planes and things

ZX sleeps, burning off the cold I think I brought from the plane. How do you travel twelve hours in that tiny space with a couple hundred other people (some of them sneezing) and not pick up something? The tiny Chinese woman in the seat in front of me bounced constantly (to keep up her circulation, I'm sure) leaned forward and swayed back and forth until I wanted to smack her. I was trying to watch Sex and the City and then The Banquet. I listened surreptitiously to the couple who shared the middle four seats and thought I might go the whole way without speaking to them. the woman alternated between sudoku puzzles she'd clipped from newspapers and sleeping stretched out across the empty seat between she and I, her own seat, and her husband's lap. They were affectionate in a way that I'm not used to seeing in China. When the man finally asked me if I was going to Beijing to travel, I answered that no, I was going home, without explanation. He and she were both Beijingers, who led tours for Americans, and so kind. the winter season isn't that busy, so they'd spent three weeks traveling in the US.

ZX was at the Chongqing airport, along with his friend ZG, who had driven his old black sedan. He stepped from the crowd saying, "Laoshi hao!", his hands jammed in the pockets of his trench coat, and his eyes that are never quite serious. They'd come up on the two lanes, ZX explained as we tried to navigate the maze of concrete that would point us toward home. Like my father, ZG prefers the back roads, and they don't have to pay the tolls. The natural gas tank takes up most of the room in the trunk, so I slept beside my big suitcase in the backseat and it only cost 25 yuan to fill up when we stopped halfway home. So ridiculously cheap. ZG asked why we don't use natural gas in the US? "We don't have that much?" I suggested. ZX said, "because Americans like to spend money."