How I Almost Ruined the National Holiday for 60 Strangers, or, Against Pollution

When the quarantine officials entered the plane, covered head to foot in white bio-suits, I turned to Caroline and said, “They’ve called the people from ET to come and get me!” Thank god Caroline’s good on a bicycle, but I’m not so sure that I’d fit into the front basket. It was around this time that the Chinese passengers, clustered around the bulkhead and back towards the bathrooms, began pulling out their cell phones and taking pictures of me.

It had been an interesting day.

Shanghai is extreme. This is certainly something that my subjective experience seems to corroborate. The visibility and thickness of the ground level ozone is overwhelming. On top of this, everything everywhere seems to be under construction, so pure dust is a contributor, along with smoke and all the usual suspects.

My sore throat began last Wednesday, when I’d been in town about 3 days. By Friday, I had developed a dry cough and was downing herbal couch syrup at regular intervals. After taking it easy over the weekend and avoiding spending too much time walking around in the pollution, the cough was a bit calmer.

So, of course, I stayed in on Sunday night to ensure that my planned trip to Kunming, in the western province of Yunnan, would go smoothly.

Just kidding! I went dancing.

On Monday I woke up and the cough was back in full force. Caroline and her roomie, Emily, and I, were due to head to the airport around 12. It’s National Holiday on October 1^st, so the girls have some time off (them, and everyone else in the country). Due to a work miscommunication, my 11am meeting didn’t get started until 12. At 1:15 I was just getting off of Skype, Emily was wrestling with a ginormous suitcase, and Caroline couldn’t find her keys. All well and good. We flagged a cab to the metro and, after some cartoon-worthy antics with Emily’s suitcase, got on the train at 1:30. We figured we’d just make it in time for Caroline and my flight.

Until we took the metro in the wrong direction for half an hour. When we reached the end of the line, the girls looked up and said, “we missed it.”

“By how far?” I wanted to know. I thought maybe we’d just talked too much and overshot.

Thankfully, there was another western woman on the train to witness our embarrassment. (what’s the point of being dumb if no one gets to appreciate it? I bet this woman went home feeling like the most competent expat in town) “You should have gotten on going in the other direction,” she helpfully pointed out to me, as the girls avoided eye contact.

We started back in the other direction. “We missed our flight,” I observed. This is when I discovered just what it means when your friends work with 5-year-olds all day.

“Not at all! I’m certain we can make it!” Caroline beamed.

“Absolutely! It’s not so far at all!” chirped Emily.

Silence.

“The Maglev only takes 8 minutes, you know.” [the Maglev is a bullet train that peaks at 430kph, suspended magnetically over a curving track]

“You won’t have to wait in the airport!”

“We can absolutely make it.”

Silence.

“You know, I bet we’ll get there with just enough time!”

“Emily, Caroline…..no. Just no.”

We got to the Maglev station at 2:40. Our flight was set to leave at 3:10. We’d already missed boarding by a long shot, but nonetheless Caroline and I gave it a go by ditching Emily with her bags on the platform (so chivalrous!) and running up stairs and across platforms. Where we waited, me coughing and wheezing, until Emily wheeled up behind us as a sign of the futility of it all and we all boarded the train together. It left the station at 2:45, bringing us to the airport at 2:53.

Where Caroline and I ran, again.

Needless to say, at 3:10 we were not on our plane. We were drinking a beer and having lunch at a restaurant in the airport, new tickets for 7:15 in hand. I was pleased. But the cough hadn’t been helped by all of the sprinting, so I was running through tissues at an alarming rate.

When our new, better, more conveniently timed plane began taking off a few hours later, the recycled air hit me in a bad way. No sooner had the vent turned on than I was doubled over, coughing so hard I thought I might throw up. This continued for a good 20 minutes. Once we’d leveled off at cruising altitude, I was red and sweating, and my scarf had become an incredibly sparkly handkerchief, but the worst of it seemed to be over. The flight attendant came over with a cup of warm water and offered me a face mask, which I took. Breathing through it kept the air around my face a bit less dry, so actually did help considerably. I have a photo of me enjoying my face mask, but can’t upload it at the moment.

