I had a ticket for a morning flight to return to Beijing but was invited to attend another factory visit. Oh well, no panic, we'll find a way to get back to the capital. Anyway, I was mentally prepared to spend several hours at the airport to catch the first available flight back to Beijing. Ten or fifteen years ago it would have been a nightmare and you would probably have ended up back at the hotel, hoping to catch a flight the next day. Once, in the eighties, I was stuck in Xian for three days.
Anyway, nowadays they have places at the airport where you can have a decent pint of beer and I had a book in my hand luggage – so everything was available to make the long wait less tedious and cumbersome.
Well, far from having to wait, I had to run. I arrived at Shenyang's Taoxian Airport at 2.08 p.m. and the guy at the China Southern ticket desk asked me whether a 3 p.m. flight would be O.K. with me. I had to run through the check-in and passport check and by 2.50 p.m. the plane was taxiing to the runway. Well, can't expect to have good luck each and every time, but still it's a nice illustration of how China has changed. If you wanted to buy a plane ticket in the eighties, you had to go to one building in Beijing – the dreaded CAAC – and queue up for an hour or more to be told that, “meiyou” all tickets were sold out.
Today, you book your ticket on-line or make a phone call and half an hour later the ticket is delivered at the door. And if you have to change your plans, you just go to the airport, buy a new ticket and be airborne 50 minutes later. No, not everything has changed for the better, but certain things certainly have...
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