T - 1 海口 → 成县 - Me China Red

July 10, 2021

T - 1 海口 → 成县

As long as I'm a relatively young and flexible crip I can continue to balance my leg on top luggage carts even if it annoys the Tiger Mom in front of me

On my way back to Hainan from the mainland, I chose to fly from the largest airport in my vicinity. Although the price of the tickets themselves was okay, all the incidental costs of getting to that airport added up and I made the decision—if feasibly possible—not to fly from that airport.

I would have liked very much to fly in to the closest airport (Hanzhong) but prices were coming it at better than twice anywhere else and were all for very much not direct flights that would take anywhere from 12 to 20 hours!

However, Cheng County's airport was only about 175km away from where my bike was waiting for me and had a nonstop¹ flight that was actually the first leg of a Haikou to Lanzhou flight and I figured it couldn't be any worse in terms of ground transportation than once again getting to and through the Xi'an Railway Station would be.

My biggest gripe, once again, is Handicapped Services at Meilan Airport. As with my last mid-tour flight back to the Mainland, it was far enough past the red-eye discount fights crunch hour that things weren't crazy crazy. However, because they've decided that the Service Desk for applying for a wheelchair should be the same as the Service Desk for applying to send an Unaccompanied Child to another city, the line (with no available seats) actually took more than ten minutes longer than the surrounding check-in desks² for non-Handicapped individuals.

Random bit of trivia I've noticed from my recent flights is that the various frontline police and security types (who are not in this photo of the Handicapped Services Desk) are washing their uniforms more often, with hotter water, and harsher detergent. The blacks are navy blue and the items which should be navy blue are fading to dark gray.

As a result, although the airport in Cheng would be an absurdly tiny thing about the size of that place in North Carolina³ where I was once maid of honor at a friend's wedding, I'd completely used up my daily allotment of walking and standing on the task of getting a wheelchair so that I need not walk or stand!

My leg is often at its grumpiest immediately after I get off a flight. It usually won't be hurting but it also won't be feeling like doing the things one usually expects of a leg (such as supporting my body weight). This plus my not inconsiderable weight and the wheelchair attendants often being very small women expecting to push very small senior citizens means that, even though the 'chair is waiting for me, I still walk up the ramp and wait for the flat spot to sit down.

Not today though.

And if I cringed inwardly at the person not knowing to turn the 'chair around and use the big non-castered wheels to go over bumps and seams or the absurdity of having to get someone to help him lift the front end up⁴, I still didn't say anything.

By the time we got to the lone luggage carousel, my pannier was the only piece left and someone had taken it off and put it on the ground so that they could turn the carousel off.

Then, he started to take me to the parking lot taxi stand where I continued to not make any verbal commentary on the state of the design of the airport's handicapped accessible elements⁵. I do wish though that there were some way to insist that architects and designers try spending a day or two in a 'chair or on crutches as they were not at all the sort of accessibility features that would allow for fully independent usage by a handicapped person who didn't have someone helping out.

Before we could go to the parking lot, however, a bunny suited woman at a nearby exit yelled across the airport to bring the foreigner over to register.

I'd like to start by stating that, on the coach to Hanzhong, when the driver asked me the same sorts of questions, I wasn't rude to him. He had no reason to be knowing that the borders were completely closed to non-citizens for a 6 month period from March 28 of last year or that they remain effectively closed even now. The apparent CDC staff member assigned to the airport (and the only person in the airport to be bunny suited) is a different story, however.

"Have you been outside the country recently?"

"I'm not Chinese. Only Chinese passport holders are allowed free entry into the country."

"Have you been outside the country recently?"

"I'm clearly a foreign passport holder. Foreigners cannot come and go. You should know that all⁶ imported cases in the past year were Chinese citizens."

"Have you been outside the country recently?"

"I've already answered your question."

And then we stared at each other for about 15 or 20 seconds before she told him he could take me outside.

On the bus to Hanzhong there were actually some bits I recognized from having recently biked underneath this viaduct.

¹ Nonstop flights don't stop. Direct flights don't change airplanes.

² I wasn't super rigorous in recording my data but I'm reasonably confident in my numbers.

³ I want to say Asheville

⁴ Could I have handed off the bag on my lap and bunny hopped it? Yes. But, even if I'd been on my own, I'd have gone rear wheels first.

⁵ Compared to places with better designed elements that have been crippled with anti e-bike bollards or the like, they really weren't that bad.

⁶ Three of the current cases of community spread in the border city of Ruili are illegal immigrants from Myanmar who may have gotten it from another illegal immigrant or who may have gotten it from one of the Chinese people that's regularly making illegal back and forth trips across that border.

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