Money Before Death in China, I’m Scared

One of the cultural issues that cause me friction in China is the relentless focus that Chinese people have on making money, and the seeming inability to prioritize anything in life properly where money is involved. Today’s news has some examples of that, with the Chinese selling arms to Zimbabwe’s dictator Mugabe and labeling it an “internal matter,” as well as the PRC government’s support for the Chinese maker of tainted heparin, which killed about 80 people in the USA alone. But, for this to really hit home this selfish indifference needs to be something I not only read about but also see first-hand, and that happened today on an airplane flight I took in the western part of China. I can now state clearly that the Chinese are even more concerned with money than they are with life and death, and that is positively scary to me.

Here’s what happened: the plane I was on malfunctioned on an aborted takeoff, with an engine spewing smoke, and all the passengers could talk about as they left the plane was how this was causing havoc with their personal scheduling. There was no discussion of what happened, why it happened, or how fortunate we were to be alive.

I took a flight from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi to Kashgar, and there was smoke in the cabin from the moment the plane left the gate. The plane staff ran quickly to check out the source of the smoke, reported it to the pilot, and the pilot parked the plane so ground crew could run out to the plane with a small handheld machine that they presumably used to check the engine, and declared it safe for flight. The stewardess, meanwhile, provided the typical Chinese explanation: “We have a small problem. It will be fixed soon.” I’d guess she didn’t ask what happened, either.

In any case, after about ten minutes of three ground crew checking the engine, the stewardess announced that the problem had been resolved, and we resumed our path to the runway. That’s where it got scary. The plane lurched forward with both engines running, the plane nose tipped up toward the air, then the nose came slamming down, the engines were cut off, and we rolled to the end of the runway, where the pilot waited for a lift back to the gate.

It was scary since the engine continued to puff smoke, after the ground crew cleared it, and also because the plane was actually halfway in the air when the pilot canceled the flight, fortunately. I had never been on a flight where the happened, in China or anywhere else, and it was obviously a last minute, good decision.

What happened next showed me how different the Chinese really are. In the USA, something dramatic like this would cause passengers to discuss the event, and the pilot to explain what happened. In China, none of this happened. The passengers didn’t discuss the event, and most whipped out their phones, and started complaining to friends and others that the flight would be delayed. Worse, when the alighted from the plane nearly half of them complained to the plane staff that they were going to be late, and wanted to know what the airline would do about it. Not one of the twenty people I heard who left the plane thanked the staff for their work, or expressed any relief at being alive.