A tumultuous end to Beijing

The previous experience left me with a fairly sour taste in my mouth (foolishness be damned!) and so that night it was naturally time for some mega eating. We went to a restaurant that basically had nothing that was on their huge menu except 2 different noodle bowls. This experience did little to improve Dad's patience with the Chinese, as whenever we asked if a certain dish was available (we did this around 10 times, until we realised all hope was lost), the waitress would aggressively wave her fingers right in Dad's face and say"Mei you, mei you!" ("not have"). Because of their small selection of food, the Rorinator still required feeding afterwards so we gave Burger King a try, hoping for my first "Whopper". I ordered the quadruple one, was given a triple one and when I took it back to complain they changed it to a Quintiple Whopper. The lady then shouted "Hey be quiet" at us while we were having a laugh about something and, predictably, Dad the cross-cultural communications expert flipped and got extremely angry with her, particularly because the Chinese people inside Burger King were allowed to bellow.
By this time we were ready to leave Beijing, but we weren't getting away that easily. Once we were in the plane, as it appeared that we were going to leave on time, the lights flickered a few times, which is a standard occurrence on planes about to take off. Unfortunately, a few of the Chinese on the plane flipped and insisted they get off. More and more followed this trend for the next half hour and we lost 2 and a half hours because they had to not only try and calm every one down but also find the luggage of the deserters and take it out of the cargo. Allegiances were also beginning to form; there was one little group near us, plotting away suspiciously, headed by a portly woman whom we gave the code name "Chairman Mao" to. I was genuinely considering the possibility of the plane being taken over by a mini-revolution. Did I mention that the next morning we had a mountain race in Hangzhou and needed to wake up at 5 to get the train?
We finally made it back to the flat at 2 AM. This allowed us 3 hours of sleep followed by a quick guzzling of oats before the race, in other words, the greatest pre-race preparation of all time.