China Environmental Law

This was my first time in the new Terminal 2 at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport. It’s big, serviceable and very easy to get through, at least on a Sunday afternoon. There seem to be several decent places to eat on a mezzanine level in the boarding area, and, there is a very big bookstore in the ticketing concourse, and several smaller ones beyond security (in contrast to Beijing’s new terminal where reportedly they were not able to find space for books).

In order to have a complete record of my trip for you, I thought it necessary to take a picture of my plane parked at the gate. I fished around for the camera and decided I would drop the world weary traveler persona I had adopted for the sake of reportage. I still felt like an idiot capturing a Lufthansa 747 at rest, but my sacrifice of personal dignity apparently opened the flood gates. After I sheepishly returned to my seat, no fewer than 10 grizzled travel veterans got up to snap a shot of our plane.

My thoughts returned to that picture forty five minutes later during our take off. The plane bounced several times on the runway unable to get airborne and it seemed we were barely off the ground when we ran out of tarmac. As we bounced the second time I imaged my picture published in the newspaper the next day; the last frame on a camera pulled from the smoldering wreckage, and a poignant symbol of how fate had intervened to change everything for one traveler who only minutes before the tragic crash had been full of the excitement of international travel.

As Fate would have it, she stayed her deathly hand, although I was sorely tempted to summon it to deal with my neighbor in the middle seat who had more than a few glasses of red wine followed (on each occasion) with a beer chaser.

I took refuge in the view out the window. I had always imagined Siberia as a place, far from civilization to be sure, but filled with towering spruces and little cabins in valleys between Alp-like peaks all dusted with a powdery snow. A sort of Russian Idaho. Nope. At least the area to the east of Yekaterinburg is a brown, treeless area of low hills, oxbow rivers and pot hole lakes. What vegetation there is looks like dense masses of brush near the water courses. It may green up a bit by summer, but whatever charm there is in that must be extinguished by the clouds of mosquitoes.

The Frankfurt airport has created its own modern Siberia. Little glass cubes (15′ x 15′) are placed periodically along the terminal concourse; hermetically sealed exiles for the desperate nicotine addict. I’ve seen special smoking rooms in other airports (especially in tobacco growing areas in the US), but these had a distinctly penal feel. Ten or more smokers huddled in each cube, their eyes to the floor, painfully aware that they were objects of scorn or pity in their smoke fouled prisons.

Environmental observations: Blue skies in Germany and lots of wind turbines to be seen from the air. Oh and that picture of the plane; sorry, but I forgot the cord that connects the camera to the computer, so you’ll have to wait until I return to Shanghai.