W ould-be passengers skidded to a halt on the saliva-slickened floor of the 
Shanghai Aerodrome as the announcer brayed the names of great and ancient 
Chinese cities into his microphone. They set bags down, shushed children, 
furrowed brows, cupped hands around ears, and pursed lips in utter 
bewilderment. None of this was made any easier by the extended family of some 
two dozen just-arrived Boers, women in bonnets and boys in heavy coarse 
farmer's pants, who had convened by one of the gates and begun to sing a hymn 
of thanksgiving in thick hoarse voices.