Tianjin Airlines

[pilotss2001]

If you are a captain at a commuter...

If you are flying the Ejet in your home country as a captain you should think long and hard before you come here. Ground your swirling money dreams to reality.

You will make more money but you will damage your body and your family's bodies. You will take years off your life. Take a look at the US Embassy's pollution index. Then take a look at the daily and yearly averages. Beijing and Tianjin are almost the same with Tianjin being worse. Anyone who is thinking of bringing their children here should have the children taken into protective custody. You might as well start them on arsenic.

You will get sick many times here. The food is not good quality. Their bodies are used to it. I was running on the outskirts of the city and saw industrial waste dumping next to farming fields. Vegetables need washing with soap and water and you can never drink the water here. You can never eat a salad here because they wash it with tap water. There are fishkills in the river and people still swim and eat the fish. This is their reality. DO NOT EAT river fish in China. Heavy metals and many man made chemicals cannot be extracted by the standard filters. Kids poop in the street ten meters from a toilet and even in stores. People spit even indoors. People constantly but in front of you and there is no such thing as a line. There are no manners in mainland China. There are only a few Chinese who have not left China with society pleasantries. China is a smoker's paradise as almost all males smoke. EVEN IN THE COCKPIT.

The Chinese are people. Some good and some bad but they are emerging from the Asian equivalent of the Dark Ages into the modern world in less than a generation. This causes mass chaos. Their culture is vastly different. Their social norms very different. At one point in Western culture we threw our crap water into the street.

They are trying. They really are. But they have constraints too within Chinese culture and their company. They just have never lived outside China. To put this mentality into perspective and friend of mine is a teacher. She told her class that in the US when it doesn't rain, it is blue sky. They asked, how is that possible. The just don't know what the outside world is like. They don't know ordered society. They don't understand why we complain about some fecal matter behind the toilet at the overnight hotel. It is the best they can do with the restrictions given to them. One mop without a bucket will be used to clean a whole floor. One rag with a little water will be used to clean a whole room. They have a different comfort level with dirt and bacteria and their bodies accept it. To them we are just picky. To them this is normal.

Do not base your decision to come here on Hong Kong, a holiday in Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen. These are a different worlds then real mainland China. Refunds for company expenses can take months. Fines happen for exceeding company standards. Other companies in China that have experience with Westerners have a much higher retention rate. A person from Hong Kong has modern culture. Mainland is not there yet.

Your job here is to watch your behind constantly. Fly as much as they want and get out when you can. No one stays here on days off. No one. And when you return you will most likely get sick adjusting to the bacteria and living conditions again and depression which also hits your immune system.

You will be sent to Sanya for your simulator evaluation and it is a nice place, good weather, and one of the lowest pollution indexes in China. Then you will return and do a medical. This will be an eye opener. It is very thorough and the "hospital" is something to experience. You can search my posts for a detailed description.

I ordered some new hepa filter masks from Amazon yesterday. On the bottom part of the page there are suggestions from Amazon that state: "Other people who have bought this product have also bought = How to learn Mandarin Chinese." Enough Said. You will have to have most things sent to you by a friend or family member since most companies, including Amazon, cannot deliver in China. Even the Chinese people think Tianjin and Xi'An are very polluted.

This post is not to scare you but educate you. It is easy to sit by your computer and look at the advertisements and glorify the money you will make and the time off you will have. You will have a completely new set of problems then you have now with no way to return and stuck here in China. In China, the company holds your license, not you. While you can shift jobs around the world easily, here in China you have to ask the company for your license and most of the time it is not given. It can happen that you get your license but if you leave abruptly or bad mouth your company you will never work in China again.

If you have the time off come and check it out and see for yourself. BUT do not commit yourself or paint yourself into a corner until you have seen and experienced Tianjin. This post will prepare you not for your success but your survival in Tianjin.