Helen and Lil,
I’m getting ready to take the high speed train back to Hong Kong now. I’m standing in front of the window, looking out at the torrential rain falling outside. My backpack is on the floor, waiting to get on my back. Rong and Jing are idling around the sofa. Everybody is waiting for the rain to subside a bit…
The rain, which has been falling all morning, suddenly picked up speed and volume in the last few minutes, when we were ready to leave. You may not have seen rain with such voracity. Should come to Guilin to experience it, at least once in a lifetime. Cats and dogs? No idea. Just that I’ve never seen downpours so intense lasting for so long…
Jing’s going to drive us to the high speed train station. But we still have to walk from home to where the car is parked, a two-minute walk, but we figure that short walk will get us all drenched...which is what’s stalling us...so I thought of telling you about this, while I’m waiting and watching in front of the window...
………………………… We left home about 5 minutes after I sent you the last message, bracing against the thunderstorm. Luckily, by the time we reached Jing’s car, we were just slightly wet. But this turned out to be the only good news in the last 3 hours.
The trip from home to the train station takes about 20 minutes in normal time. We took the precaution of leaving home about an hour and a half before departure time. 25 minutes later, we were tuned back in front of a tunnel that leads to the train station. The tunnel was half-submerged in rain water.
So Jing turned to a second route, which would take us longer than the tunnel route. After about 10 minutes of slow stop-and-go, we were stalled in the middle of the traffic. Jing’s car, together with other cars on this side of the road, literally sat there motionless for more than an hour. By then, my train has already gone. And we were still in the middle of nowhere.
In between, Rong’s bladder had reached its limit, and had to make do with peeing inside the car into two plastic bags. I suppose many in other cars were doing the same. We couldn’t even walk out to the shops and eateries by the road to lighten up because of the heavy rain. As time goes by, mine was close to the limit as well. When I announced it, Jing said so was hers, and we had a laugh, which almost spilled my urine...
Finally, we reached back home, a full 3 hours after we had left. I will have to buy a new train ticket. Don’t know when it’ll be.
There’s a big march in HK today, protesting against an extradition bill. I planned to join the last bunch of marchers when I’m back there. I suppose I won’t be able to make it this time. Well, there’s always something unexpected in life. We’ll just have to take them on as they come along...There will likely be hundreds of thousands of people joining the march today. Perhaps you’ll be able to spot it in the news...
Love you, Dad
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