Review of China Eastern flight from Taiyuan to Shanghai in Economy

This FR is the fourth segment of a trip to Mainland China to attend a wedding there, covered in the bonus at the end of the report.
CDG - PVG : MU370 (A332) The tea-pots of Yixing
PVG - CGO : FM8389 (B738) The temples of Kaifeng
CGO - PEK : CA1326 (B738) MiG Alley
PEK - TYN : high speed train
TYN - PVG : MU2402 (B738) Best wishes of happiness ! You are here
PVG – CDG : MU569, no report
The party was over, and we had to go home. A flight scheduled at 7:45 is tough when you went to bed late, but that was the only routing which was compatible with our various constraints. The staff at the desk of the International Geting Hotel where the reception was held had suggested booking a taxi at 6:45. Hotel staff are usually over-cautious for that, but here, leaving the hotel at ETD-60’ seemed acrobatically risky because the taxi ride in the reverse direction had taken more than half an hour. Leaving at 6:15 seemed safer to me.

The taxi was as punctual as it was shaky, so much so that my wife (sitting in the rear) and I on the front seat had a problem hearing each other. Small wonder: this Volkswagen had covered a record 975,645 km and counting! What was more troubling was the fuel gauge warning light.

The branch toward the expressway and the airport, leaving the ring road

Arrival in view of TYN’s terminals

The signs listing the airlines for each terminal. It was an MU flight departing therefore from Terminal 2. Note that when we flew from TYN in 2011, Terminal 1 was an empty shell and all flights were from Terminal 2 only (see this TYN – KWE flight report )

The giant characters on top of the terminal are simply the name of the city: Taiyuan 太原.

Had it been slimmer, this suitcase would have qualified as a hand luggage, and yet it took all the available space in the dusty trunk, which mostly contained a LPG tank and an equally dusty pail. Having so little space for your own luggage is commonplace in Mainland China: you often need two taxis if you are three people with luggage, especially because the drivers seldom know how to optimize the use of that space in their own car.

Arrival at 6:46 in front of the terminal, i.e. ETD- 59’: there was no excessive spare time

The margin was all the less excessive than there was a significant line at check in. There were self-check-in machines, but I did not trust them for being able to read a foreign passport and manage a connecting international flight. I chose not to waste precious time there, and it turned out to be a wise option.

It was 7:02 when our suitcase showed that it had taken on weight during that trip

… and then the process just froze. There was an obvious snag, and after a significant amount of time, the staff admitted that there was no problem for our TYN-PVG flight, but she could not find a trace of our connecting flight. I had a print-out of our e-tickets; three staff came to the rescue. I exceptionally did no hide their faces because the expressions were so vivid.

Two passengers with AF tickets on a routing operated by MU flights out of TYN: that was definitely not routine here, and all their typing and searching failed to check us in all the way to our final destination and we would have to check in again in PVG. All that was in Chinese, but my wife did not need any translation to understand that we were in a snafu and started wondering if she would make it to her office on Monday morning in Paris.
We were directed to the J/Elite counter to have our problem solved: the supervisor saw our single suitcase (with a size compatible with the trunk of taxi millionaire in km) and told us that she would authorize it as hand luggage, but did it contain any forbidden item (in cabin)? Well, yes it did, since it was supposed to be checked in. There was a very cheap knife that we would have thrown away, but the supervisor obviously feared that other items could create a problem at the security check, and there was no time for that.
« I check your luggage with a priority tag; the plane is going to be on time, so you should have enough time. These are your boarding passes to Pudong; go quickly to the security check”. By that time, my wife had very well understood without translation that it was getting very tight.

I was not going to take the risk of having a double safety check of my hand luggage and removed all the miscellaneous chargers from my laptop case (and the laptop too, of course).

Our boarding gate of course was at the far end of the terminal

I made a slight detour alongside the windows to take a picture of the planes …

… under the dark stare of my wife which clearly meant « It is definitely NOT time for plane spotting, we've had enough trouble so far ».

The plane’s registration number, before going through the boarding gate.

And two pictures through the windows of the airbridge: another 738

And a Falcon 7X somewhat further away

The offering of newspapers at the end of the airbridge. These are local newspapers: the titles include the names of Shanxi 山西 (the province of which Taiyuan is the capital) and Taiyuan 太原. The magazine on the lower shelf was obviously the in-flight magazine: the title reads 東方航空報, i.e. China Eastern News.

We were the last passengers boarding this plane

The Ja cabin of this aircraft was oversized: six rows in 2+2 layout. Shortly after takeoff, a FA made announced that “there was a lot of space in J, ask a FA if you want to be upgraded”. I did not enquire about the price of the upgrade, and from the condition of the seats when we deplaned; I believe nobody on board had been interested.

Some plane spotting through the window, with an MU aircraft in Skyteam livery and a Hainan Airlines aircraft.

