Last week we were planning our programs at CCBC for 2010 and where we have to go, etc. I thought that this would make a good topic to share this week, as I suspect many of you who are engaged in China, will be going there sometime before April.

In part 1 today, we will deal with Beijing and points north.

When I was a lacrosse player, I played my last two seasons in Rochester and I had a teammate who had played hockey with the Birmingham Bulls of the ECHL. He told me a story of the time they had a game postponed due to a snow storm in Birmingham, which closed the airport. I think he said that the snowfall was around 2 inches (1 cm). I laughed, but in China, that story is also not unusual, and not very funny, especially if you have to go to meetings and you are on a tight schedule to begin with (like we all are when we go over).

Snow in small amounts is a problem at many Chinese airports and in many cases it is due to equipment issues. In Beijing during my last trip in November, I was stuck for the entire day by delays caused by 1 cm of snow. If you are travelling anytime between now and the end of March, then be prepared if it snows, either where you are or where you are going. It is not the same as here so plan accordingly. For example, you can probably hook into Wi-Fi at the airport but unless you have an adapter plug for your laptop, you will run out of power so always carry an adapter plug in your bag. I like Beijing's Terminal 3 because it has a great Starbuck's with Wi-Fi service.

If you happen to be in a smaller city's airport, like Shenyang or Changchun, fear not as all announcements are also in English. If the delay is going to be long, it is quite common that the airline will hand out food and soft drinks. This is good because you can eat, but it is bad as it means you are going to be there for a while.

So here are two stories to amuse and scare you.

The first one is about going from Beijing to Shenyang. That day, the Shenyang airport was closed because it had snowed 1 cm in the morning and it did not re-open until  5 pm. All of the Shenyang passenger sat around the airport and once opened, they loaded all the planes bound for Shenyang that day and flew out, so 7 planes in a row took off and landed, which made for mass chaos at the other end. But we got there, which was the main thing.

The other story  is about a flight from Shanghai back home to Shenyang prior to the Chinese New Year in 2005. It had rained all day and flights were delayed. Our plane was coming for another city and could not take off. Needless to say, our 2:30 pm flight did not begin to board until 2 am the following morning, but not before a little game of chicken. All of the passengers for this particular flight had to wait so long that we felt we should get some form of compensation. To make a long story short, we had a mini strike and refused to board the aircraft until we got some compensation. After a short stand-off, the airline blinked and gave us all 400 RMB each and we boarded, returning to Shenyang at 5 am

Travel is an adventure