In this dream I'm sitting around a square table with a glass top in our apartment in Shanghai, eating dinner with my dad and grandma. The rest of the decor looks similar but I don't quite recognise the table. Dad is trying to hurry grandma along as he usually does.
Hurry, eat faster! We have to go to the airport soon. He says, then asks me to check what time my flight is. I check the booking - it says I leave at 2300, and the clock shows 1930, so that leaves plenty of time to get to the airport. I tell grandma to slow down. She grumbles back that she can't eat any faster anyway.
But what airport is it leaving from? Dad asks.
You know there are international flights from the domestic airport now, so you'd better check.
I look at the booking sheet again and it says I leave from Haima 海马 airport (as in seahorse), which I've never heard of (and is a rather strange name for a Chinese airport).
Oh no, that's the new budget terminal. You'd better hurry because you have to take a 1 hour flight from the main terminal to get to the budget terminal. Dad starts to panic and hurries grandma along even more.
I look at the clock and realise the time is probably not enough. I tell them I'll just go by myself
and walk outside. The bomb shelter opposite our house (which in real life is now a nightclub) has been turned into a restaurant called 永康小厨 and I wonder why the restaurant is on the wrong street. On the street there are no vehicles, only a bunch of rickshaws pulled by topless men wearing silly headscarves like during the Qing dynasty.
I look around a bit more for a taxi then decide to ask a rickshaw man where I can get one. He says that our street has been turned into a "Cultural preservation street" and thus nothing motor is allowed within a 2 block radius. I start walking down the street and eventually see some cars on Urumqi Rd.
The taxi driver speeds to the airport and I dash into the terminal.
Hurry, hurry! You've almost missed the flight, don't worry about security! A lady in a red uniform waves me through and I run to the gate where my flight, MA005 is waiting. As I dash through the gate it closes behind me. Phew, a close one, I thought. I follow the ramp down and find myself on the tarmac with a display board looking much like a train station, showing each flight departing from a particular platform.
I go to the area where my flight is meant to be, and see a whole row of old white Ambassadors (like the taxis in India) on the tarmac in place of a plane.
It's too dangerous to fly by Visual Flight Rules tonight, but our IFR (Instrument flight rules) plane is hours away so you have to take one of these cars to the plane.
I start looking for a spare seat amongst the Ambassadors but they seem all packed with people. As I frantically work my way up the row of cars, some of them start to leave and I am uncertain if I will find a seat.
Then I wake up.