The winglet of our 738

Safety demonstration on the IFE screens

The seat pitch was up to Chinese standards, and therefore adequate.

And the seat’s reclining was also up to Chinese standards, and therefore quite symbolic.

The safety card both sides

Some planes spotted during taxiing: a probable Cessna 208 in the foreground

I wondered who would use this typical flying club aircraft, because the Chinese airspace is so heavily regulated.

This was a much larger aircraft (a Falcon 7X, not the one seen before)

Take off was on time

From a distance, it vaguely looked like an airport, but image processing showed it was not.

Since we were in the rear of the aircraft, I could for once take a picture of the cabin from the rear.

There was a tiny floral decoration in the otherwise nondescript toilets.

The galley was nothing out of the ordinary

The FAs started distributing the meal; What would be the menu?

This is what it looked like before unwrapping

The same, after unwrapping everything. This was a very typical Chinese breakfast, with a generous portion of rice congee on the right, half an egg boiled in tea, pickles, a piece of bread and a cake stuffed with red bean paste.

The bag in the top right only contained two chestnuts.

The coffee was with milk

The IFE screens displayed the airshow which alternated between Chinese and English. This was the route flown by the plane: it was not a straight line at all, because in accordance to a friend’s quip, the whole Chinese airspace is military, except a few civilian routes.

This passenger who was possibly in her sixties, seated on the other side of the aisle, never stopped manipulating her prayer beads.

The cloud cover did not let see much of Shanghai and its outskirts

A marshalling yard

Only because I knew where we were did I identify SHA

A bend of the Huangpu River

The heavily industrialized banks of the river

An industrial suburb

Final descent to PVG

Touchdown at 9:30

Two 747 freighters (Yangtze Express and China Eastern)

Sprint Airlines, a hard low cost based in Shanghai

MU or AF for flying back to CDG? No hesitation, it was going to be MU!

Shanghai Airlines A330-200 – I did not know they have twin aisle aircraft.

An MU A321 MU with a special livery

We taxied around the terminal to reach the gates which are dedicated to domestic flights, where there were logically aircrafts of MU and FM only, since Terminal 1 was dedicated entirely for MU, its subsidiary FM and their Skyteam partners.

A Shanghai Airline 738 without t winglets, seen as we were reaching our parking spot right on time.

Leaving the plane through the J cabin which had remained empty

Arrival in the luggage claim room, where we must recover ours

Luggage carousel #3 for the luggage from TYN

No, we had not shipped apples (and I guess that the owner of these parcels was simply reusing used boxes).

That it had a priority tag made little difference because the priorities were not respected. There it was coming, 18 minutes after the plane’s final stop. This efficiency was a good omen for the next step.

Now we had to go up to the Departures level and check in in Area J (but not in J!). The flight was listed here with its AF sharecode number.

Zone J was over there

The line was long

… very long,

So long that a staff passed along the line calling passengers on some of the first flights.

All the MU flights to Europe, Japan and South East Asia were checked-in there, and that meant lots of passengers.

After 42’ of waiting in line, i.e. 61’ since we had recovered our suitcase, it leaves towards CDG. This time, the check-in was no problem.

International Departures (国际, in large font), HK, Macau and Taiwan, are all this way.

And that was where I saw my wife disappear, because I had no BP.

This was a voluntary no-show: long after this private trip had been decided, I extended it with a business trip in the country.
This is the end of the flight report; now come a bonus which I would not have considered posting if we had attended the twin celebration in Germany. But I guess most readers will never have a chance to attend a wedding in Mainland China, and propose to share this unusual experience with you. (It was unusual for me; I extend my greetings to my Chinese readers if any).
I had bought our flight tickets seven months before, and the big day had come at last. As was customary, a golden double inflatable arch had been installed in front of the entrance of the hotel where the reception was going to be held. I masked the names of the newlyweds which appeared on top of these arches, but not their faces in what follows, with their authorization.

There was an orchestra for saluting the departure of the newlyweds

I was cheating there: this is the departure of the participants of the wedding held the day before in the same hotel, with a dancer in red as a bonus.

"Be there between 11:30 am and noon; you will be able to leave between 2 and 3 pm": I knew only this about the program, and in a very Chinese manner, I received the information only the day before… at the same time the groom did!
I knew though that in China, there is no wedding registry like in the West: when they arrive; the guests give a contribution in cash which is carefully counted and recorded in a register in traditional calligraphy. The amounts follow rules: I cannot imagine the disaster if a foreigner (only a foreigner could do that) offered 400 yuan, because the number 4 which Is pronounced like the word “death” in Chinese is such a bad omen. It is also polite to give crisp new banknotes, and my friend in Shanghai had procured them for me at his bank, against the ones I had withdrawn from an ATM.
The streamer on the wall behind them meant « Thank you for your attendance »

The tradition is that the recipients give a gift in return, and each guest received therefore this box which contained a small and ordinary towel.

