“Miss He”, my surname which sounds like “ho” in Chinese was wrongly pronounced as the pronoun “he” in English at the Delhi airport check-in counter. “You have two boarding cards, one for Delhi to Shanghai and the other Shanghai to Beijing.”
At the boarding gate I was intercepted. Several guys looked at the two boarding cards, confused. “Follow me, please”, a woman said. I was wondering what wrong I had done. It turned out that the absent-minded customs officer placed the exit stamp on the wrong boarding card. So I went through the whole process again and accidentally became the last passenger to board the plane.
Luckily, the plane was only half full and we could curl up and sleep through the flight. At 4:30am the stewardess’ sweet voice woke me up. Half an hour later, the plane landed in Shanghai. India was like a dream I left behind, a dream about a journey to the west.
In the dream, Taj Mahal was shrouded in smog and haze; ladies were cocooned in fancy saris; city drivers honked the horns as if they were in a competition; street vendors yelled, vying for business; kids scrounged for food and money; animals were protected and worshipped.
It’s interesting to experience the exoticism, to see the good and the bad.
At this moment in Beijing, snow flakes are drifting down silently on empty roads. I realize it’s no longer the loudest and most crowded city in the world.
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