How I Ruined My Summer Vacation - 2018 (part 2)

Everything begins with a departure and an arrival. For my summer trips to Beijing to teach a university course, every year is the same. Get the visa first - which is a trip in itself. There is no express or same-day service at the visa office, so I must wait four days. A mini vacation, a chance to get some writing done. They almost know me by now.

Then comes the day of travel. Two-hour flight to the hub airport, couple hours of layover, then the 13-hour leg to Beijing. I can never pick the right seat. Less success choosing the right seatmates. Going, I had a Chinese high school exchange student in the middle seat and an older professor from a northeastern university on the aisle. When they both were awake, he regaled her with tales of university life and which university she should apply to in order to continue her studies in the US. I was too tired to correct some of the ideas he had for her education. Instead, I watched four movies - two I had wanted to see and two which I endured almost to the half-way point before just ending it already!

Thank goodness there is something new every time I arrive in Beijing's Capital Airport. I actually felt good at the end of this flight, even with only four cat naps of about 20 minutes each. But the two-kilometer walk through the huge complex upon arrival always zaps my goodwill. This year foreign arrivals first must use automated machines to record their fingerprints prior to entering the immigration lines. (I suppose refusing fingerprints would have caused me to be sent back on the next flight.) Not all the machines were working - certainly not the ones I tried. Then, with receipt in hand proving we had offered up our most intimate details, we should have been allowed to proceed.

However, foreign passport holders had to wait in a weary bunch as Chinese passport holders went ahead to the immigration counters. It wasn't as though we competed for the same lines. I did not complain - too tired. Once in the long foreigners' line, I passed easily because I'm a nice guy and a regular joe. I also got my bag - historically I'm always near the last - and passed through customs - nothing to declare except my contempt for the hassles of travel. The international flight was 13 hours; from exiting the plane to exiting the secure area of the airport (including the shuttle train that takes us from the outer area of the gates to the inner portion for immigration and customs) took 1-1/2 hours.

My decision to stay in Beijing was eventually rewarded when I finally exited into the public area and easily found my student assistant for this summer there to greet me. "Serena" got me and my bags to a taxi and then to my hotel, which is across from the UIBE campus. It was an overcast, humid afternoon as we went from the airport to the hotel, a situation which did not change much during the course I was to teach. This year, I was asked to teach the same course in two weeks instead of four - I presumed it to be a way to save on my hotel bill, which the university paid.

Back to the Yinghua ("Cherry blossom") Hotel, my old nemesis. The staff knows me well, understands I like good a/c. I also care about feng shui. My free time during these summers includes a fair amount of writing in my room so feng shui is important. My first two years I was in room 424 - I actually requested it the second year - which had great feng shui; I wrote the greater part of two novels those two summers (A Girl Called Wolf and Epic Fantasy *With Dragons). However, last year's visit was a terrible room-shuffling experience (read about it here), but I still managed some good writing production during the room changes. This year, only one room change.

More on the room experience next post!


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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How I Ruined My Summer Vacation - 2018

As many of my dear readers may be aware, I was on vacation last month. That is my story and I'm sticking to it. In my last post, I offered you a fine selection of books to entertain and enlighten you while I was away. Yes, I do notice if anyone has added one or more of them to a to-be-read list, and those of you who followed through with your reading scheme, I thank you. 

This is your vacation on rain.

Actually, I was working - so let's call it a working vacation. I traveled to Beijing, China for three weeks to teach a university course called "Business Writing in American Context" (Chinese translation). My course, like all those taught at the University of International Business and Economics, was in English. Students must be fluent enough to be successful in their classes. I went last year, as well. And the year before. Yes, it seems it is becoming a habit. However, I have vowed that this visit (2018) would be my last - unless I get a very good reason to go through all the hassles to get there again.

For 2018, they threw me a curve: to teach the same course in half the time. So my class went from 4 weeks (2 classes a week) to two weeks of 4 classes each week (one class was about 4 hours). That made the grading of papers for 62 students this year a challenge. In fact, I did little else during those two weeks but focus on the class. I knew that going in, so I arranged to stay an extra week beyond the end of the course to have some sightseeing, shopping, hanging out time.

I need not have worried about doing anything fun when I wasn't in class. Those two weeks were full of rain or such oppressive humidity that I would have preferred rain. I brought a collapsible umbrella which had served me well for several years. Unfortunately, I left it in the classroom when I went home (the rain had stopped) and only realized that fact the next morning when the deluge returned. The hotel, thankfully, had full-sized umbrellas for guests to use. Then the doorman pestered me about returning it even though I needed it for another couple of days before the rain finally stopped.

Everyone remarked it was the rainiest summer anyone in Beijing could remember. Students, however, were very courteous with their umbrellas, always lining the hallways in an orderly fashion. On one particularly heavy rainfall day, my class assistant relayed the consensus of the students asking if the class would be cancelled. I was already in the classroom - on time - so it was on, baby! I did not count anyone late and, in fact, I delayed the start for 15 minutes. At the end of the two weeks, one student gave me a lovely postcard with a message on it, noting among other things that I was always punctual "even in rainy day".

With jet lag waking me earlier than normal, I had time to write. I continued working on the first draft of the third book in my vampire trilogy. I had written a huge portion of book 2 last summer. I also worked on two different short stories. Cranked out about 75,000 words total in three weeks. After my class, it was lunch time so I would grab something simple, often from the nearby 7-11 store, then return to my room to relax, eat the lunch, take a nap, then get up and write. With little distraction (no substantial social media access, for example), it was possible hunker down and type those chapters.

Room 634, which had decent feng shui.

For my dinners, I had plenty of company. A new Japanese (mostly sushi) restaurant had opened next to my hotel since last summer, which became a regular hangout. A new Chinese (mostly Cantonese) restaurant had also opened up the street since last year and got a lot of my business. And there was always the big Pizza Hut several blocks north of my hotel to try - especially if I wished to show a Chinese lady how "real" American-style pizza is (it wasn't, but that's another blog post). At least I did not get sick like last year.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2018 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.