dancing on the inside

in the weeks leading up to thanksgiving, i have decided to be grateful each day. akin to my borrowed love,love,love agenda (being open to falling in love with three things in life each day)*, i am aiming to start each day giving thanks for something. maybe these two projects are cousins who like to walk hand in hand and swing on the playground together. they are certainly related.

one thing i was not thankful for this morning, however, was the snow. yes, it is snowing again in beijing. this is the third big snowstorm since halloween! i just cannot believe that this is natural and am convince that the furious ballet of snowflakes i'm seeing out my window is courtesy of the weather modification office. i couldn't find any people's daily articles affirming that the last 'gift' of a storm was the result of modification. but there was thunder so loud i thought we were being bombed the night it began, which makes one wonder. aside from the eerily disturbing and strangely sinister idea that the government is tampering with the weather on a weekly basis, it's a bit of a logistical nightmare. this city is just not equipped to handle this much snow.

a recent article in the SCMP on the nightmarish conditions at the beijing airport during the first storm demonstrates this well. mind you, as per usual, you need to go outside of china to get the real story. local coverage commended the airport staff for handling the situation so smoothly. the article:

man-made chaos, but no man-made solution
*****************************************************

Source: South China Morning Post (11/9/09):
Wang Xiangwei

On the morning of November 1, when my parents set off for Beijing Capital
International Airport for a flight of less than three hours to Guangzhou,
little did they know they were about to face more than 30 hours of hell.

Both in their late 60s, they were stranded in the cold airport waiting area,
then boarded the aircraft, then were kicked off the jet back into the cold
waiting area. When they finally took off, it was the afternoon of the next
day, last Monday.

Like tens of thousands of passengers that day, they became hapless victims
of the massive man-made chaos triggered by a huge man-made snowstorm.
Ironically, highly respected Conde Nast Traveller magazine had just named
Beijing's one of the best 15 airports in the world for its layout and flight
information, among other things.

My parents' horrible experience says a lot about the mainland's
crisis-management mechanism, lack of co-ordination among government
departments and utter failure to put into practice the government's much
trumpeted motto of "putting the people first". The cash-rich mainland may
have the best facilities, including gleaming modern airports and new jumbo
jets, but its soft power, as projected in services, is still way off.

When my parents arrived at the airport more than an hour before the 11am
scheduled take-off of Air China flight 1315, the snow was already heavy. But
the airline's ground staff mentioned nothing about a potential delay and
checked them in.

Lacking the wisdom of frequent fliers, they then began a long wait in a cold
waiting area. They were given no food or drink, contrary to state media
reports of such a service provided to delayed passengers. And they were
stonewalled when seeking flight information.

At around 5pm, they were told their flight had been cancelled, and they were
bumped to another flight. Then they were taken by bus to a Boeing 747 along
with more than 300 other passengers. From 6pm to 2am, they sat in the plane
before being told the flight had been cancelled and they had to leave.
Confused, hungry and angry, my parents, along with other passengers, engaged
in intensive arguments with the airline ground staff, who refused to say
when the next flight would be available and would not take them to a hotel.

At 5am, the airline staff relented and put them on a bus to a hotel nearby.
Then my parents were told to get ready to meet a bus going back to the
airport at 8am, but the bus did not turn up until three hours later. They
finally managed to get a China Southern flight to Guangzhou at around 4.40pm
last Monday after more than 30 hours.

To their great dismay, one Beijing newspaper they read on the flight was
full of articles praising the airlines and airport staff for initiating
emergency systems and going out of their way to help stranded passengers. A
weather forecaster at the Air Traffic Management Bureau was quoted as saying
such an early snowfall had not been seen for 22 years, and it was totally
unexpected.

But it was not. According to the state media reports, the snowfall - which
dropped more than 16 million tonnes of snow on Beijing, delayed air travel
and left city residents shivering - was man-made. From 8pm on October 31 to
2am on November 1, the Beijing Weather Modification Office blasted 186
sticks of silver iodide into the clouds to induce snow to help ease the
drought in the city.

But the officials apparently failed to notify other departments, including
aviation authorities. A China Daily commentary fumed that "this arbitrary
government decision disregarded the interests of the people".

The Beijing weather office was not the only one. The airport and airlines
may have launched their own emergency management systems, but there appeared
to be little interdepartmental communication. The result was total chaos,
with little information available from anyone.

The bad service made the situation even worse. For instance, Air China
offers a toll-free hotline, which was understandably jammed that day, but in
this age of the internet, its website provided no updates on the status of
flights, leaving anxious passengers and relatives in the dark.

As well, even after the flights resumed on the afternoon of November 1,
airport controllers cleared the backlog of flights not according to the
length of their delays, but by the ranks of officials on board, according to
insiders.

A week has passed, and nobody has come forward to take responsibility or
apologise for the made-made chaos, let alone learn any lesson. Future chaos
can be reduced if Beijing learns from other countries by setting up an
interdepartmental task force to handle airport delays resulting from unusual
weather.

As the Beijing weather officials yesterday forecast more rain and snow on
the way today, and over the next few days, passengers need to brace
themselves.

**************

a friend who was travelling through beijing en route to wuhan that day spent 10.5 hours on a plane without food as they beijing airport staff struggled with the de-icing equipment and refused to feed the captive passengers. i am so thankful i arrived at the airport that afternoon, took one look, and left. perhaps my most brilliant decision this month.

whether any of these decisions to blanket beijing in snow are brilliant, alleged drought or not, remains to be seen. apparently the weather modification office finally admitted that today's snow is their doing, but had previously stated that tuesday's was 'natural': http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26335967-23109,00.html. i suppose that depends on what your definition of 'natural' is.

in this moment, i am thankful for warmth. i no longer have any urges to rush out and dance in this. instead i will be dancing on the inside (as always).

* borrowed from a lovely friend started a blog in the spirit of a poet she heard at a conference this spring. the poet said that in order to write poetry you must be open to falling in love at least three times a day. i love that concept! and my wonderful friend with her thoughtful blog: lovethreethings.blogspot.com.