In Transit
ENTRY 010:
IN
TRANSIT
shifty considers the comfort of modern air travel, makes a new friend in the airport men's and attempts a burdensome delivery from Shanghai to Sydney
21.3.2025
Right now I’m stewing in the gloom of an old passenger jet, Sydney-bound from Shanghai.
I can tell it’s old because I can feel the cracked seat leather against my back and there’s a darkness to the grime that speaks of decades and, generally speaking, nothing works. There are a dozen movies in Chinese, all of which seem, to me, to be a mild form of propaganda, and another dozen American comedies, all far worse. Frequently, a maroon screen featuring a symbol of a microphone commandeers my ‘entertainment system’, and beneath the microphone, the kind of yellow, lo-fi text you might see as subtitles in a Spaghetti Western appears. “Passenger announcement in progress“. What type of announcement would a passenger be required to make?
Besides the twenty-four films kindly curated by the China Film Association, I’m left with little to amuse myself with. The games screen won’t load, so solitaire is out of the question. There’s no wifi and I’m unable to connect to the in-flight map, so I have no clue where we really are. For all I know (which, at the very best of times, is next to nothing), we could be sailing at low altitude somewhere above the bright festoons of exubriant Pyongyang, and all there is to do is listen to the faint whistle of our aluminium underbelly barely clear the frosted barbed wire and frozen communal latrines.
Such boredom really heightens the senses. This must be what those Himalayan hermits feel like: existing in solitude for centuries, legs crossed, eyes closed, breaking from contemplation but once a decade to wander down the ravines, bare-footed through the snow, and wash away their sins in the river Ganges. I wonder if they’ve ever tried solataire?
Yes, such boredom really heightens the senses, but this is not the most desirable metaphysical state to achieve in economy class. I previously held the belief, from the moment I stepped foot in Hong Kong a month prior, to the moment I stepped foot on this plane, that the national pastime for middle-aged men in China—for the suede jacket, leather flapcap brigade strolling with their arms clasped behind their backs—is the clearing of one’s throat onto the sidewalk. Now I understand, quite lucidly in fact, that it is not. The phlegm-laden snores of my fellow passengers prove otherwise. And I suppose with all that in mind, now is as good a time as ever to get back into the blog.
Chengu Railway Station, Chengdu, Sichuan, China. [Nikon Coolpix]
What I do know is that it would be twelve minutes past midnight—China Standard Time—had we never left Shanghai. The CCP keeps a single time zone across 5,200km of latitudinal expanse, an area large enough to encompass five theoretical time zones (and it did so, prior to 1949 and the conclusion of their civil war). That makes three hours since our evening departure, right about the stage of a long-haul flight when most shared sensibilities—for social contracts always weaken with a reduction in either gravity or personal space (in this case, both)—are hypersucked out of the lavatory shoot. Pulling the window shades accelerates this degradation, and in the privacy of this 737-9 Dreamliner’s dimly-lit bowels, a scene of primality has ensued.
Bodies are strewn across seats and aisles in angles so unnatural, one might imagine we’d crashed before takeoff. One woman, two rows ahead of me, has her right leg pointing directly toward the ceiling, having presumably fallen asleep whilst draining the pressure from her ankles. Another man sits upright, starched and ironed, eyes wide open, completely asleep. Another lies across the aisle, his shins shattered by each pass of the drinks cart. The stewardesses, already exhausted, chalks each jolt and muffled wail up to turbulence. After one more pass of the cart and another unanswered plea, I have an uninterrupted line of sight down the aisle, all the way to the cockpit, and notice the typically sealed and locked door has been kept ajar by someone’s misplaced leather boot. Though enshrouded in darkness, I can make out the silhouette of the captain in his seat against the lights of the control board. He raises his right arm above his head, fumbles for something beyond my sight, retrieves that something, which is attached to what look like thin elastic cables, and draws that something to his face. It’s hard to discern exactly what transpires over the next minute or two, but after such time has elapsed, that something recoils to the ceiling and two arms flop down to either side of the seat, where they now hang limp. The pilot’s head is cocked at a kind of “I’m really fucked up right now” angle and I trace the black edge of his aviators cap against the controls, just as lightning strikes a cloud ahead of us. The cabin is illuminated. The copilot is nowhere to be seen.
