The other day, there was a convention near Suzhou, a city about seventy-five kilometers from Shanghai. When some Israeli conventioneers asked Chabad if we could bring over some kosher food, we didn't wait for another invitation.

First thing in the morning, we went to the Chabad house in Shanghai and picked up enough kosher food to feed an army. Before you can say 'shalom' in Chinese (which is actually very hard if you are an American, but that's a whole 'nuther story), we were on our way.

Shanghai is a modern city…

Now, the trip from Shanghai to Suzhou is supposed to take around two hours, but we had a Chinese driver, and although I am digressing from the subject at hand, I should tell you something about Chinese drivers: You know how people say that New Yorker see the traffic laws as mere suggestions for beginners? Well, Chinese drivers don't see the traffic laws at all. There are no rules. Lane markings, traffic lights, crosswalks, sidewalks, all these things don't exist! In fact, a guy I met in the synagogue told me that he feels like reciting the hagomel (thanksgiving) prayer, every time he crosses the street.

Back to our story. We got into the car with our driver and tons of kosher food and headed out towards Suzhou.

The drive was very interesting. It was my first time leaving Shanghai, and the contrast was striking.

Shanghai is a very modern city (as long as you ignore the ground level and only look at the third story and higher). Everywhere you look, there are beautiful high-rise projects, impressive bridges, and awe-inspiring skyscrapers. In fact, right now they are in middle of building a skyscraper that will stand over three hundred floors high. (In contrast, the twin towers were only one hundred and ten floors high).

…as long as you ignore the ground level

But as soon as you leave the city and get into the provincial areas, you travel about two thousand years into the past. I thought that I knew third world. After all, I've been to rural Poland. But this is different. I mean, at least in Poland, they had telegraph poles strung up, reminding you that there is something called technology!

Here, the sole indicator of progress is the occasional sparkling industrial park with a huge parking lot full of bikes. It was one of those industrial areas that we pulled into. Hey, I thought we were supposed to be delivering to a resort!

We were lost. Now the problem here is that no-one knows directions, since they have never been more than fifteen miles away from home. Finally, we asked a policeman who actually knew what he was talking about.

Fifteen minutes later, we got to the resort, a beautiful place on the Yangcheng Lake.

We immediately grabbed the boxes of food and started bringing them in. On the way, I felt that one of the boxes was damp, but I didn't pay attention to it. That is until I put the box down and noticed that my pants had helped themselves to some of the sauce from the meatballs (rather much of it). Basically, it wasn't very pretty.

I excused myself for a moment and went to the bathroom. When I came out, my pants were more or less black, but one of the towels was an interesting shade of red. I guess it will give the maid something to puzzle about.

Anyway, we stuck around a bit, helped some of the Jewish delegates put on Tefillin, and before long we were on our way home.

Our flight to Shanghai began with a stopover in Atlanta. Due to unusually long lines, we were running so late that after being whisked through the second half of the ticket line, as well as the security check, we still managed to come huffing and puffing just in time to come face to facer with an important looking personage guarding the closed gate.

A quick inquiry revealed that we had misheard the announcement and that our flight didn't even start boarding yet. Good? Bad, because we had a squeaky tight connection waiting for us in Atlanta. You can imagine that we were on Shpilkes (antsy pants) the entire flight. It didn't help when the pilot got on the PA and announced in his soothing voice that we were expected to land in Atlanta at 10:10am, 15 minutes after our flight to china was supposed to have taken off.

G‑d helped and we landed earlier then expected - 5 minutes before the flight to Shanghai was due to depart. We asked the flight attendant to ask everyone to let us off first and we started running like Meshugoyim (crazy people) from one end of the airport to the other. We got to the gate breathless, and were greeted by two smiling Chinese flight attendants, who notified us that the whole plane was waiting for us – Our first experience with Oriental hospitality.

Thus began our 15 hour flight.

Now this is where it gets interesting. About an hour into the flight a man came over to us and introduced himself. It turned out he's a Jewish son of Holocaust survivors who had settled in Alabama. He grew up knowing very little about Judaism. He told us that when he saw us being ushered onto the plane he was really happy to have our captive attention for the next fifteen hours. Obviously, we were very happy to meet him as well and immediately did what every Lubavitcher worth his salt would do – we offered to help him put on Tefillin. I plopped my Yarmulke on his head and started to wrap him up for the first time since his Bar Mitzvah 50 years ago. Afterward, he tearfully asked if he could keep my kippah. He wore it for the rest of the flight and onto his taxi in Shanghai.

After landing in China, we hugged emotionally and went our separate ways.

This story taught me two lessons:

A. You never know why certain things happen. I mean we were very annoyed that the delay in our flight caused us to run around the airport like nuts. But if we would have come to the gate on time and boarded with everyone else, who knows if this man would have seen us?

B. Always bring along a spare Yarmulke.

Yechiel Kalmenson for my co-rover Shmulik Glitzenshtein, who types better in Hebrew