Arriving in China

Arriving in China Harish Chandola TWICE a week a plane of the Civil Aviation Authority of China flies visitors in and out of Hanoi. I left North Vietnam on one of its flights. The Chinese plane was a British-built Viscount. China does not fly Russian aircraft on that route, and is in fact phasing out most of the Russian passenger planes in its service in favour of more modern aircraft from Britain and the US. The Chinese crew of the Viscount did not wear the double breasted jackets with gold-braid and peaked-caps of aircrew the world over. It was a rather warm day and they were clad in white shirts and blue trousers, the same dress as most people in China wear. During their brief haft at Hanoi, they did not come into the airport building, or what was left of it after the US bombing, but sat on the tarmac near their aircraft. The hostesses too were very simply dressed in cream blouses and blue trousers. There were very few passengers: 14 Polish seamen returning home after inspecting the damage done to their ship, 'Josef Conrad', by US bombs at Haiphong, one Chinese diplomat and me.