OK, I hate to admit it but I was also furtively watching downloaded episodes of, um, American Idol Season 8, AKA "The Adam Lambert Show," when I should have been tapping away here to all my peeps. I know, I know, what can I say? I've always been a sucker for androgynous vamping (and lemme tell you, the Chinese have been too! More on THAT later in the *next* post, er, i.e., when/if I ever get to it...).
A mad world indeed (badabing).
So a good, ahem, month and a half later, let me try to return to the scene of my Cross-Strait adventure when I was but a fresh-faced, wee traveler about to embark on a connecting flight (via Hong Kong) out to Taipei and return on a direct flight back to Fuzhou. First of all, the shoes stayed on. Oh yeah, no Richard-the-shoebomber paranoia here at the security checkpoint in China (as in Germany, UK, and all the other non-Kiefer-Sutherland-24-obsessed nations in the world). Leaving the Mainland for Hong Kong used to hold a bit of political and social cache. In the past, I recall getting at least a smidgen of CSI-kind of love for my passport mug shot and my actual muckety mug from the ticket agents and customs inspectors I encountered on HK flights in Fuzhou. This last time it was all so ho-hum and quick. I barely got a look at either my documents or my ole self before they were coldly handling me my ticket and giving me that bitchy "NEXT!" kiss-off. If it used to have a cool, jetsetting master-of-the-universe feel to get the green light past the velvet rope to the HK gate, now it was more like catching the subway in NYC or more like getting your sorry tourist ass on the broken down, rickety ferry from Long Beach, CA to dinky Catalina Island. No longer ambiguous territorially like Taiwan (is it or isn't it part of China?), Hong Kong was now more like any other domestic destination. Not surprisingly this is how customs and immigration protocol played out on my way to my gate and my flight.
And Hong Kong to Taipei? It was the consummate Hong Kong transit experience, by which I mean, the trek to my connecting flight was like being trapped in a shopping mall that stretched on for infinity (which is really how it felt like walking around HK itself: where you couldn't get out of one dizzying shopping mall without finding yourself frustratingly sucked into another, the malls were like the little urban virus that could...). This was only punctuated by the Taiwanese passengers who were on the same original flight as me and who skipped merrily into the Hong Kong terminal with the joyful clarion call: "Let's go look at handbags and oh, the Ralph Lauren store! (insert: psychic squeeeeeeeee!!)." They definitely seemed more excited about the time they had between flights than in getting to their final destination. I made my now obligatory pit stop in HK to my preferred American franchise away from home, Starbucks, and stocked up on some fuel, "grande" style (coffee is too good of a word for this stuff). Then it was to Gate 21 where a good half of the same crowd from Fuzhou were gathered with their newly acquired Ralph Lauren shopping bags, etc.
"You're a Professor????" the immigration officer asked me when I handed him my customs declaration form at Taipei International Airport. I know, I know, I was thinking: I still get the three-hour undergrad book reserve treatment at the university library unless I emphasize key phrases like "this is for the class I'm, um, TEACHING." It didn't help, probably, that I'd opted for contacts rather than the usual nerd-glasses-means-I-can-maybe-just-MAYBE-be-a-Prof-oh-thank-you-very-much-asshole look. Okay, it was not like the immigration officer did not believe I was who I said I was. He did his usual spiel of what are you doing here, how long, etc. And yes, contrary to the subway turnstile experience at Fuzhou Airport, this dude was playing the international flight/passenger game. I may have left the Mainland as part of a domestic herd like so many beaten-down, shuttle riders on an RTD bus in Compton, but I was arriving in Taipei like Cheech and Chong crossing the Tijiuana-San Diego border (minus the ganja, but with proper documents). So it seems the connecting flight was part domestic, part international, if you follow the customs/immigration inspection scripts that were being played out between the checkpoint for departure at Fuzhou airport and the one for entry in Taipei.