Yet, these scenes are not entirely alarming, not after ten months in Asia. And now that it’s dark and everyone's asleep, I can, for the first time in a long time, survey my surroundings in relative peace. I can take stock of the year that has been.
For many hours now, I have been without rest. These seats are not designed for me. However, I would like to take a moment to suggest, and by all means, call me a fool if you wish, that in their most desirable state, the economy-level furnishings of the modern passenger aeroplane are quite obviously not designed for homo sapiens. Perhaps instead, some sort of Lovecraftian ghoul conjured by a pagan ritual in the janitor's closet of a Boeing shed larger than the Polynesian state of Tuvalu?
At their least desirable, they’re an entirely deliberate, sick and twisted corporate revival of medieval sadism and belong behind some glass-fronted exhibition in a dungeon beneath the Tower of London. One you might fork out £50 to glean at, then lose your lunch in the Thames a quarter of an hour later. A modern Little Ease, if you will. Just comfortable enough to coax you into a rumour of rest, too uncomfortable to actually reach it, and with all the reports of Boeing maintenance issues hitting the news in recent times (the pagan rituals were reported by the janitor to Human Resources, they were deemed to be within the company regulations and the janitor was later found dead, after accidentally shooting himself in his own head after slipping and falling in a noose), reports of wing panels divebombing into the backyards of poor, unsuspecting middle-western American corn-farmers—I half-expect, at any moment, to be hypersucked out of the emergency exit, thrown ten thousand metres through darkness, and killed, not by the the fall itself, but by the abrupt collision with some poor North Korean rice farmer’s frozen latrine.
What you should know is that not twelve hours prior, I was existing in the relative comfort, if not the luxury, of Chinese free-market reform. There I was, waiting in line for a squat toilet in the Shanghai Pudong International Airport’s Carls Jr.’s men’s bathroom, whence an older man in a leather flatcap materialised beside me. Much like an apparition, he entered my peripheral vision and waited there, on the cusp of my consciousness, until I anchored him to the present dimension with a glance in his general direction. What I noticed next, and I promise I am telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth else God suck me down into Pyongyang, was a small, outstretched hand turned upward, and in his wrinkled palm, a faintly pulsating light. It was a pill. A blue pill, so blue it nearly trembled, as if emitting a kind of energy that radiated against his sallow skin. He looked at the tiny orb he cradled. Looked at me. Looked back at the orb. Looked at me again, then grunted, “good sleep”, before smacking me on the shoulder with unexpected force. I loathe long-haul flights, so naturally I took this offering to be a fantastic stroke of good fortune and immediately scanned the QR code on the lanyard hanging from his neck. I paid the 3 yuan (about 80c) and thanked him for his serendipitous service, for he had arrived with great help in a time of great need. I could tell by his toothless smile that I had scored a bargain, and now, six hours on; as I punch out close to 150 words a minute with my eyelids stapled to my eyebrows Clockwork Orange style, I’m fairly certain I’ll have the entirety of our ten months typed and edited, perhaps even, before leaving Chinese airspace.
I last left you lost on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. My dearest apologies, I’m sure by now you’ve overstayed your Visa. Fear not, the man in the bathroom informed me, by the technomiracle that is two-way speech-to-text Google Translate, that Southeast Asian officials are famously lenient with Westerners who skirt their border laws. He also reassured me that the Australian border force are equally blasé, perhaps even entirely more so, which is good to know, for sitting rather innocuously above my head, hoisted and shoved by no mean effort into the overhead compartment, is my ever-dependable Kathmandu backpack—that endless black hole of a bag that seems to devour anything thrown into it, much like Hermione’s purse—full to the brim with some recently acquired paraphernalia.
All for one, carry-on-sized backpack. [Nikon Coolpix]
After I had washed down that three yuan pill with delicious airport bathroom tap water, my new friend held out a hand towel. Although he was in civilians, I could tell he was an official employee of the airport by his posture. He persisted in forever being slightly hunched, dangling both hands out about a foot from his body, as if perpetually holding an invisible mop and bucket. After I had dried my hands and handed him back the towel, he leant closer, hunching a fraction more, and whispered for a favour. Well, at least that’s the intimacy I inferred when reading the translated text on his Huawei:
Package delivered please now.
