Stranded in Cheng Du: Part Two

Stranded in the Cheng Du Airport. (Part Two)

To recap, we've been diverted from Chongqing to Cheng Du. The passports for myself, Christina and Tessa, along with our boarding passes are in my jacket. My jacket is missing and it's whereabout are still unconfirmed. In short, we are stranded in central China without a way to leave and without a place to stay. Keep in mind, we have a four year old in tow who has been an unbelievable traveller, but this is pushing it. At one point around noon, Tessa exclaimed to Christina "Holy cow I'm tired'. A fellow passenger on Air China flight CA1419, Jimmy, has been our volunteer translator and mobile phone provider during this whole ordeal. Jimmy and I have just learned that the Air China cleaning crew may have given my jacket to a foreigner. We hoped that the "foreigner" was either Christina, Fritz or Dee. Sadly, that was not the case:

And now we continue our story...

Our faces broke the bad news before any of us said a word. I relayed the report that my jacket may have been given to a foreigner. Fritz immediately began hunting down every white person in the airport asking them if they had been given my jacket. Meanwhile, we pulled out the phone number of Frank, our local guide in Chongqing and called him using Jimmy's phone. (Thank God for Jimmy). Frank told us that he would inform Tori's caretakers of our situation and let us know that whenever we get into Chongqing, he would make sure we could meet her. He told us he was trying to find out what was happening with the flights in Chongqing. It seems that they were all being either cancelled or diverted. Ours was the first one to not land in Chongqing that morning. I told Frank that we couldn't find our passports but were still looking. He summed things up nicely in his best english. "Oh, I think this is not good.”

We then called the Lineker, the national guide for the entire travel group. Lineker also mentioned that this is not good. I asked him about other travel options like a train or a car. He told us that we should not leave the airport, but focus on finding those passports. You cannot, I repeat, cannot function in China without a passport. No getting on planes or trains, no checking into hotels, no adopting children at civil affairs offices. Fear had been upgraded to dread. 

Lineker said that there was a US Consulate in Chengdu and that he would be making phone calls to see what could be done in the event that we cannot recover our passports I got off the phone with Lineker. It was about 1:00pm. Christina and I looked at each other and knew we would not be meeting Tori at 2:00. We didn't know if we would be able to leave Chengdu today, or the next day, or the day after that. We held each other and grieved the loss of this day. I apologized for the mess I put her and Tessa in. I felt like a complete failure as a protector and guardian. I resolved that in God's strength, I would never fail them this way again.

Jimmy suggested we go back down to the Air China cleaning crew office and ask them to look through the plane again. Down we went. The lady there called in another search (or so it seems). Still no luck. They could not find it. I sat down in a chair utterly defeated. I forget how dependent I am on God until I have nothing left to depend on. I was praying profusely for Yahweh Roh'i to shepherd the passports back to us and shepherd us to Chongqing. Praying that He would deliver us somehow. It was the only thing left I could think to do.

The Air China lady got off the phone and said something to Jimmy. Jimmy turned to me and said "The plane is leaving!” We ran out of the office and got back up the elevator. No elevator in history has ever gone so slow. I was feeling bad for Jimmy at this moment too. I didn't want him to be stuck here because of his generosity to us. The doors opened. I told everyone that the plane is leaving and that our mission was to get on that plane at all costs. If we can just get to Chongqing, we'll at least have our daughter and a guide. We ran to the security check point. The Air China cleaning crew lady came up with us to try and help explain our situation. We just hoping they'd let us slide through. Jimmy made it through, but we were stopped. We could not pass without a boarding pass.

We ran back to the first ticket desk and began begging and pleading for a boarding pass. Of course, without Jimmy to translate, this was not going well. Mercifully, I had copies of our passports in my money belt. I pulled them out and showed them to the Air China ticket agent. Fritz showed them his boarding pass stub. Christina pulled out our document binder with Tori's pictures on it. I frantically pointed to the pictures of Tori and yelling "My daughter! Chongqing.” 

