Rainy Week

     Two weeks ago the weather turned steamy.  This past week was incredibly rainy, lots of thunder and lightning and downpours.  Southern China had a drought last spring, so the rain has been appreciated by many, I'm sure.
     Getting around here in Hong Kong in heavy rain is kind of a pain, though.  The traffic slows down and gridlock grows, which cues a chorus of sustained honking from the blockees at the determined bus drivers who clog the intersections.  Phalanxes of umbrellas march down the sidewalks alongside dense groves of yet more umbrellas patiently queued at the bus stops.  Hong Kongers are practiced at walking with their rain shields in rows and in vertical layers, creating a mostly smooth flow.  Mostly...there are a few foreigners who don't quite have the technique yet and who stop to take photos besides.  This foreigner needs to pay closer attention to how the locals deal with wet feet.  I've returned home a few too many times this week with jeans soaked up to the knees and soggy shoes.
     Thunderstorms all over southern China have played havoc with plane traffic here this week, as well.  Air travel in China is plagued with delays even when the weather isn't a factor because the Chinese military restricts commercial flights to using a very narrow sky corridor.  Delays are euphemistically attributed to "flow control" by pilots and airline officials.  Narrow corridors also limit options for flying around bad weather.  So planes and passengers sit on the ground and wait and wait some more for flow control and weather problems to get resolved, such a lot of wasted time for so many people.  Terry's midweek flight from Guangzhou to Shanghai was delayed 5 hours.  He arrived around 2:30 a.m. in Shanghai, where he then had to wait in the taxi line for nearly an hour because all the backed-up flights had arrived at nearly the same wee hour.  Repeat versions of this a few times over a few days and the work week gets a little long.  Train travel starts to sound more attractive, but unfortunately the high-speed rail line between Guangzhou and Shanghai is still under construction.
     This week I read online about newly-available flight delay insurance from one airline in Shanghai.  When passengers book their tickets they can buy the insurance for around $3.  If a flight is delayed more than 3 hours the payout is around $30, and a 6-hour delay would yield $60.  It's hard to imagine  travelers saying,"Oh boy, I won!" when they've been hunkered down in an airport for hours on end during turbulent weather, but it probably happens.  You'd hope that this insurance would put pressure on the airlines to reduce delays, which in turn would prompt the airlines to put pressure on the Chinese government to release the military's stranglehold on air space.  Good luck with that....