U.S. TO WUHAN – IN THREE PART DISHARMONY

The trip to China, and then to Wuhan, my destination city, was an adventure in itself. It was a journey fraught with discomfort and unsettling surprises, as well as some wonderful and some not so wonderful discoveries.

I will write about it in three parts: the plane trip – a disaster in itself, getting stranded in Shanghai – disaster again, and finally the train trip to Wuhan. You guessed it, another disaster. Hence the title: Three Part Disharmony.

OK, here goes: I reasoned I should go to sleep at about 7:00PM, that last night in Baltimore. I had to be up at 2:00AM, and I would have to shower and call a cab to the train station in order to be there at 3:55AM to make my train.

At 11:30PM, the phone was still ringing. Why didn’t I just turn off the phone, you ask? I was using it as an alarm clock, as well as having set the hotel’s alarm clock and having requested a wake up call. I wanted to be sure to wake up on time: had to catch that train!

I woke up on time. As a matter of fact, I was so worried I wouldn’t wake up on time that I kept waking up. At 12:17AM, at 1:00AM, at 1:47AM. I think I had the waking up thing down pat. By the time the various chimes went off to actually wake me up, I was red-eyed, dizzy, overwhelmingly tired. Never mind I reasoned, I had a 19-hour flight ahead of me and I could certainly sleep then.

I could not have been more wrong.

I made the train, I made it to the airport in Newark, I made onto the plane still working that phone. I was missing people already, and I wanted to be sure they knew about it. I called people whom I knew were not near their phones and left voice mail so that they could have a nice surprise when they came home. I called people who wanted to monopolize all the time I had and battery life the phone had. I really tried to get to everyone, those last few hours in the U.S. Who knew when I would hear their voice again?

Finally: the Big One. The overseas flight. 19 hours worth. No phone, no interruptions… well, maybe a meal and a movie. I had my Benadryl ready to make me drowsy and sleep most of the flight away. My first disappointment: I had requested an aisle seat and not only got a middle seat, but a middle seat in the middle of the plane. Not just the middle of the plane, but the very back seat of the middle of the plane. There was no place to store my carry-on in the overhead bin, so per the air hostess’ instructions, my laptop got to ride first class in an empty storage compartment, and I was remanded to the back of the plane. There was no place for my ‘personal item’, so I had to shove it under the seat in front of me. There went any leg room I might have had. Strike One.

I forgot to tell you how I dressed for the trip: long pants, cami under a long sleeved hoodie. I wanted to look somewhat appropriate when I met my employer for the first time, and he would be picking me up from the train station. Thus the slightly formal but still sporty selection. The outfit was a little warm I grant you, even for 3:00AM Baltimore weather, but I can’t tell you how fortuitous my wardrobe selection turned out to be! The plane’s climate control system was damaged and the cabin temperature was stuck at about 65 degrees Fahrenheit for the entire overseas flight. There was no fixing it, and there were no extra blankets. We found that out the hard way.

That was the third shock in this nightmare flight. The first came when I sat down and tested my position: how would I manage my limited leg room, how companionable are my seat-mates (they would have to let me out for bathroom and stretch breaks), will the seat recline and will the headrest support my head? The seat did not recline at all. Not one iota. It simply did not move, whether I pushed the button or not. Strike two.

Just after taking off, when the hostesses were offering the first round of drinks and a snack. The man in front of me asked that his wife not be served peanuts, as she had an allergy to them. Immediately, all 6 hostesses in the vicinity yelled at him – not kidding here, yelled! – that he should let everyone one the plane know in case something happened and she accidentally got peanuts. One hostess in particular was loud and braying; one of my seatmates and I figured that she was the ringleader… or at least held some sort of rank over the rest of the crew. I leaned toward my seatmate, after this poor guy had been berated 4 times by the staff about letting everyone know, and asked her: “didn’t he just let everyone know? Why are they yelling at him?” She was as shocked as I was at the aggressive tone of the hostesses. Maybe it was because they thought he was deaf instead of Chinese that they felt they had to yell. Regardless, we being in the last row were destined to suffer the ire of the crew, and they fairly threw us our snack: a bag of pretzels apiece. Strike three.

Normally, after Strike 3, one is considered out. Unfortunately I was on an airplane and I couldn’t just ‘out’ myself. Where would I go at nearing 3,800 feet? Helpless, I had to let the strikes continue.

My seatback entertainment center died. Not that I was wild about seeking entertainment: I was shivering, tired and hungry. But still, there might have been a good movie to watch. Unfortunately I elected to fill in the survey before I reviewed the movie selection. Even though I honestly appraised the flight, including the hostess’ attitude, the cabin temperature and the seat backs not reclining one bit, it would only allow me to select and report that everything was excellent. I started giggling madly – I simply couldn’t believe that, on a flight where personal comfort was anything but the norm, and the hostesses were rude I could not review the flight as anything but excellent! Both my seatmates also tried the survey, and got the same results: no matter what rating they gave any particular category, the system would only accept ‘excellent’ and taunt you with your lie before you moved on to the next question. They both started laughing as well.

That’s when the entertainment system died. Not everyone’s, just mine. So now, I’m stuck in the back of the plane, in the middle of the middle row and I’m too tired to read my book but still too wired to sleep, and I’m wrestling with the microfiber blanket to cover most of myself up. That’s when they brought out the food. Only one selection – pork, because the pasta was all gone. The food was cold, so I asked the hostess to please warm it up for me. She took the food… and it never came back. Seriously. I don’t know if it was meanness or if she just forgot that she had someone waiting for a warm meal in a very cold cabin. Whatever the reason, I never saw that food again. Just as well; I wasn’t hungry anyway and my seatmate told me the food was not any good. She didn’t finish hers, either. After the meals were cleared cabin-wide, the braying hostess asked me if another hostess had remembered to bring me my meal. I told her “Never mind, I don’t want it now.” And that was the truth. I did save the pumpernickel roll, the butter and the cheese, and the brownie. It made for a nice snack later, and I was grateful to have it because that was all the food I got on that flight.

This one is rather long, isn’t it? Just one more observation: It struck me as completely odd that, on a plane bound for China and with fully ¾ of the passengers being Chinese, the two languages offered on the on-board entertainment system were English and Spanish! There was not a single Chinese character in any of the menus or in any of the flight information. None of the on-board literature featured any Chinese either but they did have safety information cards in English… and Spanish!

Fortunately, the flight is now over, so kindly deplane in an orderly manner and let’s go get stranded in Shanghai – the next topic.