The flight attendant asked if I’d like to take my temperature. Taking it as a nice offer rooted in a cultural difference, I declined. She seemed uncertain but left.

It wasn’t until this video was screened that I understood what she had been getting at. (You MUST watch this video, it is priceless).

The flight went on. My cough had subsided once I got used to the altitude and the air. Caroline and I worked through the guidebook, planning our ten day trip to Yunnan.

About 45 minutes before landing, the flight attendant came back and politely insisted that I have my temperature taken. I gave in sullenly, but what could be the harm? I’m not sick, let them take my temperature, whatever they want. The flight attendant, who for the record was absolutely sweet, chatted with us while we waited – or rather with Caroline, since I was sitting there with a glass thermometer stuck in my mouth. After 5 minutes, she took a look. And another look.

“37.3,” she said. Caroline and I were just beginning to figure out what that meant in Fahrenheit when the flight attendant said “I’ll be right back” and disappeared for 10 minutes.

By the time she came back, Caroline had scribbled through some longhand, memory-based calculations and determined that I was at more or less 99 Fahrenheit. Caroline was being sunny – “That’s nothing!” I was being pessimistic – “Then why’d she leave?! We’re being quarantined.”

"Well, this reminds me of a story...." said Caroline, and launched into a long history of someone she'd met somewhere.

After a while I turned my head and said "Caroline, I'm not listening."

She looked back at me, equally calm, and said, "This helps me."

So, with more respect on both sides, on went the one-sided chatter.

“I’m sorry,” the flight attendant said, when she returned, “but the regulations of China say that it cannot be more than 37.” Another flight attendant, a bit less sympathetic, stood glaring over her shoulder. “Some passengers heard you coughing, and we must have your temperature. If it is too high, you must speak to quarantine officials when we arrive.” She asked me to take a new reading, this time by armpit.

A few months ago, my mother called me to tell me that her friend’s son had been quarantined in Beijing. Someone on his flight had been declared a swine flu risk, so Chinese officials had required all of the passengers of the flight to check into hotel rooms for 4 days. My mother had urged me to get traveler’s insurance in case some such thing happened, since the friend’s son had been required to pay his own hotel expenses.

Did I listen? Enough to know that I was screwed should I be quarantined....not enough to purchase said insurance.

So we waited. I argued with the flight attendant, who was indulgent of my concerns and demands and clearly of the opinion that I was not sick. I tried to mentally control my temperature, but the thought of 4 days trapped in a closed room was not exactly calming. The flight attendants left for a minute and when I looked down I saw that I was at 37.5. The thermometer was retrieved. 5 minutes later, flight attendants reseated the row in front of us.

Over the half hour before we landed, the entire aircraft was rearranged. It wasn’t a very full flight, so by the time we landed, Caroline and I were isolated from the rest of the plane by a good 12 rows ahead and 2 behind. Caroline tried to cheer me up. I resisted and started yelling at the plane at large about my allergies, the horrific pollution of Shanghai, and other related topics. No one spoke English, and I was muffled by my face mask, so everyone just ignored me.

Enter the ET bio-hazard team. The Chinese passengers edged closer to watch the drama. I sat there with a thermometer under my arm, trying to look as healthily exasperated as possible. Caroline, now fitted with her very own face mask, giggled. The flight attendant translated back and forth. As the flashes were snapping all around me, I couldn’t stop thinking --

What does it do to your karma if, due to not caring properly for your cough, you cause 60 plane passengers to be quarantined and miss their holiday home with family?!?!?!

Luckily for me, after the temperature was read and the flight attendant translated my explanations about allergies, pollution and air conditioning, Lead Bio Hazard Lady took off her hood and raised her goggles. Things were said in Chinese. The hazmat folk left. The other passengers began leaving with their things. I took this as a good sign, but when the flight attendant came by and definitively told me I was not in lock down, that’s when I did the Rocky air punch.

Then coughed all the way to the terminal, while avoiding the gaze of the other passengers as well as Caroline’s attempts to ‘lighten the mood.’

“Well! Two first experiences in one day! A missed flight, and a near detention!”

“Caroline, let’s just get the hell out of here.” And we did.