Wiggers and Whiteouts (well not really)

When you have well in excess of 1.3 billion people (in fact nearly 1/5 of the world’s population lives in China-hence you have 20% of the world’s people living on less than 2% of the world’s terra firma—a bit crowded!{just for comparison’s sake, the US, with about 300 million now, sits at roughly 4.75% of the world population, living on about the same 2% of the land mass}) its not difficult to find warm bodies for completely random jobs.
Swarms of security enforcement personnel –many looking not a day older than 17 yet legitimized by their flambouyant uniforms, armies of aircraft interior cleaners and endless numbers of women in green and grey zip up jumpsuits armed with a broom, dustpan, and occasionally a plastic bag, can be found anywhere, and at literally anytime. Saturday was no different.

We had flown from Xi’an, in the heart of Central China, to Lanzhou, a city to the northwest, already, and I was grateful to be free of Xi’an’s never ending snowstorm (about 10 days in fact), if only a brief respite. We were on our second leg, from Lanzhou to Fort Jiayuguan, the ancient limit to Dynastic China, an enclave pressed against rising terrain to the south, the Tibetan Plateau, and Xinjiang to the west, home of Islam and speakers of Uyghur (pronounced Wigger for everyone who might get a kick out of that), a language closest to Turkish than any other. The city sits, seemingly, on the edge of nowhere, a trait I have grown to appreciate in my travels. South and west, the mountains, resembling daggers or splintered canine teeth, protrude 16000 t0 17000 feet into the air, giving you the willies when you descend thru cloud layers only to catch a momentary glimpse of the precipitous, snow spackled granite close by. To the north and northwest, the town gradually disappears into the nothingness of the Badain Jaran Desert, an arid subsidiary of the Gobi, but proudly standing on its own as the world’s 4th largest desert. In the winter the desert looks more like an arctic ocean that froze during the middle of a huge storm. Sand dunes that rival those I saw in Algeria stretch for as far as the eye can see, yet are completely white, buried beneath a couple feet of snow. The pattern makes your eyes hurt if you stare too long, and I often wonder if I cross my eyes and stare long enough if a magic, computer generated 3D image will pop out, or maybe I’ll simply spot Waldo. So far neither has happened, yet I’ve spent a good amount of time staring crosseyed out the cockpit windows—on purpose.

The captain I’m flying with today, as I still need more Chinese flying hours before they’ll set me loose on the Mandarin speaking world, doesn’t speak a lick of English beyond what he must’ve learned off an archaic John Wayne movie… “howdy…how da ya do?”, to which I usually reply “well I reckon just fine pardner”. As we begin our descent from 28,000 feet into the tiny—by Chinese standards—frontier town, he informs me, through the use of the translating co-pilot strapped into the jumpseat behind me, that there may be a little snow on the runway…just patches though. I think to myself “Myself, this is no problem. Xi’an has had patches of snow 5 inches thick everywhere and most taxi ways are simply dirty slush pits with aircraft tire marks cutting through…therefore no need to worry, myself”. Yet it wasn’t until we descended thru the cloud bases on an ILS approach for Runway 32, and the copilot said “Approach lights in sight…and…uhhh….”, and the respective concern that the unfinished comment generated within me, that I realized what patches of snow in Jiaguayan means.

In a featureless, flat landscape, at a featureless, flat airport, marked only by a depressingly colored control tower, and a few random vehicles scattered about, was a featureless, flat and white landscape which was laid out before me, with flashing approach lights leading up to it.

“Ummm…” the copilot kept murmuring, while the captain muttered something undiscernible next to me, presumbably in Chinese.

I officially joined the intellectually stimulating conversation by belching out “holy shit, that’s white” after but a brief moment.

“Five Hundred” the computer generated voice announced, letting us know we were five hundred feet above the ground, and closing in fast. The flashing lights that sequentially led up to the end of the runway, sequentially led up to…nothing. I considered the fact that maybe the captain was referring to the fact that this was in fact a patch of snow, one that extended 100 miles in each direction, as I struggled to find features that would help me identify the edges of the runway. “Two Hundred”, Bob the emotionless voice from nowhere said. Finally I found the barely discernible tops of the runway edge lights, delineating where I should place an airplane from where I should not. Then I saw them: Greenish gray little specks jittering and whirling around everywhere, off to the side of the runway.

I turned my attention back to landing the aircraft back between the practically invisible bumps on the side of the runway. It reminded me a bit of landing in Bahai, Chad, on a bad visibility-dust stormy day, yet it was more difficult, as I had little to no visual clue as to where the ground actually was. It was an optical illusion…everything was white…and flat. I remembered a South African captain I had met while flying in Algeria who liked to talk of his time spent flying scientists around the south pole. His favorite stories revolved around flying in white out snowstorms where the visibility was 0. “I’d just slow the old DC3’s descent to 200 feet per minute, pick a cardinal direction on the compass, and hope that whatever you landed on eventually was flat, connected to land –i.e., not an iceberg, and didn’t bite. No icebergs here, it’s surely flat, and the only thing that bites is the fact I can’t really see the thing I’m landing on, I thought as Bob announced “50…40…30…20…10…”. I pulled up slowly, waiting for a serious thump, and waited, and waited. Still waiting…doo da doo…yep, still here.

‘Er-Er’ finally came as I landed on the smooth and creamy runway. We slowly decelerated and came to a complete stop before I looked around out my side windows. White everywhere…a bright, light infused gray mist containing my view to a mere ¾ mile in each direction, and then, as I turned the aircraft around to taxi back, I saw the little greenish gray jittery blurbs running frantically about with what looked like Harry Potter broomsticks. They were everywhere, sweeping and swishing and sweeping the snow off the taxi way lines and now, the sides of the runway. We slowed our taxi speed to allow more taxi lines to be uncovered and suddenly what was just a featureless, flat, white surface, was now a flat, white surface in the middle of nowhere with intersecting yellow lines neatly criss-crossing about. I felt like I had just landed on another planet. But then again, China kinda is. Who else would have platoons of frigid women in green jumpsuits running about an airport with broomsticks made of local grasses, instead of a petrol powered snow plow? Chad maybe…if they had snow.