Flight to Asia, Part 2

Been on the airplane to Shanghai for 3 hours of 14.  Ick.  It’s a China Eastern flight, so from the moment I got in line to check in, I’ve been in China.  Maximum 5% of the passengers aren’t Chinese.  The flight attendants keep trying to speak to me in English, but I respond in Chinese.  I’m sitting next to Joshua, a 29-year-old art and design professor at Zhejiang University.  He’s returning from Oregon where he was in charge of a summer semester abroad.  Right now he’s sleeping, as I should be.  But I had this thought and wanted to write it down: I love travel, especially on planes, because everyone is equal.  Yes, there are people sitting in first class, but on a given flight I could sit next to almost anyone.  For the most part, people don’t have phone service or wireless Internet or access to their bank accounts, and so they all do the same things – read, sleep, talk, and watch movies.  When we get off the plane, we’re businessmen and students and homemakers with busy lives, but while traveling we’re all just people.  If there are delays or rough weather, they happen to everyone, and we all complain to our neighbors and wonder out loud when we’re going to arrive.  I wish society could be more like a plane ride – fewer divisions, more unity, more common goals and empathy for others.