Airport Relay

When sprinting through an unfamiliar airport for an impossible-to-catch plane, the kindness of strangers is more important than how fast you can run.

Nonfiction/Travel Writing—Written May 2021 after returning from a month-long adventure across China.

For the first time in a month, I was alone.  

Elsewhere in China, whole swatches of the country were flooding, pointed-bow boats being rowed down the streets, but here in Ningbo, the rain was still just a storm tapping an irregular tune against the airport windows as I waited for my flight to board.  

I was only in China at all because my friend Yilin had invited me along on her research expedition. We’d crammed side by side on buses winding up mountain roads, packed onto the underground railway in Shanghai rush hour, and watched Wuxia on bullet trains cutting across whole provinces, but now she was gone, already boarding a flight of her own.  

The rain outside fell harder and the tapping on the windows became knocking. I glanced at my watch with its small white face and pink faux leather strap. I was early, but I had run for far too many connecting flights for that to ease my worry. I was ready to be home, even as I already craved bamboo rice and spicy Chongqing noodles, all the things that would never be as good back in the States.

As the storm built, bruising afternoon almost to night, the airport transformed into a sea of waiting, restless people as flight after flight was delayed or canceled. The first of my two flights was a short two-hour hop to Guangzhou, a major hub for international flights. The next, to San Francisco, would be far longer at just over fourteen hours. My watch ticked in time to the rain. My layover in Guangzhou was supposed to be six hours, but as the seconds hand on my watch flickered forward, that time was slowly eaten away.

It took three more hours and two gate changes before my plane boarded. As I took my aisle seat, I worried my bottom lip between my teeth. Outside the plane window, the black runway was cut through with the watery reflections of windows.

Another hour passed before an announcement in Mandarin crackled through the plane. A burst of yelling overtook the English that followed it, so all I heard was a few familiar words, including a fuzzy apology. I took a sharp breath between my teeth and looked around for any sign of what might be happening, but all I saw were worried and tense expressions that matched my own. For the first time in my life, I pressed the button to call a flight attendant.

A flight attendant in a blue skirt and matching blazer approached. Pinned to her collar was a hot pink pin shaped like a spiky speech bubble that said, “I speak English!”

“How can I help?”

“Sorry,” I said, “I didn’t quite hear the English announcement.”

“It’ll be at least another hour before the storm allows us to take off.”

An hour. After so long standing in the airport, the plane was just a new location for purgatory. My feet flexed inside my Vans, wanting to run, to hurry, when all I could do was wait and hope.

Another hour passed, and a new announcement came. This time, the flight attendant came to find me before the English announcement had even ended.

“We don’t know when we can take off,” she said. “We’re allowing people off the plane. Would you like to go?”

“No,” I said, glancing at my watch, as my connecting flight’s departure time crept closer. What would it matter if I went back to the airport and waited there instead of here? Even if my connecting flight took to the air without me, Guangzhou was another step along the trip home. “I’ll stay. Thank you.”

An elderly white man wearing elbow-patched tweed, along with a few others, left the plane, hands clutching tight to their carry-ons. Just twenty minutes later, the plane lurched forward, and sailed down the runway. I had an hour and forty-five minutes until my second flight left to cross the ocean. My current flight would take exactly that long. I fidgeted, turning my music on and off, opening and closing my book, and staring at my watch. Thunder cut jagged wounds through the sky, each strike another jolt of anxiety.

As we landed, I pulled my backpack onto my lap, patted my pockets for my passport and ticket. A Mandarin announcement came over the speakers, then an English one. “If you need to rebook a connecting flight, please see a gate agent.”

Did I need to book a new connecting flight? I looked down at my watch again. I’d definitely need to book a connecting flight. My flight to San Francisco was already boarding.

The plane stopped and all the passengers stood, heads bent under the low ceiling of the overhead compartments. A woman with a bright silver suitcase shouldered her way down the aisle, looking down and mumbling apologies in Mandarin and English as people glared.

“We all have flights to catch,” someone said, blocking the aisle. The woman halted and hunched in on herself, fidgeting with the handle of her suitcase.

Eventually, like a river undammed, we started moving, emptying out of the plane onto the gangway. My heartbeat quickened. How far was it to my new gate? Was there even a sliver of a chance I would make it?

The English-speaking flight attendant stood by the plane door, smiling. Her lipstick was a darker, deeper red than the rest of the flight attendants, and she had a calm that rippled out through the frantic crowd as we shuffled off the plane. As I reached the front of the aisle, I held my ticket out to her. “My flight is boarding. What do I do?”

She pointed out the door and said, “Run. There’s someone waiting for you.”

I ran, pounding up the gangway. Other people sluggishly walked from the plane, rubbing tired eyes, a few others running along with me. I forced my jaw to unclench, taking deep breathes. 

The gangway came to a curved elbow, where a cluster of three flight attendants stood, next to a door that hung open to reveal a set of well-lit stairs. One of the flight attendants had a laminated sign that read, “San Francisco.”

I skipped to a halt in front of her. “I’m going to San Francisco.”

“Do you have checked luggage?” she asked, voice quick.

“Yes.”

“Do you care if your luggage arrives at the same time as you do?”

It felt like one of those word association tests, with how fast she was asking me questions.

“No.”

She slapped a circular green sticker, three inches across, on my shoulder, pointed down the stairs, and said, “Run.”

I ran. 

