I have been fortunate to have travelled over a large part of China. Many places I have been to have never seen a Westerner before. One gets used to young children hiding behind their mothers skirts because I am a ‘gweilo’, a white ghost that comes into naughty children’s bedrooms at night. Over the twenty odd years that I have been there, I have seen 500,000,000 people lifted from abject poverty to having something in life worth living. That still leaves another half a billion who are waiting.
Just over the fence was a farmer and his whole life revolved around about half an acre. At one end was a big shed where he lived with his family, one wife and one statuary child. His little acre was solid with vegetables in every stage of growth and every morning he would spend two or three hours with two large watering cans feeding the crops with diluted night soil. He had already been up before daylight so that he could cut that days produce to take to the farmers market in Longwan. On the way he would stop by a man with a hosepipe who would, for a few fen, douse his crops with water so that they weighed more when they arrived. He never stopped sowing and planting all day apart from meals and this was in winter. His collective daily produce would probably realise about 20-25 yuan, six days a week. Assuming everything went well he would have an income of about 7,000yuan; at that time £470 a year. Before the reforms in 1978 he would only have had what the Collective would have given him.
There was an MD80 in China Northern colours with a Hainan Airlines crew that would fly Hainan-Guangzhou-Shanghai and then to Wenzhou for a night stop. The next day it would reverse the route. There seemed to be three crews that did this roster continuously and two of the pilots we got quite friendly with.
At this time China’s licensing system was not in accordance with IATA. A Chinese national licence was in Chinese only as were most of their let down plates. This restricted the holder to Chinese airspace and he could not fly overseas until he had a foreign going licence similar to an internationally accepted ATPL To pass this he had to pass an English exam and an international navigation paper. This meant that he had to be familiar and be able to fly procedures according to Jeppersons. This was difficult because it was almost impossible for them to get hold of a set of Jeps.
But we had them.
We came to a mutually satisfactory arrangement. They would practice procedural English whilst studying and being prompted by us with our Jeppersons. In return they would buy the beer. The bar used to close at nine and one evening at that time we were in full learning mode. The problem was solved by the captain sending his steward out to the aircraft and he returned with a slab of Princess Lager from the aircraft’s galley. We didn’t have early takeoffs as we had to wait for our pax to fly in but they did. I don’t know what their company’s regs with regard to bottle to throttle was but it was way less than ours. As time went by the Chinese aviation system came closer to ICAO standards. Towards the end of my flying days they stopped pilots flying with an endorsement for their foreign licence and we were required to get a Chinese ATPL(H) and I was over sixty-five at that time. In answer to our query CAAC said that if I passed the exams and the medical I would get a licence. This I did and at sixty-seven I may well have been the oldest commercial pilot in China.
The time came when the NH 5 had finished it task and was going down south. It was being replaced by an all Chinese rig so they did not need white eyes up front. We would return to Shenzhen leaving the Chinese machine to carry on. SAR? no problem.
Before we left there had to be a company dinner. You do not mess about with company dinners in China. You find the best restaurant and order the best food, lots of it. The Chinese captains organised it in a fabulous place in Wenzhou. You have to be careful dining as a guest. Every one of your hosts, all fifteen of them are honour bound to challenge you to ‘Gambie’; basically to throw down a drink as fast as possible. Fortunately the Chinese beer was a licence brewed Papst which most Brits can drink continuously so one after the other challenging you was easy enough.
There were the usual speeches to which we replied on how good the co-operation had been-it had. Then one of the co-pilots gave a speech addressed to me. To get it into perspective I was a fairly heavy smoker in China. (When in China----). There were no rules about smoking in the cockpit so I would continue to get through my 40/day at 50p/packet. The co-pilot described how everybody liked to fly with me because they could always find their way back to base. They just followed the dog ends in the sea. They then presented me with a fiery dragon table lighter which is still one of my favourite possessions.
The next day I flew to Xiamin, lunch, then routed via Shantou and along the coast to Shenzhen. The next time I routed that way was slightly different but I have already described that.
I will be giving this a rest now as I shall be travelling some.
FED