Our flight, direct, from Tokyo to Xiamen took 3 1/2 hours–after an hour delay on the ground. It’s tough to explain to a 4-year-old that no, we’re not there yet, and actually, we’re still stuck on the tarmac.

Just like my first flight into China in 1993, mine was the only non-Asian face aboard, unless you count the youngsters, but since their mother is Chinese, we’ll give them honorary full Asian status for this blog entry.

The first major sign I was back in the PRC: while we were still taxiing down the runway after touching down, a few people began unbuckling their seatbelts and opening the overhead bins. A flight attendant got back on the P.A. system to instruct people to sit back down, leave the overhead bins closed, and so on, since we weren’t anywhere near the gate yet. And for some reason, she gave this announcement only in Chinese, not also in Japanese and English, like all other announcements so far.

But her admonitions seemed to prompt a few other people to jump up and try to head for the exit up front. From my seat in the front bulkhead row in economy class, I could see her simply replace the microphone to its place on the wall and look down at the floor. Apparently she’d flown this route before.

After getting through the immigration desk, the customs desk, and the health form declaration desk (new question since my last visit: Have you visited a poultry farm in the last 7 days?), we gathered our luggage and exited into a surging throng of humanity. Fortunately, our Welcome Party spotted us right away: my Wife’s Younger Brother, Younger Sister, her Husband, and their 5-year-old Daughter; the 7-year-old Son of my Wife’s Elder Sister; and two drivers, one for a Honda mini-van and the other for a Chinese-made sedan, the brand of which I didn’t catch.

My Wife’s Brother, my 2-year-old and I loaded into the sedan; everyone else and all our luggage went into the mini-van.

In the Rush of Things, we didn’t have time or space to install the car seats for the kids, but it would have seemed socially awkward to do so anyway, since the Niece and Nephew weren’t similarly equipped. So off we went, leaving the throng of humanity for a throng of motor traffic, heading north out of Xiamen for the town of Anhai, about 50 to 60 km north. In the sometimes swerving traffic, with a toddler on my lap, more than once I clicked my heels together and muttered, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…”.