I wrote a travel guide to Shanghai in my little tiny brain and it came out all like a raw egg, all weird, and here's the first part
I sleep three or four hours before getting on BART to try my luck getting onto a SFO to Beijing flight and it turns out I’m sort of lucky, sort of unlucky. When I arrive no one takes any notice of me and no one understands the kind of ticket I have.
--It's a standby ticket.
--Don't look like it.
--It's an employee ticket.
--Why did you say standby?
--It's a standby employee ticket.
--What? Wait over there where no one is going to pay any attention to you.
I’m wearing two sweaters and a new coat that makes me look like a green pillow and it’s hard to swear and look upset in that state, but I do my part by banging my head against a column while the only Air China employee, a man who looks like my friend Hanzhi’s grandfather circa 1992 is tending to all the passengers who are bringing overweight luggage on board, and for some reason, they are all South Asian, except for one man who has a dog, and he is a nice Chinese man who looks concerned when I start hopping around and leaving my luggage unattended. Anyone who stands behind me in line gets to A)be attended to before me by the only Air China employee at the Air China counter, and B) have my suitcase fall on top of their foot while I say nothing.
At 1 pm, twenty minutes before my plane is schedule to take off, I get my boarding pass and race through security and to the gates. Air China stewardesses all have straight black hair which they wear short or in a bun. They wear scarves around their neck and I am reminded of the time my poetry teacher asked me, “Hi Jenny, are you subbing for a Singapore Airlines stewardess today?” and I pulled at my purple-flowered necktie in response. A good response at that! Pulling! Brilliant.
I sit between a woman who wears five or six tiny tiny small braids in her hair and I can’t tell what her ethnicity is but when she sleeps her lips are fixed in such a way that I think of the Pringle commercials—I can’t elaborate further, and a man who is so overeager to help me with my bags that he doesn’t even mind when my jacket and my laptop falls on his head. He looks confused for a minute and then grabs my bags out of my hands and takes it to the front of the cabin. I’m gladdened by his good-heart but as all seemingly innocent things, they have a sinister undertone. As for my seemingly good thing, he talks to me every five minutes. He reads one newspaper throughout the entire twelve hour flight and he analyzes the butter we receive with our meal and puts it in front of me.
--That's for your bread if you like to have some cream with your bread.
--And this?
--A towelette if you'd like to wipe your mouth after or before the meal.
I don't fault him for not knowing these things. In about another few hours most people I encounter will think I'm a retard of sorts. A grown woman, 22, now 23 years old, but with a vocabulary of a first grader, and the linguistic ease of a third grader who has a speech impediment. That's my fate. My current fate is trying to sleep while the man on my left reads a newspaper with great relish and with his two elbows greatly jutting into my side so I sleep towards the woman on my right who has the little tiny braids, as if she were my mother, and she's not because she's very very strange, and the only thing she does is sleep and at one point mention that at a mall she got a free gift, which was most certainly not pertinent to whatever topic of conversation was presently at hand.
The minute I wake up from my nap the man next to me shows me the duty-free catalog and asks me to pick which makeup case I find more impressive, the Lancome makeup set or the Shiseido makeup set and I say the Shiseido because it has more colors and will have a greater chance of being liked by whoever is receiving the gift, but I personally find the Lancome to be more elegant and he shakes his head with a great big smile and tells me that if I were awake he could have asked for my advice but left to his devices he picked the Shiseido set.
--That's the one I got.
--Oh, great. Good choice. Very good choice.
--And you? You would have picked?
--That one too. Yes.
He has a funny accent and it turns out he's from a very cold place near Harbin and Heilongjiang. My mother tells me today that my grandfather on my dad's side spent ten years in Heilongjiang working on the farms during the Cultural Revolution. The weather channel says it's -12 to -18 degrees Celsius and I feel embarrassed each time I complain about the cold. The entire flight tires me out. I sleep for one hour and then talk to the man next to me for ten minutes. When I wake up the fourth or fifth time I find him standing up next to a few other people and looking out the emergency window.
--It's good to stand up and stretch huh?
I say this in a meaningless kind of way, but I feel bad that I keep turning away from him in mid-conversation to pretend to sleep and then to actually sleep, so I say this to him.
--Yeah. All that sitting is bad for the legs. You should stand too for a while.
--Oh. Haha. Yeah.
Speaking of hahahas, the story of how my cousin Jing met her boyfriend is a delightful story but the kicker climax is when my younger cousin Jiayang, aka Young Jenny, writes my cousin Jing's now-boyfriend an email that goes like this (but of course, in Chinese!):
Here's the reply:
When I see my cousin Young Jenny on my 23rd birthday she is all smiles and she says this: something something something something something something something something HAHAHAHAHA!
It's official. I'm a dunce. When my fifteen year old cousin talks I can only understand 10% of the things she says.
D-U-N-C-E. Everyone's afraid of me.