I’ve fallen both down and up quite a few staircases in my life, but by some miracle, I made it down intact. A bus waited at the bottom, engine rumbling, the windows warm rectangles of light. A man in a pale pink collared shirt stood in front by the open door.

“San Francisco?” he asked.

“San Francisco.”

He gestured at the bus and I climbed aboard. The man in the pink shirt hopped onto the bus after me. Four other people were already aboard: the young woman who had tried to push her way out of the plane, and a mother with two young boys, deep bags under her eyes.

The bus doors slid shut and started to move. I couldn’t help laughing a little to myself. There was no way we would make this plane. The mom laughed with me, her hand on her younger son’s shoulder. A private bus, just for us, and our plane was probably already done boarding.

Only a few minutes later, the bus parked next to the terminal. As we climbed down onto the tarmac, the man in the pink shirt sprinted forward, waving a hand to urge us to follow. We ran too, off the dark runway and into the blinding glare of the airport’s fluorescent lights. Then, customs. My lungs were tight in my chest as I tried to still the race of my heart from running.

“I’ll meet you on the other side,” said the man in the pink shirt. I nodded and got in the line for international travelers, thumb tucked into the page of my passport with my travel visa, as everyone else stood in the fast-moving Chinese passport lines. Only two people were in front of me. I tried to take deep, slow breaths as one and then the other went through.

Hurry, I chanted in my head, hurry, hurry.

I handed over my paperwork and finally was on the other side. 

Past the checkpoint, my fellow passengers were already running down the empty terminal. The man in the pink shirt, waiting for me, gave me the gate number and pointed down the terminal.

“Run.”

I took off, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. The terminal stretched away from me, a large hallway covered in dark windows. It didn’t end, just curved until I couldn’t see any further, a false horizon that looked like the edge of the world.  I kept reaching that curve and finding there was still more to run.

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport is the 13th busiest airport for passenger traffic in the world. According to the airport’s website, over 65 million passengers passed through it in 2017, the year before I was there, and the building alone is 523,000 square meters. The airport, in short, is big. It feels even bigger running through it at full sprint, passing gate after gate, my heartbeat loud in my ears. Faces blurred as I rushed past them, and the neon signs of airport stores dimmed and went out as they closed, just one long line of dying lights.

In high school, when I was dragged along to one 5k after another, my cousin and I would pretend zombies were chasing us to force ourselves to keep moving quickly. It never worked. We always ended up walking most of those five kilometers. 

Maybe, I thought as I ran, my bad ankle twinging, my tendon a bowstring pulled too tight, I’d do better in a zombie apocalypse than I thought.

I passed the young woman with the silver suitcase as her sprint slowed. In the distance, still running, I watched as the last passengers stepped out of the waiting area and onto the gangway, and the final boarding call rang out.

I wasn’t going to make it. After all that, and with all the people who had helped me along the way, I wasn’t going to make it.

The mother from my plane, with her two sons, reached the gate just in time, as the doors started to close. She paused, looked back at me, and spoke to the gate agent waiting for her boarding pass. She started patting down pockets, looking through her purse.

Her younger son huddled close against her, hand clutching at her skirt, but the older boy moved away from the gate and out of the waiting area. He swung both his arms in huge, pinwheeling circles, so enthusiastically his whole body titled forward, baggy basketball shorts flapping around his legs.

“Jia-you!” he yelled. “Jia-you!”

I didn’t understand, but it was enough to urge me forward out of a defeated jog into a flat-out sprint. He yelled as I picked up speed, his arms windmilling faster. My lungs heaved, my backpack pounded into my back with every step, the sharp corner of a book banging against my spine.

The boy cheered as I reached him, jumping up and down. His mother met my eyes, smiled, and pulled a stack of three tickets out of her jacket pocket. She had stalled for me, a stranger. She stepped away, down the gangplank, her back straight and her dark hair swaying against her shoulders, a son on either side.

My ticket was tucked into the inside pocket of my jean jacket, right where I always kept it. I glanced over my shoulder. The woman with the silver suitcase was still behind me, her face red and chest heaving as she ran.

I patted down the pockets of my dress and my jacket, opened my backpack and looked inside. Footsteps approached me from behind and stopped. The woman bent over the handle of her suitcase, breathing hard. I slipped my ticket from my pocket and handed it over to the gate agent. We were all going to make it onto this plane. Every single one of us.

As I walked down the gangplank and boarded the place, I was only just catching my breath, my hair frizzing out of my braid. Faces turned towards me, a sea of strangers all wishing we would just take off. Halfway to my seat, I passed the mother with her two sons as she slid a backpack under the seat in front of her. Relief and gratitude stung my eyes as she nodded at me.

“Xièxiè,” I said. Thank you, the only phrase in Mandarin I had absolute confidence in. I’d said it at restaurants, to tour guides, and when buying souvenirs, but I never meant it as much as I did then. We’d never see each other again, and we didn’t share a language, but for the run across that airport, we had been something besides strangers. I would make it home today because of her.

“Xièxiè,” I said again and moved down the aisle to take my seat.

Author’s note:

In case anyone is wondering, there are Chinese snacks that I’m still craving and have not yet been able to find in the States. Let me know if you know a place to get them, or just tell me what food you crave that is hard to get!

Yilin Wang, who kindly invited me to accompany her on the trip that ended with this airport sprint and checked the Mandarin in this story (thank you, Yilin!), recently published a book of poetry and essays called The Lantern and the Night Moths that I heartily recommend. More information about the book and where to buy it can be found here at Yilin’s website.

Thank you for reading!

Emily