Friend brother Sydney please.
I felt a pang of guilt swell beneath my chest. I had reamed him for that blue pill, and now his family was in need? How could I refuse? I happily obliged to settle the ledger and my conscience. It seemed a modest favour for someone who was there when I needed him most. And the only trouble I found between that point and now, as I presently sit here typing, was the ninety minutes immediately following that request, whereupon we undertook the herculean task of fitting five kilos of baby formula into my already swollen backpack.
It wasn’t so much the unusual whiteness of the formula that concerned me; it was more the lack of branding. They were solid, oblong bricks of super-white, almost translucent, powder, wrapped in transparent packaging tape with either side bound by a slightly thicker brown tape. But sensing my concern at the time of the exchange, my new friend reassured me again (for he was a rather soothing character) that he had removed the labelling to reduce weight. I thought that was very courteous. Although I still couldn’t get the zip shut.
After ten months of acquiring a variety of trinkets and vestments—the latter of which had forced Memphis to walk further and further behind me as we wandered the thin lanes and alleys of Asia, lest she be seen in public with a large caucasian man dressed in a white silk hangshan, cloth shoes and felt hat—my bag was much too full for the my friend’s formula. I was exerting all 95kg of my kumara-bred and fed mass on top of it, while my helpful rice-fed and somewhat more nimble friend wrestled the zip as hard as he could. And even though the craterous wrinkles on his child-sized hands made for an excellent combination of grip and dexterity, it would not budge. Understanding the urgency of our situation, he would periodically mount the toilet bowl—for this was a western-favouring cubicle we had chosen—and leap with a diving elbow, as if soaring from the top rope of a Mexican wrestling ring. Again, this was of no use, and my friend abruptly left.
A half-zipped bag bulging at the seams with baby formula, silk garments and a brown paper bag of plant seeds I bought from our taxi driver, and only an hour to get through security, customs and immigration before our scheduled departure. I did what any rational man would do when facing such odds. I called the nearest female I knew.
But only after another half-hour of working up a fierce sweat, where first, Memphis sat on the bag and I pulled, then I sat on it and Memphis pulled, did my friend announce his return with a coded knock on the door. He entered swiftly, with two large and strange men in tow, whom I also assumed to be airport employees, and with the combined might of all five of us, we finally managed to wrench the wretched thing shut. I stripped my leather belt from my waist (actually, this was another stroke of fortune—a genuine calf-leather PRADA belt in mocha brown, and only $10 from a Mumbai street salesman who must’ve had some serious connections in Milan) and wrapped it around the bulging canvas for insurance. I'm sure it all would’ve made quite the scene, had we not commandeered the disabled bathroom. And now, as we wave goodbye to the Middle Country, and prepare to say hello to the Lucky Country with my pack harbouring nine bricks of near translucent Chinese baby formula and my eyes still wired open (I am beginning to wonder if my friend said “good sleep”, or, “no sleep”), I am deeply worried… what if Jetstar pings me for the seven-kilogram carry-on limit when we transfer to Coolangatta?
But I digress. I left you there on the streets of Kuala Lumpur with a roti canai in one hand and a sweet masala chai in the other, and expected you to make your way up the peninsula all by yourself. I suppose the first thing I should tell you is to head south, rather than north. You’ll miss Melacca otherwise, and, knowing you as well as I do, I’m sure you’d hate to miss such a place.
Shanghai Departure Terminal, Shanghai, China. [Nikon Coolpix]
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I write Stories to Tell My Grandkids as a way to memorialise our trip, continually improve my writing, and add to my portfolio of work. As a freelance writer, I want as many people as possible to read my words and see my photos. If you've enjoyed this story, please share it with anyone and everyone you know; friends, parents, colleagues, cousins, nanas & grandads, better halves and long lost loves… if you wake up in the morning and don’t recognise the stranger next to you, then by all means show them too. The more, the better.
