24 Hours Later...

Left the house at 5:15am. Exactly 24 hours later, I was checking into my hotel room in Wuhan. This picture pretty much sums up the last 24 hours of my life. It is the view from gate C53 at Shanghai Pudong International Airpot, as I waited for my third and final flight to Wuhan. As you can see, it's a very nice airport, albeit spacious beyond all reason. I think I must've walked about 2 miles between the time I landed there and when I finally approached that gate.

The taxi ride from the Wuhan airport to the hotel brought back the memories and the fear.

No seatbelts: check.
Broken speedometer so you can't tell if you are in fact approaching the sound barrier: check.
Complete disregard for lines on the road: big fat check-a-roonie, especially in crowded urban areas.

I believe you must be at least a level 20 Zen Master to get a cabbie license in China.

Last time I came to China the road from the Shanghai airport to Shanghai was a gorgeous, lush, carefully planted and maintained road, but the road from the Wuhan airport was not. This time, Wuhan's airport highway also has the landscaping. Really, like 10-15 miles of heavily landscaped median and shoulder. Wuhan's is mostly composed of shrubs and trees, whereas Shanghai's highway had a lot of flowers, but still it puts every American highway I've ever seen that connects an airport to shame. I tried to get a picture of it, but... eh, the pictures don't really do it justice. Mixed in were what I think were pink azaleas and white yuccas, but they don't show up in this picture.

Now I have two days to get situated before work on Monday.