Yaroslavl to Xi'an--the journey

We arrived in Xi'an China one week ago today after a very long journey. We took our 5 hour taxi ride to the Moscow airport and arrived 3 hours early. We then had a 8 hour delay and left at 1.30 am. After our 8 hour flight to Beijing we were left with less than an hour to clear customs, claim our baggage, go thru passport control; and then find our next flight to Xi'an. They suggest to have at least 6 hours (we had planned 8 before the delay) so we were fully expecting to miss our flight and since it was a separate ticket on a different airline we would be out of luck. And since this was the weekend after a weeklong National holiday, we knew most of the planes for the next two days were booked and we might be looking for the train station to catch the 12 hour overnight train...........but we were the last ones on the first bus to the terminal and were thus the FIRST ones off........we ran to passport control only to find out we needed to fill out a form...run get the form...fill it out in line.......run to baggage claim.....our luggage was off in the first 5 minutes.....go through customs..........we need another form......run get the form...fill it out in line.......then we started looking for the AirChina ticket desk so we could check our luggage in and get our boarding pass..........Nadia asks and then spots the AirChina check in counter and we run past everyone to the front of the line (just as all of us good Russian tend to do)..check in, give them our bags, get directions to the gate, and begin our sprint for the security screening, .....off with the shoes, empty the pockets, let strangers in uniforms rub down your sides and legs.....on with the running shoes....fill up the pockets and "we're off for the gate"...........find the gate and when we first see the counter at the gate it is EMPTY............we get closer ......25 minutes before take off and they have not even started loading the plane yet. Wow....we are dirty. tired, sleepy, frazzled................and the two happiest people in China.