Across the East China Sea

The Yangzi River carries our ferry straight to the East China Sea and within minutes the barges and tugs are gone and it’s nothing but container ships and the sparkling Su Zhou Hao floating across the East China Sea.   The Su Zhou Hao is ship shape, all fresh white paint and chipper crew and not a speck of dirt in the small cafeteria. Thirty passengers fill the ferry, armed with plastic bags full of noodles and soft drinks for the two-day journey to Osaka. 

In the lounge we meet Samson, one of the crew, who tells us that ten days ago the Su Zhou Hao was trapped in Osaka when a typhoon struck. Later that night, the ship begins to roll as the seas swell and the rain spits at the  window. Our cabin is right off the deck and so at 3am I amble out into the night to catch the eerie image of lights from two fishing boats as they pass our ferry.  It is silent save for the gentle sounds of the rain and wind and I think how nice it’d be to roll out the sleeping bags and pitch it here for the night.

E takes to the boat like everything else: with utter abandon. The deck is devoid of people and he makes it his tiny playground. He runs, dances, spins in circles, and points gleefully at gulls flitting across a cloudy gray sky.  Below deck he experiments with spicy noodles, eggs, tofu and a collection of other dishes extracted from the ship’s cafeteria.  He takes after the more adventurous Engineer.

Japan– a nation of 300 islands –appears in small doses amidst the clouds and mist.  Accretions of seamounts and lighthouses and other chunks of life on the sea surface hover in the smoky dark. And soon, lights from factories and bridges begin to stretch for miles across the night sky.  All of it seems neat and orderly as we snake our way through the sea channel and closer to Osaka.

We meet Patrick, a lively antiques dealer from Virginia who has lived in Moganshan for twenty years and is headed to Japan to improve his language skills.  He’s got a great sense of humor and calls E “captain” whenever we see him on the ferry. Patrick can’t believe we’re taking this same ferry back to Shanghai in just a few days when the airplane is so much speedier. He has a point.  But then I remember that the ferry was both journey and destination.