Eric's Beijing Diary

The office finally opened up for the fall semester Tuesday. Tomorrow is the first day of school.

I'm on the train to Shanghai. Mali Browne, my friend from Arizona who is working in Shanghai invited me to a two-day seminar on innovation. At first I told her I couldn't come, but it turns out that I don't have any undergraduate classes on Thursday or Friday, and the graduate classes don't start until after the October holiday.

This evening, I walked to the North Gate to get a taxi at 6:30. My train left at 7:44, so I had plenty of time. Or so I thought. We ran into really bad traffic, which isn't that unusual, but after getting down toward the city center and sitting for what seemed like forever, it turned out that the Second Ring Road was blocked off by the police. Great. That's when I began to wonder if I would really be going to Shanghai. I told my driver when my train was leaving, to sorta give him a little extra motivation to get there in time. He did the best he could, but it was just very obvious that we were going to be late.

I tried to be philosophical. When you are about to miss a train, is it bad news because of all the things you could have done that you will miss out on? Or is it good news because of what you will be spared? For some reason, I thought of my great uncle, who had booked passage to Norway on the Lusitania and had to cancel at the last minute. Sometimes it is a blessing to miss opportunities.

As it turned out, the driver did drop me off in front of the station about five minutes before the train left, but I was on the other side of the street. I still had to get up over the sky bridge and then walk across the large square in front of the station. Then there was security, which fortunately went pretty quickly. But I was really late. I ran up the stairs, but couldn't see my train listed anywhere (not a good sign), so I went to the information booth and she pointed in the general direction. I pointed myself in the direction she had indicated, but as I proceeded, I still could not Z7 listed anywhere. I did see Z5, though, so I headed for that platform. I pointed to the ticket and asked the lady if that was the right platform. She nodded and punched my ticket, but it turned out she wasn't paying attention. Z5 is Z5 and Z7 is Z7. When I showed my ticket to the lady standing by the door, she wouldn't let me on the train, and called to ask someone else. I finally found someone who had a little authority, and she motioned me to wait while she checked to see what was available. Finally it was time for this train to leave, so she motioned for me to get on, and the train began to move. Too late now. Missed my chance to avoid being sunk by a German sub. I decided to view the matter positively. There must be something valuable ahead of me that God didn't want me to miss. It became a little easier to look at matters this way when she found me a bed, and sitting here in the dining car with eggs and shrimp and a cold beer, I choose to anticipate good things. Hope I'm right.

Anyway, that's my story. Just call me "Winston."