I had wanted to take a vacation for a while and had been keeping my ears open for a cool place to visit. I also knew that 申琦 (shēn qí) had never been on an airplane, so I wanted to help her get through her first plane ride. I had heard that 大连 (dà lián) was a cool place, romantic, and about an hour-long flight away. It seemed perfect. I then noticed that 大连 had been ranked number 1 city in China by some study. This sealed the deal.

My friend Leo helped me book two plane tickets from 石家庄 (shíjiāzhuāng) to大连 (dà lián) for about 1300RMB each round trip ($165 US), and helped us find a decent hotel， 船舶丽湾大酒店 (chuánbó lí wān dà jiǔdiàn), for around 500RMB a night ($63 US). I was very excited about leaving and getting to spend a relaxed weekend on vacation with 申琦 (shēn qí), but she, however, was quite nervous.

Our flight left late on Friday the 19th. On Wednesday, 申琦 (shēn qí) started having trouble sleeping because she was so afraid of the flight. Most Chinese people have never been on a plane before, and thus have this deeply ingrained fear of flying that they have developed over many years. 申琦 (shēn qí) was the same, even though she knew that flying was much safer than any other means of transportation. I made sure that we were booked on a large plane, an airbus 319, and not a small one that might be bumpy. As Friday drew closer and closer however, she kept getting more and more scared, and slept less and less.

Finally by the time Friday rolled around, she kept on telling me that getting on a plane felt like she was giving me her life, and that she was sure it was going to be tragic. She wanted to have her mother come over for dinner and some majiang before we left. As we ate, she told me that it seemed like it was her last meal. As 申琦 (shēn qí), her mom, my maid wu jie, and I played majiang, the two women kept reassuring 申琦 (shēn qí) that it was perfectly safe and that everything would be fine, but she was still scared. Finally it was time to leave. We took a cab to some hotel that had an airport shuttle for 20RMB ($2.50 US). The石家庄 (shíjiāzhuāng) airport is about 50 minutes outside of town, so taking a cab would have been a bit expensive.

Our travel agent had said that we needed to be at the airport 10 minutes before the flight. Coming from the U.S. where you have to arrive hours before a flight, I of course did not believe this. We got to the airport about an hour in advance, which turned out to be much earlier than necessary.

The way the travel agency worked was that we deposited some money in their bank account and they then gave us a code. We were then supposed to take this code to the people at the airport, who would ultimately give us our tickets. This all sounded strange to me: depositing money directly in a bank account only to receive a code that we couldn’t validate until arriving at the airport, minutes before our flight. If the travel agency hadn’t been owned by a friend of mine, my bullshit detector would have been going off the chart, but I guess that’s just the way it is done here in China.

There were no real security checks at the airport. A quick glance at my passport, and then an x-ray of our carry-on luggage, was all that we had to do. We then walked right onto the plane. Once 申琦 (shēn qí) got seated, she began taking everything in. I quickly realized that she had to check everything out because it was all stuff that she had never seen before: how to put the tray table down, how to use the seat belt, where the bathroom was located and how it worked, what the wing looked like, how the stewardesses were dressed, what the magazines were, how to turn on the lights, etc. She was on overload, and her fear of flying combined with all the new stuff raised her anxiety level a lot. Once we pushed back from the gate, every noise, light, etc. made her jump. At one point (I think when the engines started up) she even cried a little. I was really worried about what to do. If she truly couldn’t handle it, we would have to get off the plane and go back. I kept consoling her, letting her know what would happen next, and reassuring her that everything was normal. I figured that the worst part would be the actual take-off, but it turns out that it actually calmed her down for some reason. She was surprised at how quickly the plane accelerated, and actually said she liked the feeling of the take-off. Score!

I had gotten her a window seat, and she sat glued to the window the entire time. She loved looking at the cars below, until we entered the clouds that had been looming over the city all day. For the rest of the flight, all she could see from the window was a black abyss, and she said that it made her feel as though we were still on the ground. The flight was smooth except for a few bumpy patches. She said that she actually didn’t mind these that much since if felt a bit like a massage ( )! When the drink cart came by, she had to have me help her put the tray table down as she didn’t know how. She decided to save her orange juice cup as a souvenir.

On the arrival into大连 (dà lián), she was again glued to the window looking at the buildings and cars below, and actually didn’t mind the landing too much. She was all giggly about having survived a plane ride, and I felt very special to have been able to share it with her. We hopped in a cab and proceeded to our hotel……