finally making it there, I pulled out my phone to check, and hey, guess what? The flight was canceled.
Apparently, Guangdong was already under an orange alert for thunderstorms and torrential rain, amply demonstrating just how much it welcomed me home.
But I couldn't just become a Shanghainese person. I still had to leave, so I immediately applied to change my flight. That alone took two fucking hours of waiting, with all kinds of phone calls and checking flight information in between... Two hours later, I successfully switched to a flight at nine thirty that night-but departing from Hongqiao Airport.
Off we go, then. To Hongqiao.
Shanghai's Didi drivers must all fucking worship my portrait.
When I got to Hongqiao Airport and checked, there was an extra line in the flight information. Above the "scheduled departure: 21:35" was a line saying "estimated departure: 23:35"-is that human language? Are you competing to see who knows more synonyms? I already had a bad feeling by then. After all, Guangdong's torrential rain treated everyone equally. What could I do? I couldn't just sit at the airport waiting to see when it would actually take off. I'd book a hotel.
I wasn't staying overnight anyway, so the cheapest one would do. I might leave in a few hours, I thought naively.
So I dragged my luggage along and eagerly caught a taxi, which took me somewhere that looked less like Shanghai and more like a county town, and got out. It really was close to the airport. Huge planes roared right over my scalp, blowing my wig clean off (I took writing so seriously that I started losing my hair at eighteen). I also took a few pictures of the big planes while I was at it. Couldn't come all that way for nothing.
I checked in, went into the room, took a look, and went right back out. What for? To buy disposable toilet seat covers. That toilet seat was as yellow as aged braising stock. One look told you it had been steeped in years of old piss.
Right. So this was a hotel where even the cheapest room cost over three hundred. I was definitely in Shanghai.
Well, guess what happened next? Heaven heard that bit about not staying overnight. My second flight was delayed. Until five in the morning.
Even an owl couldn't stay up like this!!!
I changed my flight for the second time, to eleven this morning.
Then I stood in that hotel room clutching my bag, trapped in misery, and realized I really would have to spend the night there. If I'd known, why didn't I book somewhere better? Heaven was out to get me. First I put the door chain on (something I'd never done before), then pulled back the quilt to inspect the sheets. The sheets were okay. At least they all looked white.
By then, all that running around had taken me into the evening. Without having written a single word, I was physically and mentally exhausted. I reached down to feel the mattress.
...Where was my mattress?
What were these individual, lumpy, hard ridges? Springs forged from diamonds? Weren't springs usually covered with padding? Where was the padding?? I could fucking take the springs' pulse through the sheet. Where was my padding?!?!?!
I honestly wanted to cry. Guess how I slept that night? I spread the quilt back out and used it as padding. Lying on that quilt felt like lying on a sidewalk.
I pulled a section of the quilt out and wrapped it around myself from the side, turning myself into a stuffed flatbread. That way, I had both padding and a quilt, one thing serving two purposes, and could finally sleep...
Having written only three hundred characters by this point, I was utterly exhausted and shut my eyes a little after nine. Going to sleep that early was disrespectful to the neighbors.
So, sometime after ten, I heard it. If you thought there were only a few kinds of noises you could hear in a hotel, you were wrong.
I heard a pair of high heels clacking up and down the hallway for at least twenty laps (there was no carpet), and then a door slammed shut as someone went into a room. Next, someone started moving furniture.
Halfway through sleeping, I was wondering even in my dreams, How are you moving the furniture? The hotel desk and bed are all fucking fixed in place. What exactly is that heavy piece of furniture scraping across the floor???
And why did they keep moving it for half an hour?! Were they renovating the hotel???
What were all the people staying here even here to do???
Anyway, in short, I made it through the night. Once I post this account of the situation, I have to haul all my bags off to the airport again. Right now I'm exhausted, sleepy, and suspect I stink all over (I didn't dare shower here)... I'm expected to land a little after two this afternoon. If I really can land on time, there might be an update tonight. If there's another delay, I'm going to jump into the Huangpu River.
After all the running around I've been through on this trip to Shanghai, you think it'll all be over once I get home?
No. I haven't finished what I came to do. I have to come back on the eighth, after the holiday.
How wonderful. I'm just here to toughen my resolve and experience life.
(End of chapter)