It was probably two or three A.M. in the morning when the plane touched down in Beijing airport. It had been an excruciating five hours and I had barely managed to get any decent amount or quality of sleep; it didn’t help that currently, a spot over my left eyebrow was throbbing in pain. There wasn’t a lot of pressure in my ears, but that did little to alleviate the pain I was currently feeling.
The aisles were choked with bodies of passengers grabbing their luggage from the overhead compartments, chattering to one another, and making their way down the aisle at a snail’s pace. My brother and I stayed put, waiting for our parents to get out onto the aisle before we did. My father was gathering up his belongings while my mother had wrapped herself in as many layers as possible, terrified of the cold.
I slung on my long, puffy coat and with some difficulty, got my fur-lined boots on. Soon, we joined the moving mass of bodies in the aisle and slowly but surely made our way off the plane.
The airport was slate grey, and felt more like a military base than an airport. Stern-looking people in monochrome suits directed us to the foreigners’ section of the airport, where our passports and handprints were scanned by an ATM-like machine. Passport checks were very different from how they were in Malaysia. There were marked yellow spots where you were supposed to stand before your turn. The emptiness and silence that permeated through the airport felt overbearing almost. The proceedings were more or less the same, but I found myself dreading when my turn came.
I got through with no problems, but I could feel a sense of relief when the proceedings were over. After we were finished, we went along on our merry way to baggage claim and hopefully a way out of the airport. While my parents busied themselves at the washroom or baggage claim itself, my brother and I observed a middle-aged man from our flight conversing in sign language to a few other people.
Eventually, we made our way out of the airport, but we were stuck with waiting in a long line for taxis. It didn’t help that it was also cold outside, and I thanked my coat for keeping me somewhat insulated. My father, however, had no issues with the cold. After waiting what seemed like hours, we finally managed to get a taxi driven by a short man with a strong Beijing accent. After cramming as much of our luggage as we could into the tiny boot of his taxi. My mother showed him the address of the AirBnB we would be staying at, and we were set.