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A Year Abroad in China

The Story of a Young Canadian Flight Attendant

When asked how she would describe the experience of living and working in China for a year, Sherry Mallory said simply, "amazing."

It was in the summer of 2002 that she and 30 other young Canadian flight attendants went to work in China after receiving offers for an all expenses paid trip to live and work in the Asian country for Hainan Airlines, a large operator based in Haikou city on the island province of Hainan, China.

Sherry had jumped at the chance. The employment situation in the Canadian airline industry at the time wasn't exactly rosy. Five months had passed without work for her and the others while they waited to learn if Hainan Airlines would accept their applications.

 

Top Left:  With one of her crew mates, a first officer. Sherry is wearing the summer uniform for FAs; Top Right: A Hainan 727 Bottom left:  In training at China Airlines facility;  Bottom Right: In the cabin with a crew mate. The girls are wearing the winter uniform for flight Attendants

In 2001 the Canadian airline industry ailed. Competition for passengers among operators was strong. Price cuts and incursions into small regional routes by bigger and stronger companies like Air Canada threatened to push smaller operators off the market.

When, in March of that year, Canjet the Nova Scotia-based regional flier that Sherry worked for was bought by international carrier Canada 3000 -- a company aiming to become the largest airline operator in Canada -- Sherry and her fellow fight attendants heaved a sigh of relief. But it was a short-lived relief.

The economy was slowing down and the airline industry was laying off workers everywhere in North America. Then came September 11 and the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC., and the slum in air travel took a deeper nose-dive.

Canada 3000 was in trouble. The company owed over $40 million to creditors and was losing another $700,000 in its daily operations. Eight months after the Canjet take-over, in November 2001, Canada 3000 succumbed to the long-running industry slum and filed for bankruptcy protection. Sherry and 5,000 other employees were out of work.

China Opportunity

But as one door closes, a new one soon opens. Through one of the pilots at Canada 3000, Sherry learned about a Chinese airline that was looking for English-speaking flight attendants to begin work in China. They were taking applications through the Flight Attendant School at the Nova Scotia Community College. She applied, sending in the recent photograph and personal statistics as well as educational certificates the company requested and waited.

About five months later, during the summer of 2002, a response came from China that she had been accepted. The job was a one year contract, renewable for one or more years, to work for Hainan Airlines as a flight attendant in China and teach English to Chinese employees of the company. All her expenses -- airfare, housing and medical -- were covered by Hainan Airlines for the period she worked for the company.

Preparation for the job in China consisted of a week and a half of special survival training at the Nova Scotia Community College. In China the flight attendants received additional three months of training to meet Chinese standards for airline workers.

Hainan was looking for "good looking" or attractive English speaking people with experience as flight attendants. Unfortunately, there were no people of color among those selected in Sherry's group.

 

Sherry moonlighted on her off days as a kindergarten English teacher. The Canadians were also recruited by a Chinese film company to play bit parts in a production

Living in China

Sherry described life as a foreigner living in China as an "amazing" experience. "The Chinese are nice and sweet people," she said.

Life in China is quite different from what she and the others knew in Canada, Sherry admitted. A few among the original group of 30 people who went to China did not complete their contract. Some of them didn't take well to being under Chinese authority. One girl spent most of the time in her room. Another would not eat the local food, instead she made daily trips into town by taxi - an expensive proposition in China - to eat at McDonnell's. The girl had gained a few pounds by the time she abandoned her contract midway to return to Canada.

In China, the work came first in most people's lives. In Hainan Airlines, for example, all employees are housed in a set of apartment blocks near the airport in Haikou city. This means that people get to work on time and there are fewer distractions for employees. Older workers may, however, obtain permission to live outside in the city. Employees had to obtain permission from company authorities before they could marry.

This way of doing things ties in well with age-old Chinese custom of respect for authority and the aged. With young parents busy earning a living, most kids are left to the grand-parents to raise until school age.

As hard as they worked, people in China also played hard. There were discos and pubs for partying on off days and after hours. Every time they flew into a city, each member of the flight crew (not just the foreigners) was given a choice of regional specialties -- artifacts, meats and delicacies -- as presents by local authorities as a way for the particular city to show appreciation for Hainan Airline's business in their city.

Culture Shock

Sherry recalled the first time she met Mr. Chen Feng, a Chinese American and Hainan Airline company chairman. As the flight attendants were lined up to greet the chairman, she felt a sharp nudge in her back and looked to see the Chinese flight attendants bowing. Someone was trying to get the Canadian flight attendants to bow like the Chinese. Finally the Mr. Feng excused them in Chinese, explaining to the others how Westerners were not used to bowing to authority.

"Chinese do what they are told, but we were not used to that. I had to explain later that in Canada we always want to know why before we do something," Sherry said.

Sherry once stopped a woman from stuffing her sleeping child into the overhead compartment. The woman was well aware of the use of the compartment, but felt the infant would sleep better in there.

"The Chinese are very tolerant," Sherry said. "Once a traveler brought frozen fish into the passenger cabin and when the fish thawed it dripped on the person sitting below it. She didn't seem to mind. Just smiled and said it was ok."

Flying all the time meant staying in many different places and you never knew what to expect of the hotel accommodations. Sometimes you found yourself in a place with no hot water and bug infested rooms -- a situation their Chinese co-workers took in stride, but something the Canadians could not get used to. At other times they were treated to three star hotel accommodations.

When looking for work abroad, quite often the pay is not the most attractive, especially when traveling to developing economies. Sherry and her Canadian crew mates were paid same as the Chinese pursers or chief flight attendants. The attraction is the chance to experience another culture, another society. What you are paid will most certainly allow you to live comfortably and enjoy yourself while in the country, but usually the pay is a little less than what you might earn in a comparable position in North America. Therefore even if you saved some money while there, on conversion it may not amount to much back home.

The upside is that some of these jobs, like the one Sherry had in China, come with generous pecks -- more than adequate housing with in-house phones and every amenity you may expect in a middle class home in North America, medical insurance and transportation.

After one year at the end of her contract, Sherry confessed she was glad to escape China's excessive bureaucracy in which in order to get anything done, you first had to get all the mandarins to sign off on whatever it is and even then you ar still not sure of getting it done.

Despite all that, Sherry is looking forward to going back if and when the right offer comes her way.