As I write this, ’tis the day of Christmas and all through the globe — not a creature is stirring — for sure not a baggage handler.
My friends are celebrating everywhere — the Bahamas, Florida, one’s sailing the Canary Islands, another basking in Mexico, another house-guesting in the Dominican. I therefore picked the only intelligent thing. Wintry Shanghai.
Starbucks, Old Navy, McDonald’s, KFC, Disney is opening a resort — everything’s here. Taxis are plentiful, so many bicycles Janette Sadik-Khan would have an orgasm. If you venture to Hongqiao Road near Jianhe Road, there’s even Bubba’s Texas-style Bar-B-Que and Saloon.
Everything’s here. Everything — but my luggage. United’s 15-hour direct nonstop — Newark Airport to Pudong Airport — perfect flight. Friendly crew, sleeper seats. The only problem? My suitcase wasn’t on board. Nor were bags of 50 other passengers.
My traveling companion’s domestic United flight began in Boston. An hour late taking off. They were told: “The aircraft is dirty. It needs to be cleaned.”
When we boarded our international flight in Newark it was one hour late departing. Why, who knows. Certainly not because they were delayed loading luggage. Maybe tourist people are collaborating with government people. My going out and buying a wardrobe is China’s way of boosting their economy.
Personnel ran around giving us papers to fill out size, dimensions, description, luggage tag numbers, places we can be reached. Only the papers were in Chinese. Lotsa luck. Our flight was all locals returning for the holiday. Suitcases filled with presents. It was chaos.
That’s three days ago. Still, no luggage.
Our accommodations, beautiful. The hotel, gorgeous. The desk clerk, not. We’d booked adjoining rooms. He confirmed our adjoining rooms. Yeah, they adjoined. But only if they were connected by the LIE. Off the elevator, I was down the corridor to the right. Her room, off to the left.
Christmas is no big deal here. You shouldn’t think Fifth Avenue snowflake. SantaCon, uh-uh. Salvation Army chunkies in red suits clanging bells, nope. Rock Center’s holiday tree, forget it. Saks 5th, Cartier, Harry Winston all jazzed up in lights and glitz and tinsel, no.
No Santas anywhere. Not in department stores. Not on the street. Hunting Donder and Blitzen? Their circuit does not include rice paddies or Shanghai’s jammed, teeming streets.
Not a national holiday. All stores are open. At the huge flower market we found smallsize wreaths. Bunches of holly berries flown in from Holland. Christmas trees fashioned from bamboo. Evergreen branches wrenched off trees decorated our expat friend’s Christmas table.
Christmas Eve, one long line of believers waited patiently to get into a tiny church for a late-night Christmas Eve service.
The local newspaper featured one photo of Mr. Claus bouncing a little girl on his knee. But the picture was from the Finnish Embassy in Seoul, Korea.
Shanghai, meaning “city by the sea,” sits on the Yangtze River. The world’s busiest container port and largest city by population, give or take its 25 million citizens. Mainland’s commercial and financial district is so busy, so many bodies in the streets that comparatively it’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve on steroids.
Every single creature has a cellphone. Want anyone’s attention, you have to phone them. Speak to a person, they answer while clutching the gadget in their hand. Ask anything, they politely respond while chatting with the phone. China mobile customer base is more than double the combined bases of AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the US. Apple’s iPhone 5 and 5C will shortly become available to 763 million Chinese mobile customers.
So my feast tonight with friends who live here? I’ll either sport a clean bathrobe from the Hengshan Hotel or that grubby 4-day-old sweater and pants I put on four days ago in Manhattan.
And a happy holiday to you, too.
After hours and hours phoning airline officials, we are now informed: “We can’t exactly explain what happened — but one entire luggage container did not make the plane — and it will be four more days before we get it to you.”
Only in Shanghai, kids, only in Shanghai.