7/3/07 – 7/4/07

7/3/07 – 7/4/07
Tuesday Fading Into Wednesday (Date Line!)

I am sitting in the back of the plane. This is because, apparently, I am an inferior human specimen and thus ineligible for better treatment, such as being hand-fed canapés by sultry Asian women up front. At least that is how I am imagining it.
Thankfully, my fire-code violating cell at Simon’s Rock College has inurred me to any lingering sensations of claustrophobia. Bring it on, 16 hour flight from hell across the Pacific. I can take it. I am going somewhere special.
There are Guys in font of me. I capitalize this because they are the essence of the testosterone laden American male traveling to Asia, whose primary impression of what Hong Kong is involves prostitutes shilling noodles underneath tremendous neon signs. They are, unbelieivably, all high school athletics coaches.
I hear snippets of their conversation drifting from over the musty seats.
“Hey, that pilot sounds just like Mister Sulu!”
“You know, the stewardesses here are ugly. And old. Singapore Airlines fires stewardesses when they turn 23. They just take em’ back and say, ‘Honey, you gotta go into accounting now.’”
Between these, I hear them honking loudly. One yells, “Whoo! Suzie Wong!” across the aisle, and as everyone stares, his neighbor breathes, “Drop and give me 20!” They do not notice that they are being disapproved of. One says, his voice dropping to a pitch saturated with awe, “Everyone loves Americans. The Chinese love Americans. We’re ambassadors, man. Everyone loves us.”
I guess he has not attached a Canada patch to his duffel bag. I guess he is still proud.
I walk up to the front of the plane to find my parents, more out of boredom then out of sheer, cattle car induced loneliness. The first class passengers sleep in their tiny space age pods, making artifical night noises in the blissful, blissful darkness. They are mostly white and amply padded, their carry-on laptop bags stowed in and around their beds. The stewardess in the corner glares at me, and I say, respectfully, “Oh, I’m just trying to find my parents.”
She narrows her eyes. “Well, they’re not HERE.” I consider nicking some snacks from the cart on my way out, but decide a stale biscotti is not worth the altercation. My parents tell me later that they were on the second floor of the plane, a floor I was not aware of.
And so I return to the back of the bus, return to the part of the plane composed mostly of San Francisco Chinese returning home. This includes my seatmate, a pleasant woman from the suburbs of the city, seeing her ailing mother in Guangzhou. We share a moment of feminine sympathy – they had confiscated her makeup in security as foundation presents a deep and grave security risk. She had barely made it to her seat. We talked for a long time about her life in California, about her 7 year old son who reads constantly and writes rambling stories about sinister penguin armies. (I want to meet this kid.) She shares with me that her husband doesn’t always understand her, that her son isn’t athletic and she wonders why he has to be, that her best friend is in line to become the new Queen of Nepal.
I ask her something I had always wondered: “How do I say ‘Excuse me?’ in Chinese?”
She looks at me, confused. “You can’t say that in Chinese.”
Uh oh.

Snacks: A cup of noodle, eaten at dangerous heat in the tiny cramping seats. An almond cookie with many, many chemicals. A distressing chicken and pasta looking entrée. I do not eat any of it. I am waiting for skanky Cantonese food. I am waiting for legally procured rum.

300 is playing on the overhead screen. Even I am made uncomfortable by jiggling, tremendous boobies being reflected onto the darkened, silver faces of the entire airplane.

It is morning now and I am descending over China for the first time, and my excitement and anticipation are lodged deep in my throat, exploding out of the top of my head. I plaster my nose to the super-chilled window. The monitor says that we are passing over Japan, that we are within spitting distance, but the grey and clumping clouds prevent me from spotting it.
The plane goes on and on, and I see my first glimpse of Chinese land: an island in a sparkling blue sea.
The only sign of habitation is a tremendous golf course.
The sun is coming up for real now, coloring the water pink and gold and beautiful, a South China postcard from cruising altitude. We are descending now, and I refuse to lower the shade, I refuse I refuse.
The man ahead of me, who has been silent in response to the two coaches he has had to sit next to, comes to life, pointing out the window as the ridges and rocks of the Hong Kong coast floats into glorious view. “I’m moving here,” he says. “I’m working for the Bellagio out of Vegas – they’re building in Macau, you know. My wife is coming over soon, and we’re going to raise our kid here, in the Hong Kong schools – I hear they’re good.”
I half listen to him as the landmarks appear, as I can discern Repulse Bay and Kowloon and the tiny angular sampans and cargo ships spread out beneath me. He ticks off the place names and locations but I do not need them. I have been hearing them forever and now I see them all.