The Hotel on the Roof of the World (3 page)

When China expatriates get together, one of the main topics of conversation is CAAC. Everyone has his favourite CAAC story. The other topic of conversation is, ‘Did you hear about the guy caught in the lift of the Palace Hotel in Beijing?'

For several years in China this was the common knowledge of every expatriate hotelier, from Tianjin to Tibet. An expat staff of one hotel had been caught ‘trying on a shirt' with a local girl in the lift of the best hotel in Beijing. This alone was scandal enough, but the most juicy part of the story is how the unfortunate couple was discovered. I had always imagined that the lift door opened at a certain moment, but not at all. Apparently the whole affair was watched on the in-house TV monitor by the entire hotel security staff. According to reliable sources there was a high price put on the video but the tape mysteriously disappeared. Of course the fate of the couple was that he was sent out on the next plane, and of her, nobody had any news.

After the ice had been broken by the lift story and the many other variations on the same theme, the tales inevitably turn to CAAC experiences. Everyone has their favourite coming-into-land story, the bits-falling-off story, the near-miss story, the deckchairs-down-the-aisle-for-the-over-booking story and so it goes on until the Tsing Tao beers have run out.

Frequent travellers to China have renamed CAAC as ‘Chinese Airways Always Cancel', or somewhat cruelly there is also the version: ‘Chinese Airways Always Crash'.

I prefer calling it by the official title ‘CAAC' (pronounced
‘cac'
) which in the French language has a meaning which exactly describes the service.

I have now flown the frightening skies with CAAC so often that I could be a leading member of their frequent flier programme. If they had one. But on that first day I had little idea of what to expect.

‘Connections', whispered Mr Li, were the key to getting through the crowd at the check-in counter. The Chinese refer to this as
guanxi
and it is impossible to arrange anything in China without it. I watched Li dart in and out of the human mass and sweet talk the uniformed CAAC guardian into giving out a boarding pass. He added my suitcase to the Samsonites of a Japanese group so that I had no overweight baggage to pay for.

I was surprised when Li refused money for the help which he had given me. ‘Please ask about my papers,' he called out as he dived back into the crowd. I wanted to thank him but he had been engulfed by the mob and had disappeared from sight.

After the crush of the check-in and the departure of the helpful Mr Li, my spirits were lifted by seeing a sign over one of the empty desks which read: ‘CHINA SOUTHWEST AIRLINES, NON-NORMAL FLIGHT SERVICE.'

With this intriguing thought in mind I set off to the security check.

As I approached the walk-through metal detector, it suddenly dawned on me that I had forgotten to take my large penknife out of my pocket. It was too late to go back and find my check-in luggage so with a sinking feeling of resignation I emptied the metal objects out of my pockets into the basket at the security counter. The girl in charge was practising her English. ‘Money,' she said as she passed my coins over to the other side, ‘Walkman. Knife.'

With a pleasant smile she passed everything across the counter.

There were no announcements in English in the departure hall and it is not uncommon for tourists to sit there happily up to several hours after their planes have departed. I had been warned of this strategy, so closely shadowed a Chinaman with the same coloured boarding pass as I had been given, and hoped that this was the Lhasa flight. I couldn't lose him as he was carrying a large bag of garlic shoots which he was taking as hand luggage on to the plane.

After a lengthy delay in the dense smoke of the waiting room an incomprehensible announcement in Chinese blared out over the loud speaker. They do not have volume controls on their audio equipment, only distortion control, and this one was on maximum distort. Fortunately, my friend with the garlic shoots and about 150 other people seemed to understand it, as they immediately leapt to their feet and started to crush six abreast down the narrow stairway and into the waiting buses on the runway.

The plane was an even greater shock than the airport: an aged Boeing 707 which looked older than I was. The first thing one notices upon entering the aircraft is an overpowering smell of rotting cabbage and a group of slovenly looking youths dressed in dishevelled uniforms. These are the crew, who have a small tea-drinking area which one must walk through to reach the passenger seats.

When you have recovered from the waft of moulding vegetables, you pass through the ‘first class' area to the economy seats. In front of you are the 150 people who had run to get the best places. Although seats are numbered it is not taken very seriously and there are often several boarding passes issued with the same seat number. Most of the rush concerns grabbing the overhead lockers.

There seems to be no official policy on the amount of hand luggage which may be taken aboard a CAAC plane. Thus, the only limiting factor is a physical one: how much can one person carry? Small Chinese ladies defy credibility by heaving huge suitcases up and down the aisle. Families of smiling Tibetans struggle relentlessly up the steps with over-stuffed sacks on their hunched backs. Nothing can dampen their spirits as they push their way along the aisle, ready for the next game: squashing the bags into the overhead lockers. You have to be a bit careful as bits of fuselage stuffing and bare wires protrude from the backs of the lockers, which do tend to get in the way. Stewardesses shout and order people about, but nobody listens to them, as they are all too busy trying to cram 20 kg bags into 10 kg spaces. Inevitably, several of the lockers will be left open with bags hanging out over unsuspecting passengers. The rest of the luggage is piled up on any empty seats. I once sat next to a basket containing half a frozen pig, which started to defrost shortly after take-off and drip onto the carpet. No one, except myself, seemed at all concerned.

