National Day Holiday - Part 1 - Getting to Qingdao

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently went on holiday during the Chinese National Day Holiday (October 1 - 7). October 1, 1949 was the official founding date of the People’s Republic of China. Originally, my flight was set to take off at 8:20 AM from a proper gate (with the gangway). Of course, another flight (I believe to Haerbin or some place) was at my gate and was also scheduled to leave at 8:20. How on earth would they get two planes to leave from the same gate at the same time, I thought… Well, they didn’t. At about 8:25 they changed gates for my flight - only this time to a bus gate. Yuck. The bus gates (4 of them at least) are located on a lower level of the concourse. I got a head start to go to the gate, but unfortunately, there was already a long line of people waiting to enter the escalator. Yes, 1 escalator. Most of them were foreign, I heard lots of German, so I thought maybe they would be on my flight as apparently Germans like to go to Qingdao. While waiting in line for the escalator, I noticed this one older foreigner with a massive bee-hive comb-over (Similar to this, except it was a very ugly red color). Finally getting to the bus gate level, I noticed a fundamental flaw in the design of the large waiting room. Just after the end of the escalator, you have to turn leftto avoid the waiting area chairs (a line of them). See the crappy drawing below. The red line is my path. The blue dots are people, lots of them! I had to navigate around lots of people, many of which were just standing around - not to mention the usual “oh, gee, how do I get off an escalator, must be very careful. There we go, I think I will stand here for a bit ignoring the fact that there are people behind be getting off the escalator also…”

That’s my rant for this entry… The rest of the “getting to Qingdao” went as planned… Stay tuned for Part 2: Qingdao