July 14: The Flight to Fuzhou

Multilingual conversations

I flew with Mr. Wu Xian Shou, his friend Mr. Lin, and his son Diego, from Shenzhen Baoan International Airport around 5 p.m. In addition to ourselves and our luggage, we transported several large boxes of printed sutras to be delivered to temples in Fujian. The flight was about an hour, but take-off was delayed by the effects of a typhoon affecting Fuzhou, our destination.

Landing in Fuzhou was smooth, however, and Mr. Lin (who owns a display advertising company in Fuzhou, with offices in Shenzhen) had two cars waiting. One took him home (presumably); the other took the Wu father-and-son and me to a hotel in Ningde, where we would spend the night before taking the rough mountain road to the temple in the morning.

One delightful surprise: The driver (an employee of Mr. Lin's) spoke no English, but he had lived in Japan. So we were able to converse in Japanese (he much better than I) as we rode along. See more on my conversation with Mr. Wu in the post for July 22. Dinner was waiting, and I had a comfortable private room for the night.

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