For the past two hours, I have been sitting in the car on Hainan Island, on the way from Sanya to Haikou. We had a successful "Mobility Weekend" in Sanya together with Honeywell and Elo Touch Solutions, but the trip back decided to be difficult.
Unfortunately a typhoon stopped by, making the weekend a bit more challenging. It only rained once though over the weekend - it started on Friday night and ended on Monday afternoon.
Bernd, who flew back to Shenzhen with the main group of travelers, spent the night in the airport and could see first-hand how the flight passengers banded together and made the check-in crew's lives miserable, until they ended up apologizing for the bad weather. Afterwards they stormed the First Class lounge. But it did not help: if no plane can land because of bad weather, then of course no plane can take off.
So, the entire group went via train to Haikou, without any sleep. There, the airport was also closed, but not quite as much as in Sanya. Instead of arriving on Sunday afternoon, our employees arrived at home on Monday night.
Since I did not need to go to Shenzhen, but rather Shanghai, I am just now driving through the car wash. Every few minutes I get a call telling me which flights have been cancelled and which have not. In China, they do not like to admit failures, and on the official airport websites it looks like "business as usual". Sanya alone has cancelled 75 flights, which are all on time, according to the website.
But the reality looks different. My driver takes me and my bottle of red wine through the night for hours, to bring me from the closed Sanya airport to the newly reopened Haikou airport. Then I get a call that my flight was cancelled, but that the flight one hour earlier will depart on schedule. I kindly ask my driver to step on the gas, but: he suddenly stops and steps out of the car. I thought I asked too much of him and that he was going to throw me out into the typhoon.
But: "Sorry, Sir, I can bring you to Haikou on time, but I have to cover the license plates." and he places covers over both the front and rear license plates. And just like that, you can drive 200 kph in China. Cool! Don't let anyone ever tell you that the Chinese do not have creative solutions.
As much as I could tell in the rain, we were caught by speed camera eight times, and we have been driving for two hours with our hazard warning flasher on. However, Hainan has brand-new highways, so that I can comfortably work on my laptop while drinking my wine. Love China!
The most important piece of knowledge about the stormy weather came from my mentor, Y.S. Chang, who sat completely relaxed with a cup of tea as the rain flooded the grounds: "Rain is good. Rain means money." Ok then.
You can see pictures from our Sanya trip on www.facebook.com/jarltech