--It's a standby ticket.
--Don't look like it.
--It's an employee ticket.
--Why did you say standby?
--It's a standby employee ticket.
--What? Wait over there where no one is going to pay any attention to you.
I’m wearing two sweaters and a new coat that makes me look like a green pillow and it’s hard to swear and look upset in that state, but I do my part by banging my head against a column while the only Air China employee, a man who looks like my friend Hanzhi’s grandfather circa 1992 is tending to all the passengers who are bringing overweight luggage on board, and for some reason, they are all South Asian, except for one man who has a dog, and he is a nice Chinese man who looks concerned when I start hopping around and leaving my luggage unattended. Anyone who stands behind me in line gets to A)be attended to before me by the only Air China employee at the Air China counter, and B) have my suitcase fall on top of their foot while I say nothing.
At 1 pm, twenty minutes before my plane is schedule to take off, I get my boarding pass and race through security and to the gates. Air China stewardesses all have straight black hair which they wear short or in a bun. They wear scarves around their neck and I am reminded of the time my poetry teacher asked me, “Hi Jenny, are you subbing for a Singapore Airlines stewardess today?” and I pulled at my purple-flowered necktie in response. A good response at that! Pulling! Brilliant.
I sit between a woman who wears five or six tiny tiny small braids in her hair and I can’t tell what her ethnicity is but when she sleeps her lips are fixed in such a way that I think of the Pringle commercials—I can’t elaborate further, and a man who is so overeager to help me with my bags that he doesn’t even mind when my jacket and my laptop falls on his head. He looks confused for a minute and then grabs my bags out of my hands and takes it to the front of the cabin. I’m gladdened by his good-heart but as all seemingly innocent things, they have a sinister undertone. As for my seemingly good thing, he talks to me every five minutes. He reads one newspaper throughout the entire twelve hour flight and he analyzes the butter we receive with our meal and puts it in front of me.
--That's for your bread if you like to have some cream with your bread.
--And this?
--A towelette if you'd like to wipe your mouth after or before the meal.
I don't fault him for not knowing these things. In about another few hours most people I encounter will think I'm a retard of sorts. A grown woman, 22, now 23 years old, but with a vocabulary of a first grader, and the linguistic ease of a third grader who has a speech impediment. That's my fate. My current fate is trying to sleep while the man on my left reads a newspaper with great relish and with his two elbows greatly jutting into my side so I sleep towards the woman on my right who has the little tiny braids, as if she were my mother, and she's not because she's very very strange, and the only thing she does is sleep and at one point mention that at a mall she got a free gift, which was most certainly not pertinent to whatever topic of conversation was presently at hand.
The minute I wake up from my nap the man next to me shows me the duty-free catalog and asks me to pick which makeup case I find more impressive, the Lancome makeup set or the Shiseido makeup set and I say the Shiseido because it has more colors and will have a greater chance of being liked by whoever is receiving the gift, but I personally find the Lancome to be more elegant and he shakes his head with a great big smile and tells me that if I were awake he could have asked for my advice but left to his devices he picked the Shiseido set.
--That's the one I got.
--Oh, great. Good choice. Very good choice.
--And you? You would have picked?
--That one too. Yes.
He has a funny accent and it turns out he's from a very cold place near Harbin and Heilongjiang. My mother tells me today that my grandfather on my dad's side spent ten years in Heilongjiang working on the farms during the Cultural Revolution. The weather channel says it's -12 to -18 degrees Celsius and I feel embarrassed each time I complain about the cold. The entire flight tires me out. I sleep for one hour and then talk to the man next to me for ten minutes. When I wake up the fourth or fifth time I find him standing up next to a few other people and looking out the emergency window.
--It's good to stand up and stretch huh?
I say this in a meaningless kind of way, but I feel bad that I keep turning away from him in mid-conversation to pretend to sleep and then to actually sleep, so I say this to him.
--Yeah. All that sitting is bad for the legs. You should stand too for a while.
--Oh. Haha. Yeah.
Speaking of hahahas, the story of how my cousin Jing met her boyfriend is a delightful story but the kicker climax is when my younger cousin Jiayang, aka Young Jenny, writes my cousin Jing's now-boyfriend an email that goes like this (but of course, in Chinese!):
Hello you!
So you met my cousin today. What'd you think of her hahahahahahaha!
Young Jenny
Here's the reply:
Dear JiaYang.
So good to see you and your family. Your cousin is very pretty and seems like a nice girl. Hope all is well.
Yours Truly,
My Cousin's Current Boyfriend Whose Name I Do Not Know
When I see my cousin Young Jenny on my 23rd birthday she is all smiles and she says this: something something something something something something something something HAHAHAHAHA!
It's official. I'm a dunce. When my fifteen year old cousin talks I can only understand 10% of the things she says.
D-U-N-C-E. Everyone's afraid of me.
posted by Jenny at 12:49 AM
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