Coming out of a summer resort cum industrial backcountry coastal town of northeastern China on a chilly December morning has little semblance to a business trip, and this is where I must put my imagination to work so that there is more to observe than output charts sitting in meeting rooms for the next two weeks. Add to that, thanks to my meticulous and atrocious planning, we were beginning a four day, four flight domestic crisscross across half of China. This would eventually put me on the fast track to get influenza A at the end of my first week and be prompted to get myself evacuated, leaving the second half the trip hanging out to pick up next year, but that's a separate story to be told in a different tone.

             Half of the time, this looks like a derelict town, the other half you can expect it to be waiting for the season to turn to bloom into a bubbly giant oceanfront resort. It is an open and flat landscape for the most of it, with a few small hills planted here and there that give it a texture. The coastal geography of the town doesn't show much as you move away from the waterfront, as there aren't many such trees or birds that would keep reminding you of it being a seaside town. Looking to the other side, it is like any other inland city. Sitting in a car speeding towards the local Airport, it could be anywhere in the world but Europe. But it was China, and I'd get a flavor of local effects in about an hour. It was a quiet drive going to the airport given this was countryside-industrial China, so roads were wide and high speed, but traffic was minimal, also due to the season. Minor suburbs and downtowns punctuated an otherwise desolate highway all the way. There were motorcycles and motorized tricycles that ran along the side of the highway as you sped past them. Local men and some women rode them, for transport, business or chores. These weren't pleasure trips on a weekend, and the riders acknowledged the chill with additional insulating gears donning the motorcycles and tricycles, in which the rider would put his or her hands before grabbing the handle. 

             Pulling into the airport was a mildly dramatic entry. This airport building was an isolated structure with open landscape around it for as far as one can see. There was one additional building on one side of it but nothing else anywhere nearby. It was this structure in the middle of nowhere, erected to surprise you if you woke up from travel slumber after the car had stopped. You could shoot a James Bond movie scene here where he tries to meet the antagonist, who is holding out of his modern castle in the middle of a desert. It was unusual for a city airport to be so sparse, and its absurdity exacerbated due to the size and structure of the building resembling a proper airport and not a regional one. Once inside, I found that the area was small, making me wonder if it was an architectural illusion or if several sections were cordoned off for whatever secret was being protected. It is convenient and natural to assume there is a secret just because it is this part of the globe. I'd eventually learn that it was just an old airport with a lot of unused space. 

Upon entering, we discerned that we had arrived too early for such a small airport. I was accompanied by a local colleague, who while being local wasn't from around there and didn't speak Mandarin. There were only two flights scheduled for the day, a miniscule number even for a regional airport. One at 9:30 am, which was ours, and the other one at 7:00 pm, which made us wonder if the staff would go to sleep the whole day off after checking everyone in for the morning flight. Amidst the amusement of observing the airport, security checks were completed quickly. These motions brought in nostalgia of early days of air travel, with old style metal detectors and small luggage scanners and a calm flow. Without much of a queue, we were soon at the check in counter speaking to the employee when hiccups began. 

        They couldn't find my passport number in the ticket entry of my booking. In China, your passport must be associated with the booking at the time, to process a ticket. I was asked to fix this with my company's travel agency. With a lack of decent network on my phone, the usual anxiety driven panic had suddenly set in. The Isolation of this airport had made it clear that not being able to get this flight would mean a rather long detour through taxi, going to Beijing and figuring out an alternative. At times like these where miniscule interruptions cause earthquakes in your brain, you think whether you're being more adventurous than you can afford to, going around the globe for business and such. Maybe I'm better suited to be a shopkeeper in a small inland town, where I knew everyone who'd do me wrong and everything that would go wrong, throughout my life. But here I was, now trying to get hold of my travel agency through my colleague's phone. This problem got fixed soon and we were on our way to security. My colleague got through first and I presented my passport to the security officer next. 

             "Your passport number doesn't match what I have on my screen" - this was hiccup number two. 

This was more severe than the first given that my local colleague was now on the other side of the security and there was a trivial but theoretical possibility that he'll be gone, and I might have to figure out the whole country on my own, with a patchy network and a great language barrier. I tried hard not to plan in my head, the possibility of going back outside this building which didn't even have a taxi stand, confronting the landscape and its desolation, and navigating back through the highways of the coastal town on my own. After several back-and-forths, in which the staff didn't bother me much but realized an error at their end, I was shown to the other side of security. 

We came to the only staging area in the airport. It was funny how an otherwise mundane morning turned volatile and reverted to mundane, all within half an hour, leaving an anxious mind wondering how many battles were lost in anticipation, most of the time. With my love for contrasts, in terms of big and small scale of the same set up, I spend the next hour checking every nook and corner of this cozy little transit point, which could pass for a private hanger with the right imagination, clicking photos of small food stalls and local advertisements. It is a pleasant uneasiness, waiting for the only plane to board at an isolated airport where everything is at a hand's reach: security, restrooms, shops and the gate. Boarding was uneventful for an otherwise adventurous start.