I had the morning to continue snooping a bit around beautiful Shanghai. We went on a walk to a nearby neighbourhood with several open houses that were once residences to famous poets and playwrights. They were very fashionable neighbourhoods for the wealthy Shanghai set. We visited the homes of several of these Chinese authors to see how they lived. There was a steady stream of visitors to these open house museums filtering in to see these places.
It finally came time for me to head to the airport. Everything seemed to go smoothly until the last half hour before my flight was due to take off. Suddenly, an announcement was made in Mandarin that led to huge gasps from my fellow waiting passengers. That can’t be good, I thought. Sure enough, a four-hour delay was finally announced in English. The delay was due to a mechanical issue that required a replacement plane be used.
Knowing this would screw up my connection in Singapore and knowing there were few alternative options for other ways of getting to Perth, I immediately started working on resolving the issue. There was an 18-hour gap between flights to Perth out of Singapore, so I tried contacting various parties to see what could be done to ensure I was back in time for work on Monday. In essence, Qantas disowned any responsibility for the problem and claimed it was China Eastern’s problem and China Eastern claimed it was Qantas’ problem to get me to Perth. I could only get as far as a consensus that I would have to get the issue resolved after landing in Singapore.
Before I left Shanghai, China Eastern handed everyone wads of 600 yuan as compensation. They only announced the handout in Mandarin, so I only found out about this when a very nice bilingual woman went around and told all the Westerners what they were entitled to. We had to approach a desk to ask for the payment.
