Giving Thanks at Thirty Thousand Feet
My alarm went off at 4.30. I staggered out of bed, stuffed a few things in a bag, double-checked I had the paperwork I needed, and caught a taxi to the airport. I was heading from Chengdu in China to Shenzhen, and from there to Hong Kong.
Boarding for the Chengdu Airlines flight started at seven. I was surprised to see the cabin adorned with signs in Chinese wishing passengers a happy Thanksgiving. I didn’t know it was Thanksgiving, because we don’t really do Thanksgiving in the UK. We don’t really know what it is for. If pushed, we might say it is something to do with people in strange hats and turkeys and harvests and the history of colonialism: but we are vague on the details. Anyway, the festival seems to be catching on in China, and the celebratory texts around the cabin gave things a cheery air.
After we took off, I feel asleep. The cabin crew woke me up for a Thanksgiving feast of indifferent noodles. I closed my eyes again, settling back into the rhythm of the flight, familiarising myself with the strange, bland limbo of life at thirty thousand feet.
But then the cabin crew cleared away the foil noodle dishes, and one of the stewardesses announced. ‘We would like to wish our customers a happy Thanksgiving,’ she said. Then she and her colleague unfurled a large red banner that stretched across the front of the aircraft…