Strangely in the midst of this panic, as I was pointing at Tori's pictures I realized that God had grown our love for Tori into a powerful force. We were desperate to get to her. The ticket agent was less than interested in our impassioned plea. In broken english, he told us to find someone to translate. Then he would help. So with all the subtlety of Ty Pennington with a bull horn, I whirled around and started yelling  “Help! English!". Christina, in a much more strategic move, went to the nearby terminal lounge where she tracked down the other passenger on the plane who was fluent in english. His name was James (no relation to Jimmy). 

James came over and played rosetta stone for us. The ticket agent said that there were three flights in front of ours so the flight isn't leaving right away. He would compare the passport copies to the flight records. If they matched, he would issue us temporary boarding passes. We thanked James profusely. James said to call him if we need anything else.We waited on pins and needles as the agent compared our records and cross referenced them against our passports. Then the song 'Hosanna' popped in my head. I started to sing the line "You are the God who saves us, come have Your way among us" over and over again. 

Praise God. The ticket agent pulled out three boarding passes and filled them in by hand. We hurried to the security check point and made it through to the gate. For a moment, it looked like a gate attendant was going to stop us because we didn’t have passports, but another Air China agent cleared us. Later on, we learned that Lineker had somehow called in a favor and had someone give a box of cigarettes to someone at Air China to make sure we got through. At least now we knew we would probably be getting on a plane to Chongqing. Jimmy was waiting for us at the gate. He went and bought us some snacks and drinks. 

Finally our flight was called up. We boarded the shuttle bus and drove out to the plane. I ran up to the front of the line and up the stairs. There, at the top of the stairs, were the flight attendants holding my jacket...with the passports and boarding passes in the pocket. I fell on my knees right there. They picked me up and I sang the Doxology all the way to seat 23C.

It was strange how after all that panic, we were in the same spot as everyone else. We were back on the plane with the rest of the passengers. It's just that we had had 4 hours of terror in the airport while everyone else had four hours of boredom. With the whole family back on the plane and all our documents in tact, we thanked God and breathed a sigh of relief. Fritz and Dee had bought a couple of Tiger Woods golf hats as customary gifts for some of the adoption officials we were to meet. They decided we should give one to Jimmy since he loves golf. He gladly accepted it and proudly wore it the rest of the day. It was 3:00. We could be in Chongqing by 4:00…Or so we thought.

As it turns out, there were a lot of other flights that had been delayed and we were in a long line. We sat on the tarmac for four hours. Christina and I kept thinking about how unfair this is to Tessa. She was such a trooper through the whole ordeal. At around 6:30, they offered to let people voluntarily cancel their flight and leave the plane. We called Frank, and he advised us to wait until the flight makes a formal cancellation so that they would be responsible for getting us a place to stay and a new flight. Trying to manage that on our own would be next to impossible with the language barrier.

At 7:00pm they had everyone deplane again. It seems that in the last four hours of waiting in line, the weather in Chongqing had gone bad again. Back to the gate we went. This time, we made sure we had everything with us. We dozed away in the terminal until about 9:30-10:00. Tessa fell asleep on Christina's lap. We had been up 18 hours at this point. Bear in mind, we had just traveled for 24 hours straight only two days ago. Finally, they called our flight up and we got on the shuttle bus to go to our plane...for the third time that day. We're certain this is the end to the nightmare. As the shuttle bus pulls up to our plane, we notice that it looks awfully dark in there. The bus driver gets out of the bus, walks up the steps, knocks on the door, peeks in the window, then turns around, gets back in the bus and starts to drive us back to the terminal! There is no one on the plane. The flight crew is gone.

The shuttle bus pulls up outside the gate entrance. The doors open. No one moves. No one. A gate agent comes out to tell us to get off. Wrong move. A cacophony of what we can only assume were Chinese expletives and calls for revolution exploded from the bus. Young and old, rich and poor. The people of the People's Republic were staging a revolt against the tyrannical rule of Air China. There we were, in the midst of what had become a sit in on a shuttle bus in Chengdu. As tired as we were, we couldn't help but laugh. We were all in this together now. James yelled to us from the front of the bus to tell us that no one is leaving the bus until they staff the plane. People are tired of the airline lying to them. 

