Shining girl’s arrival.
I flew to Shanghai airport to meet my daughter, a clever, strong minded seventeen year old Aussie girl and I love her. It was not possible for me to get a flight from Wuhan near her time of arrival, even calculating for the journey from Hong Qiao airport to Pu Dong airport, mainly domestic and mainly international respectively. There were six hours to kill between my arrival by bus and Shining girl’s arrival time. Airports are interesting enough but six hours is enough to use up my interest. It had been almost two years since my arrival in China and money problems had prevented me from returning to see my two lovely children so I was nervous. How strong would our relationship be after such a long time? I had conscientiously kept up phone and internet chat contact with them and felt I had a better relationship with them than many people who live with their children, but that was only my perspective.
I had KFC for lunch and later wandered up and down many times watching the people and sat in a restaurant for an hour and a half drinking coffee and looking down on the international arrivals area. People of all shapes and sizes and colours, wearing saris, khaftan’s, Calvin Klein, Armani, jeans, shorts, suits and most other imaginable garb pulled or carried backpacks, suitcases and plastic bags of expensive duty free through the gauntlet of relatives, guides and of course taxi drivers whose intent was to make a week’s salary in an hour by giving a foreigner a ‘special deal’. A child with thin legs came in a wheelchair as did a woman with a grey complexion under an oxygen mask.
For a few moments I achingly wished that Strongsoft boy was coming too and vividly imagined him walking out side by side with Shining girl and saying “Hello” in that Aussie deadpan of his.
The plane was delayed about twenty minutes but when it landed I stood waiting with a lot of others, Chinese and Australian. I chatted with a couple of about my age and they were anxious about their daughter. I hadn’t thought to be anxious about mine because I thought she was pretty clever and air travel is pretty straightforward in my experience. It was their daughter’s first time to travel alone, they told me, though she had been all over the world with them. I asked her age. Twenty-three, they said. I was right about my girl. She successfully made an interstate connection, completed the tax rebate forms for a computer she brought for me, and got to China without a worry.
Eventually I noticed that people who were coming through the gate were carrying plastic bags from Australian duty free shops or with Aussie brand names. After a while my lovely daughter came through and over to me for a warm hug. That was the start of a good bonding time together as we toured six Chinese cities. I needn’t have feared for our relationship. The magic love links were as strong as ever.