Every time I travel back from China to the US, I'm smacked with the reality of just how different the two cultures are. It's a telling picture of how society affects how we interact with one another and how we dictate the kind of society that we have. In order to be unbiased, I'll leave out any terms that will lead to identifying which culture is which.
"We will begin boarding for flight 090. Will those sitting first class please come to the desk please?". With those words, the airport rep opened the floodgate of many tired travelers to crowd around the desk. No line, no waiting, no courtesy. And it seems like the older grannies are the ones most guilty of pushing and impatience. Their jagged little elbows always seem to hit their mark as they make their way to the front of the line.
Upon finding my seat in the plane, I was surrounded by two very different people. My left was a younger (20's-30's) man who looked like he had encountered both culture. To my right was a slightly older (40's) woman who had only recently moved from one culture to the other, but still clung tightly to attitudes and actions of the older culture.
This was my first flight on Continental, you gotta love the personal entertainment screen for each seat. It's a good thing they were on when we first boarded, because train taxiing and other complications delayed our flight by an hour. So we were sitting on the plane, waiting for takeoff. The guy on my left just put on his huge noise-canceling headphones and adjusted his seat. The woman on my right was up and down about 5 times per minute, asking me to help put up her heavy suitcase and bring it down. I finally asked her polite, "there's space under the seat in front of you, why don't you put it there if you need it so much?". She agreed and the plane soon took off.
I think she started a few conversations with me but most of them were questions that were too blunt, personal or offending so I ended the interchange and started a long movie on my screen, hoping to show her I wasn't interested in talking.
The first meal came and it's always interesting to see how people treat the flight attendants. This treatment of people actually is bigger than just what culture you are from but it's obviously that our views of service and what flight attendants do are very different. The lady was at it again, loudly asking and interrupting the attendant what options we had and placing her order while the attendant was serving another passenger a few rows ahead of us. The food service began a few hours after the flight, so many passengers were watching movies or had their seats reclined for more comfort. When the flight attendant set the food on the tray table in front of our good friend, she decided she didn't have enough room. She forcibly struck the seat in front of her and loudly demanded, "I have no room here! Put your seat up!". The flight attendant was embarrassed and assured the passenger in front that they did not have to do anything. Throughout this flight, I tried to stay detached to this woman and make it clear I had no connection with her.
Of course, arriving at my first stop didn't mean that everything would get better. I did have to go through security where everything but your underwear is scanned, felt or x-rayed. And the people like to gripe. My connecting flight was also delayed about an hour and many people waiting in the gate were complaining and short on patience. I struck up a conversation with a nearby passenger and I said "we're going to get there eventually. This is just the last 2 hours of my 20-some hour travel day. Just wait it out."
So far, my time back has been a good refresher of the good and bad points of both cultures. Stay tuned for more stories.
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