The airline personnel outside were frantically talking on their radios. Periodically an agent would come back to the bus to talk to us and boy would they get an earful. Young people got out of the seats on the bus to make sure the elderly folks had a place to sit while we waited. Tessa was totally spent at this point. As she sat on the floor of the shuttle she said, “I hope tomorrow isn't like this.”

About 45 minutes later, the doors to the bus closed and we were off to our plane again. Only this time, we passed our plane and went to the plane next to it. Our plane was still dark. They opened the doors at the opposite end of the shuttle bus and ushered people to the other plane. There went James and Jimmy. Then, three people before us, they stopped the exodus. “No more room,” they said. There were about ten of us left on the bus. At this point I pointed at my four year old daughter and said. We have to get on a plane. Fritz told them we need someone that speaks english to come and explain what's happening. We looked down at Tessa and she was standing there with her hands folded. She said something like “I was praying there would be stuff for the plane so we could fly.”

The airline agent said that both planes would be flying that night and that we would go on the other plane with our baggage. Sure enough, an Air China van pulled up and out climbed a new bleary eyed flight crew onto the plane. They must have been called back into duty when they learned we weren't leaving the bus. We got off the bus and walked toward the plane. Then two other busses showed up and people flooded off of them aiming for our plane. We ran as fast as we could and got there before the hoard. Finally on the plane, we collapsed in our seats and awaited take off.

The plane took off after midnight on Tuesday morning. We landed in Chongqing less than an hour later. The flight was a measly 50 minutes. It is now 1:00am on Tuesday morning and the shuttle bus takes us from the plane to the airport. We all get off the bus and round the corner to the entrance to the baggage claim area. A passenger and front of the group. Pulls on the glass door. Clunk. It's locked. The door to the airport is locked. We start banging on the doors and finally someone from the airport comes over and unlocks the door for us. In we go.

We reunite with Jimmy and James over at baggage carousel five to wait for our bags. It's the same plane we started the day with, so there shouldn't be a problem right? Wrong. After a few minutes. Our flight disappears from the board. James says. "That's not good." An Air China agent comes over and make an announcement in Chinese. Then he runs. That's right, he runs away over to a baggage claims office. Jimmy turns around and says “You will not believe this! Our bags are still in Chengdu. They had taken them off the plane.” James came over and gave us the scoop on what our next step was. Passengers needed to go into the little baggage claims office, make a photo of their boarding passes and baggage claim stubs, then right down a phone number where they could be reached. I pulled out our baggage stubs. They were all in Dee's name, which means she would need to venture with me into the office.

The office was a 10' X 10' hole in the wall occupied by a desk, copy machine and dozens of riotous passengers. There was no line so we just squeezed our way like sheep into a pen past the borderline violent men on our left and jostled our way over to the copy machine, then over to the Air China agent to give him our information and get their phone number. About thirty minutes later we had finally made it out of there and breathed fresh air.

We made our way over to our Chongqing guide, Frank, who had been waiting for us the whole day. It was 2:00am. He welcomed us with a smile and asked if we wanted to go see our daughter. What a guy. Christina and I were grateful, but knew that wouldn't be fair to Tori. We decided to go to the hotel to get some sleep and then meet her later that morning. Frank helped us check in to our hotel in Chongqing and we finally crashed into bed at about 4:00am. All told, it took us as long to get from Beijng to Chongqing as it did to get from Portland to Beijing. We were beyond exhausted, but grateful to God for delivering us through the gauntlet knowing we would finally meet Tori the next day. 

Sorry for the lengthy tale, but figured the story would need to be as 

long and torturous as our travel saga.

THE END

(cue main theme: restfully triumphant music (fade to black)

Epilogue: “What about the bags?” you ask. Well, Frank was the hero again here. We just didn't trust Air China to bring the bags to us, so in the midst of all the work Frank had to do to get us to meet Tori, handle sensitive paperwork, get us to our civil affairs appointment, he called Air China about once an hour all day trying to confirm when our bags would be there. Finally at 8:00 that night, he got confirmation that they had arrived. We drove back to the airport and Fritz spotted all our bags together. An airline employee brought them over and we were out of there with our bags in less that five minutes. The final chapter was finally closed on our harrowing Cheng Du excursion!