On my way back, I had deliberately booked the cross-strait direct flight from Taipei to Fuzhou for comparative shits-and-giggles. After some mysterious, backroom tussling between the "non-governmental" cross-strait representatives for Taiwan and PRC, it had been decided that direct flights from the Mainland would be routed to Taipei's Domestic Songshan Airport smacked in the middle of the city rather than its official International Airport in the outskirts. So guess who won the political smackdown in that series of negotiations? As my own mother huffed, it ain't Taibao (Taiwanese Compatriot, as the mainlanders termed their cross-straits neighbors), it's Daibao ("Stupid" Compatriot). Adding perhaps insult to injury for the likes of mommy dearest, we were greeted as we pulled up to the domestic airport by the cuddly, smiling visages of China's newest "gift" to Taiwan: the panda bears, Tuantuan and Yuanyuan (whose names combined to make the word, "togetherness" or "reunion"). There they were two black and white smiling blobs gracing the main sign welcoming you to Taipei's domestic airport. Awww, you ask, how can any Taiwanese hate on such adorable, roly poly pandas? Well, that's probably how some people in Troy looked at that cute wooden horse given to them by those sneaky Greeks, so some self-proclaimed non-Daibao Taiwanese insist. There’s much more to say about these two pandas and the great, if politically awkward, April Fool's hoax concocted by the Taipei Times. But I'm just going to leave you to read all about that by yourself:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2009/04/01/2003439917
The terminal for the direct Xiamen Airlines flight had such the creepy, barren echo of the Catskills hotel in The Shining that I almost expected to hear the screeching calls of "Red Rum! Red Rum!" or see Jack Nicholson's Chinese doppelganger limping down the hallway with a bloody ax in tow (well, him or those scary bug-eyed twins!). But alas, at one far end of the otherwise empty terminal, there was a long line of passengers snaking around a u-shaped counter. On the left side of the counter, the sign read "Domestic." On the other, "International." Guess where this line was forming? Yes, it was all Cheech, all Chong, all the way to the ticket counter. Dammit, I thought, this is one long muthafrakin' line. Despite feeling like I got there waaaay early for the flight, a good 1.5 hours early, I knew I was in for a long wait. Maybe the problem was that I had calculated how early I had to be at the airport based on the wrong logic (domestic flight = 1 hour). By international flight standards, I was cutting it a little bit close (international = 2 hours). This was what happens when your flight is having an identity crisis or can't stop being coy about which way its door swings (sorry, minor Glambert brain fart!). By the looks of how the airline agents at the counter were scanning people's faces and paperwork like hungry hawks, yeah, this one was singing "I am International, hear me roar."
“Must be so nice to have an U.S. passport,” the agent manning the security checkpoint told me after he recovered from his Macauley-Culkin-worthy double take (American document? Daibao face? Beep! Beep! Beep! Does Not Compute! Does Not C-O-M-P-U-T-E!!). I took it that the airport security folks like him have not seen many U.S. passports on these direct cross-strait flights since they launched them last July. “You can go anywhere with this, eh?” he continued. “No problems, right?” I thought this last one was a trick question and he was going to punk me with “well, sorry, MoFo, you’re going to the interrogation room tonight! MOOHOOHAHA!!!!” Instead, he just waved me forward after I did the nervous laughing shuffle and blurted out all Rainman-like, “heh heh heh heh yeah yeah yeah not bad not bad not bad” (yes, it’s a double shout out to Dustin Hoffman and Home Alone, if you’re keeping track at home, homeys!).
You see, there was something mind-blowing about trekking across the Straits with one single passport. Taiwanese and Chinese traveling this route were not so privileged and had to lug around multiple documents for multiple checkpoints: a national passport for their own national gatekeepers, an alternative ID for their Cross-Strait neighbor to skirt that very “national” question, an exit-entry permit (don’t call it a visa, puleeease, we’re still in Don’t Tell, Don’t Ask, mutual non-state non-recognition mode here!). Enter the non-passport “resident” booklet issued by both the PRC and ROC. It might not carry the national insignia but as they say, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, well...OK: maybe it’s really a platypus. Born to confound the international/domestic divide?
Non-Passport for Mainlanders (Left); ditto for Taiwanese (Right).