The ceremony and banquet were held in the fully gilded room. It was decorated with reproductions of famous paintings now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, representing Emperor Napoleon. This was quite quirky for the wedding of a German, it amused the Europeans who attended and was completely lost in translation (or historical culture gap) for the Chinese.
My pictures do not show it very clearly, but apart from the parents of the bride, all the Chinese wore “clean and tidy everyday clothes”. I knew this dress code too, and no doubt that the Germans knew it too, but to a single man, the six Europeans could not help wearing a dark suit on a light shirt. It was easy to spot the foreigners: they wore foreigners’ clothes! We had respected the color code, though: all neckties were red, and the ladies had red in their dresses too.

It does show very well on this picture above, but the room was nearly divided in two by a catwalk leading to the scene, with a step (see below) next to the flowers. The ceremony was managed by a talented and fully bilingual (English / Chinese) animator who was

And then it all began, sharp on time. No, not at half past noon, but at 12:28 sharp, on 6/6! Do I need to remind you the lucky properties of the numbers 6 and 8 in the Chinese tradition?

I do not know if a picture taken at this moment captured all the pride and emotion that I read on the face of Xiaoyang’s father as he was leading his radiating daughter to the canopy at the far end of the catwalk. What a climb up the social ladder and what a revenge on his country’s troubled past! His schooling had been stopped abruptly in primary school by the Cultural Revolution which sent him to the countryside, from where his only escape had been to become a simple worker in a factory, but he had nevertheless managed to guide his only child on a brilliant academic track. Her results at the fearsome gaokao 高考, the end of high school exam which seals in two days the fate of the young Chinese, opened for her the doors of a prestigious university in the capital, and even before she had received her master’s degree in teaching Chinese as a foreign language, she had been selected by the Confucius Institute (the Chinese culture and language promotion institution). An international career start ensued, leading her to a promising young German academic researcher.

There he was welcoming his bride under the canopy in the presence of his best man

What could be more romantically European that a Gothic church, and what could be more evocative of a European celebration than champagne cups? On the other hand, only a Chinese wedding organizer could imagine this alignment of giant champagne cups alongside the aisle of a church. If you throw in the inevitable Mendelssohn Wedding March, you will have the setting which needed no translation,

The exchange of vows,

The wearing the wedding rings required no explanation for a European

What followed was purely Chinese, not from some tradition but an idea from the wedding planner: the newlyweds pouring water in a case to generate life

… symbolized by a tree (with an inevitably pink foliage) growing virtually on the screen

On the other hand, this was a real Chinese tradition: the newlyweds made a triple kowtow (deep bow) in front of their parents to thank them for all they had done for them until that day.

We then had a meal, with purely Chinese dishes which were not much different in nature or quality from what I ate many times in business meals in the country: they corresponded more or less to the base contribution of the guests.
Xiaoyang had changed clothes to wear a tight red Chinese dress which was a perfect fit, and the newlyweds which much like in Europe probably did not have time to eat much were going from table to table to toast with the 200 guests, all friends, relatives, colleagues, neighbors of Xiaoyang and her parents, with the exception of the seven Germans and two French who had traveled to Taiyuan for this event.
Some guests started leaving around 2 pm, and at 3pm, all had left and the hotel staffs were starting cleaning the room. The end of the day? Not quite!
Xiaoyang’s parents had invited us in their home in the end of the afternoon. Home was for them in one of these anonymous suburban working class neighborhoods, in a tall building where the corridors had never left the raw concrete status, where the majority of Taiyuan’s 3.2 inhabitants live.

It was impossible not to know that there was a wedding in one of the families living in that building, because the small raw concrete entrance stairs and access ramps were decorated, as well as the corridor leading to the elevator.

This character 囍, which is the ligature of two happiness characters 喜, is associated to marital happiness and ubiquitous in wedding decorations.

Warmhearted notice
I am Mr. Z, living at #6 on Floor 23 of Building 5. Due to the wedding of my daughter on 6th June, 2015, thanks for your understanding for the inconvenience caused to the neighbors by using the North elevator and a few parking spaces.
Thanks to the whole house!

The whole corridor of the 23rd floor was decorated this way

In the living room and two bedroom apartment, both modest and tidy, there wasn’t a square meter of wall or ceiling which wasn’t overloaded with wedding decorations.

The neighbors kept pouring in, because many knew Xiaoyang from her early childhood years. Many buildings in that area had been razed to make space for the tall housing towers which looked old before they had been new, but the inhabitants had remained there.

There were wedding decorations even on the fruit that we had for dinner, and the conversations continued until late in the night.

Xiaoyang in Beijing, Juergen in Singapore, their parents in Taiyuan had all been instant friends, and this had been an exceptional day, full of emotion and shared happiness.

Best happiness wishes, Xiaoyang and Juergen! You deserved them :-)