(a continuation from last week)
I confess I've had fantasies about shooting holes into the tires of crazy drivers who risk mowing down pedestrians, cut sudden U-turns on busy streets, and barrel through red lights. The aggressive Chinese taxi drivers I've observed make their New York City brethren look like old ladies. Those fantasies utterly vanished this morning.
I had gotten up early, pooled my vital documents together and gone down to the bus stop at the foot of the hill, where I watched buses 502, 535, 555, and 565 roll by about every 20 seconds. Where was 558, the bus whose last stop was the Chongqing North train station? The bus stop crowd expanded and contracted as passengers were exhaled onto one bus after another. My bus, which I'd taken twice before, wasn't to be seen. A bystander suggested I take 516, 518, or 898 to downtown Beibei and catch an empty 558 there. My cushion of time was completely flat, though--and the small pink train ticket in my hand said I needed to be at the Chongqing train station, ready to depart in just an hour and fifteen minutes. Panicked and poor and far from Chongqing, I flagged a taxi, knowing it would cost ten times as much as the bus. A student, also bound for Chongqing, piled in and we took off.
We had been weaving madly through thick traffic and were then zooming 25 km over the speed limit on the shoulder when a police car came into sight. My heart sped up. Not to worry--the policeman apparently had exactly the same driving proclivities as my taxi driver and tore around a belching truck, also using the shoulder to do so.
My hero the taxi driver pulled up to an underground part of the train station, anxious to know if I knew how to get to the boarding hall. I did. Twenty minutes later I was zooming in and out of tunnels, rushing past rural Chongqing's lush mountainsides. Sichuan's mountains came into view, also thick green with occasional villages--none of which seemed to be troubled with signs of the twentieth or twenty-first centuries. No neon or ugly parking lots or conspicuous gas stations or sprawl to be seen from the train window--just a little outcropping here and there of square-topped buildings clustered near terraced rice paddies and neatly patterned vegetable patches on the lower slopes of the mountains.
Once in Chengdu, the directions to the US Consulate were easy, now that I know the word for consulate: Lingshiguan. The address was simply "4 Lingshiguan Road." There, a line of mostly Chinese travelers snaked around the US Consulate, mostly students waiting patiently in the hot sun. One guard checked numbers, another occasionally thrust his hand in the chest of someone approaching the door. Inside, my laptop and just about everything else were swapped for a clip-on blue badge. None of these officials spoke much English, so much of the process remained a mystery to those of us who do--and quite possibly to those who don't.
Several check points and badge-switches later, a red-uniformed woman's hand went up and she told me to go home. I couldn't point to my name on the list of appointments--it wasn't there, although my appointment was supposed to be for 1:00. The room was packed with hundreds of people, mostly Chinese--most very tidy and stoic. No entrance, I was told. Go make another appointment. (Appointments can only be made on Wednesday mornings and Friday afternoons, teaching days both for me.) I felt my head grow thick, my eyes almost lose focus. I seldom sweat, but I started sweating profusely and felt dizzy. I wanted a bathroom. My physical reaction subsided, partly thanks to an observant musician-turned-kindergarten-teacher who fetched me a little water. I gently protested that I did indeed have an appointment at one o'clock and thought that Greg was expecting me.
Greg? I hadn't intended to drop names but that apparently was a magic bullet. However uncompromising the guards were at the gate, the staff (both Chinese and Western) behind the barred windows couldn't have been kinder, gentler, more accommodating. "The process is somewhat opaque," said one, between my many rounds of being helped, being seated while something was checked, and being helped again.
Having made my appearance in person, as required, to humbly apply for a new passport, the process still promises to take another four to six weeks, with a few more this's and that's to do. The passport story is a long one, and I'm not sure how it will end or how the visa one will go after that. The good news is--ah! The first chapter is done, partly thanks to Mary, Ling, JiaYue, Xiaodan, Kairong, Lingfang, Xiang, and Peace Corps friends, among many others who've helped me along the way. And the taxi cab driver!
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