1 - YOU MEAN YOU WANT TO WORK IN LHASA?!
Flight SZ 504 with 83 passengers on board descended through the grey drizzle shrouding Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport. It was the morning of 31 August 1988.
shroud當名詞時，有「壽衣」之意，非常可怕，最有名的是耶穌的裹屍布。
The usual close-up view of the thousands of television aerials [ˋɛrɪəl], atop the dirty skyscrapers of Kowloon, was obscured by a dense fog.
The control tower radioed its last message to flight SZ 504 at 9:14 in the morning:‘All clear for landing.’
Kai Tak’s runway, a narrow strip of reclaimed land extending across the polluted waters of Hong Kong harbour, was buried deep in the drizzle.
Pilot Zhou Feng Li and the five crew who crowded the cabin of the Chinese flight were unconcerned. Kai Tak airport had an excellent safety record.
The last accident had been in 1967. Nothing could go wrong. Flight SZ 504 was destined to change Kai Tak airport’s safety statistics as it skidded across the runway, plunging into the murky harbour and breaking apart on impact with the water. Rescue teams were at the scene almost immediately but tragically seven people died: one passenger, and the six crew who had been standing nonchalantly in the cabin without wearing seat-belts.
I sat in the departure lounge of Kai Tak airport on that same day, waiting to board my first ever flight on CAAC,China’s national airline, on my first trip into China and Tibet.
While they combed the runway for parts of the fuselage of the old CAAC Trident I had a seven hour delay in which to contemplate my decision to work in this country: a place I had never been to, an airline with rather obvious disadvantages and a two year contract in one of the remotest parts of the world. Just one month earlier I had travelled from Europe to HongKong with my short resumé typed out as lengthily as possible and my best English suit packed.
I was looking for a job in the luxury hotels of the Orient – reputedly where the finest hotels in the world are found. If I had done my homework properly I would have known that you do not visit Hong Kong in a thick, heavy woollen suit in the height of summer,but it was my first time in the tropics and I had much tolearn. Dripping with perspiration from the sweltering, humid heat of Hong Kong, with my sodden suit clinging to my body as if it was made of neoprene, I entered the Holiday Inn offices for the last interview of my trip.
As interviews go it was a disaster from the beginning. I was only there because the helpful gentleman I had seen at The Peninsula had recommended that I see his friend at Holiday Inn, but my heart was not set on it.
There is a tremendous snobbery built in with hotel work. For some reason it is assumed that if you work in a five star hotel you are automatically part of an elite upper class of hoteliers who mingle at ease with the rich and famous.
As the reason behind my trip to Asia was to continue my career in luxury hotels I was infected with this snobbery and had little interest in working for Holiday Inn.The high powered air-conditioning in the office sweptthrough my dripping suit and I shivered uncontrollably asI chilled to the bone.
The lady conducting the interview was kind enough not to make any comment on this, for which I was very thankful, but from both sides the interview was going nowhere. We chatted for a while. All I wanted to do was to leave this refrigerator room as soonas possible. Even the sticky heat outside would be preferable to freezing in my own perspiration.I made to leave.
‘Thank you for coming. Don’t call us, we’ll call you,’ said from both sides with polite hoteliers’sincerity and with smiles all round. As I was leaving the room I casually mentioned that I would love to go to Lhasa,as I had seen a brochure for the Lhasa Hotel outside heroffice. From that moment my fate was sealed.
‘You mean you want to work in Lhasa?!’ was the incredulous response to my passing remark. The door was closed behind me and before I had turned around my interviewer was on the phone to the company’s Vice President.
I had to face him that day, as the next morning I would be returning to my job in Paris. Still wondering what I had let myself in for, I entered his office; an elegant apartment decorated with immense scrolls of Chinese calligraphy.
Some of the scrolls had merely a few characters messily swiped over the rice paper with a large brush. It looked to me like the scribbling of a child let loose with apot of black poster paint.
My host, appreciating my observation of the calligraphy pointed out the red chops on each scroll that showed we were looking at works of art from great Chinese masters. From the Chinese writing he read the names out to me and I nodded in admiration of these masterpieces, wondering how much one got paid for producing these things and whether my little nieces could be millionaires before the age of ten.
The Vice President swivelled pensively on his chair: asumptuous black leather swivel chair, from which he madedecisions every day concerning the multi-million dollarChinese empire of Holiday Inn.
This was the person who would decide the future direction of my career.Broadshoulders, a large square face with a mop of grey hair and thin wire-framed spectacles added to his sombre and learned appearance.
He nodded for me to sit down and then proceeded to scrutinise me in detail. The intensity of his look and the wry smile on his face were unnervingand, not quite knowing where to look, my eyes darted from his face to the scrolls on the wall, to the spectacular view of Hong Kong from his window.
Crimson and silver taxis edged along the congested streets far below us in a world which was miles away. It is strange to see the world from above. Somehow it is a private place which humans were never meant to see, like the kitchens of a restaurant or the bathrooms of royalty.
Far below, perspiring heads glimmered in the sunlight. Litter and fallen laundry covered every ledge and portico beneath the high-rise. Daylight betrayed the rusting brackets of the neon street signs which crept even this highup the skyscrapers. Unsightly air-conditioning units jutted out of the exterior walls, spewing annoying little drops of water onto the hapless pedestrians far below.This last thought on the air-conditioning brought mymind back to the present.
I was decidedly uncomfortable. My suit had still not dried out, and the Vice President’s grey eyes, enlarged by the thick glass of his bifocals, continued to stare at me, penetrating my inner thoughts.
After several minutes of silence he tilted back in his chair and spoke with a deep, slow, authoritative voice:
‘So, young man, you are going to be the Sales and Marketing Manager. You are going to spend six months a year in Tibet with the yaks and six months a year screwing your brains out in Hong Kong. How does that sound to you?’
Startled by his own question he jumped suddenly from his chair and nervously asked me not to repeat what he had just said. Trying to regain his composure he sank uneasily back into his swivel chair and gave me some advice on survival in China. He had worked there for many years and was reputed to know the system better than anyone.
‘Be careful,’ he said, ‘it is not like the Western world.’He paused.
‘When you see a local girl just remember this one proverb: You can’t try the shirt on before you buy it.’
Not really certain what he was on about I nodded in agreement.
‘They will be watching you,’ he continued.
'Remember, even when you break wind they will know it. Be careful.’
With these last words fixed in my mind and still wondering why I should be buying shirts with local girls, I returned to Paris to hand in my notice.
'Where are you going Alec? The George V? The Ritz? Back to London?'
'No, I am joining Holiday Inn.'
'Holiday Inn?!’ he exclaimed.
'Why? Which one?'
'Lhasa.'
'Lhasa?' he repeated, looking quizzically at me.
‘Yes. Lhasa. Tibet.’ I answered.
He could barely bring himself to whisper:
‘Au Tibet?! Au Tibet?! Au Tibet?!’.
|
住戶編號:2894013
檢舉原因
心情: 