The ceiling tiles hang down slightly and as the plane accelerates along the runway it is always fun to guess how many oxygen masks are going to fall out, amusing the passengers in their seats. Sometimes you only have half a seat belt to hang on to nervously as you watch the poor stewardess who is trying her best to get through the safety demonstration before being bowled off her feet as the plane hits take-off velocity.

To calm the nerves it is always advisable to ask for a copy of the in-flight magazine. To give CAAC their credit this is the best inflight entertainment available on any of the world's airlines. When I read my first copy I laughed so much I had tears running down my cheeks and the stewardess had to come over to ask me to stop. It is an impressive-looking glossy magazine. The gloss is so good that it could have been printed in Hong Kong, but the English can only have come from a person in China who had never used the English language. The result is the best publication in the history of aviation.

There is a wonderful article with the title: ‘Youth, Glistening in the Blue Sky' which is dedicated to CAAC stewardesses:

Reading further about the four steps does not exactly inspire confidence in CAAC, and the nervous passenger, clinging to his half seat belt as the plane taxis along the runway, is not advised to read the passage concerning hardship:

But not only do the stewardesses run the risk of injury, they must also keep the passengers satisfied:

And when the stewardesses are exhausted after servicing all those passengers, they still have to face the most difficult task of all:

So, no problem if you should have any ‘incontinence of faeces' troubles – you will be in the good hands of the ‘Youth, Glistening in the Blue Sky'.

A later edition of the in-flight magazine also confirmed one of my other suspicions about CAAC. I had long maintained that just before take-off, a man went around the outside of the aircraft checking everything with a screwdriver to see that it was all still screwed on. No one believed me, but there in the magazine was proof: a full colour picture of the screwdriver man and his friend, with the caption: ‘Conscientious and meticulous'.

On my first journey I closely followed the work of the screwdriver man, wondering if the heavy engines really were screwed on tight enough. They shook a lot down the runway but were soon shrouded in the thick mist as the 707 struggled skywards.

Twenty minutes after take-off the aircraft emerged through the clouds which fill the Sichuan basin. Dawn broke over the cumulus and a rosy pink hue cast across the cloud ocean. China was way below, and there, ahead, above, lay the Tibetan plateau.

Fifty million years ago, or thereabouts, continental plates crashed together here, throwing up the Himalayas. Tibet lay on the edge of the Asian continent, while the Indian continent sailed full steam ahead on collision course, forcing Tibet's sunbathing beaches several miles into the sky. The average height of the Tibetan plateau is over 16,500 feet (5,000 m) and there are more than fifty peaks higher than 23,000 feet (7,000 m). There are mole hills higher than Mont Blanc. Well, there would be if any moles lived in Tibet.

From the aircraft the dawn view of the approach to Tibet is a moving experience. The abrupt geographical line between China and Tibet tells you something about where you are going. You are gripped with a sensation that this flight is not like any other (as if you had not already realised) but this is a flight to somewhere special, somewhere magical, high above and beyond the clouds.

The plateau is deeply cut by twisted gorges between high mountain ranges. Even in this day and age the area is unsafe: outlaws and outcasts eke a meagre existence by the sides of the road cut through by PLA (People's Liberation Army) troops and prisoners in the 1950s. Due to the inhospitable terrain, the road was constructed with great loss of life. Sadly, today it is rarely used, as landslides tear long sections down each monsoon season. The Chinese military keep command of the route and it is rumoured that there are important military posts on the way, tunnelled into the hillsides.

Before the road was built, brigands and bandits inhabited every valley and watched over the remote passes. The French explorer Louis Liotard lost his life in an ambush over one of these mountain ranges. In 1940, his compatriot Andre Guibaut wrote of the furthest Chinese outpost on the edge of the plateau: ‘Robbers abound in this frontier town… It is quite common at dawn to find people lying stabbed and entirely stripped of their clothes.'

Perhaps CAAC isn't so bad after all.

Thin fingers of deforestation now stretch up the green slopes as trees are felled for the lumber markets of China. This beloved land of the early-twentieth-century plant hunters, who came in search of the seeds that created many of today's European gardens, is rapidly being carted away to the east, down the shaky PLA highway.

As the 707 toils on above the plateau, the deep ravines become shallow, and soft undulating hills stretch up to rounded snow caps. New roads fan out to reach the furthest tree covered slopes until the landscape changes to rugged snow peaks with bare black rock faces. Glaciers flood the valleys and dazzling turquoise lakes lie in the oval hollows between mountains. How people can survive down there defies the imagination but every so often there is a small cluster of Tibetan houses.