The relationship between the United States and China has been a long standing affair.
Under prime minister Zhao Zyiang, the People’s Republic of China was slowly emerging as a major political and economic power. Yet, in 1985, China had nothing to do with what we know of today’s China. Beijing’s first modern buildings were slowly emerging from the ground but the country was still locked up in centennial traditions as well as the straight jacket of a complex and dictatorial administration.
A short 9 years after the death of the “great Helmsman, the country was still half asleep, trying to find some kind of a compromise between a “socialist economy” and “reasonable capitalism”, probably the only way to help Chinese population improving its standards of living . 31 years later, we all know what China looks like . 2.378.000 millionaires were registered in China in 2013, not bad considering that in 1938, chairman Mao’s principles included : “ At no time, and in no circumstances should a communist place its personal interests first ( October 1938, Selected works, Vol II Page 198) .
In 1985, changes in the Chinese society were nevertheless on their way, the memories of the so called “Cultural Revolution” placed on the shelves of Chinese History, and The "Flying Tigers" were back in China with modern cargo airplanes.
By the mid-1980s, Flying Tigers operated scheduled cargo service to six continents and served 58 countries. It surpassed Pan American World Airways in 1980 as the world's largest air cargo carrier after acquiring its rival cargo airline Seaboard World Airlines on 1 October 1980.
It also operated military contract services, most notably DC-8 routes between Travis Air Force Base, California and Japan in the 1970s, followed by weekly 747 passenger service between Clark Air Base, Philippines, and St. Louis, Missouri via Japan, Alaska, and Los Angeles during the 1980s.
Covert flights for the military were not uncommon throughout the airline's history, given its roots in Civil Air Transport (CAT), as with its sister airline Air America, originally owned by General Claire Lee Chennault, commander of the Flying Tigers fighter squadron in Southeast Asia.
Thanks to its historical ties with Asia, Flying Tigers (The Flying Tiger Line) started exploring the possibilities of conducting charter works between the United States, Europe and Asia. We c would carry anything that could be fitted in a B 747 cargo plane, and , due to distances and weight involved, the “200” type was often used.
The L.A Headquarter brass had cleared the way with CAAC, the Chinese Aeronautical Administration, equivalent to the American FAA and in 1985, my first flight to China opened up a long period of flights to Beijing and Harbin and gave me the wonderful opportunity to be introduced to Chinese culture and history.
31 years later,well into the 21st century it is difficult to remember which one was the first charter to the “Zhongguo Empire”….but I vividly remember the official dinner hosted by CAAC in the presence of our Vice President who had arrived in Beijing on a commercial flight to celebrate our first mission, whilst we had flown in with 237 dairy Heifer cows born and bred in Denmark.
Offloading the animals in Beijing Airport was a long affair.
Shortage of equipment was compensated by creativity in adapting existing ground support material. But an offload operation which would have taken about 2 hours anywhere else in the world would required a full 7 hours.
Airport workers, all clad in the green or blue “Mao” like uniforms were trying to be helpful but the language barrier was real and sign language had to be used on several occasions. Cultural differences did not help, even when trying to mimic some actions related to airplane handling or cleaning !
I remember specifically that when needing a vacuum cleaner to clear the upper deck of food debris and trying to express the concept of vacuum cleaning with my mouth conducting a noisy aspiration, the airport worker lead man interpreted my sign language as a need for a sexual favor close to fellatio !
Luckily, I managed to better explain that it was the floor of the airplane which needed to be cared for, and not me.
I vividly recall also that on this particular flight, while the immigration officers were in the main deck of the airplane, processing our passports, I discreetly picked up one of the two hats worn by these officials and applied carbon paper on the inside of the hats so that blue marks would appear on the forehead of our Chinese border patrol when hats would be worn again and again taken off…!....my kind of humor...never a dull moment ...!
The airport hotel was a very strange building from an other time and days ! Only seasoned travelers would stay there. The ambiance was far away from that of international 5 stars locations and , at night, once it was sure that guests were all accounted for, the hotel doors were locked with a chain: we were prisoners !
The hotel smelled of old times, bureaucracy, dust, and Chinese cuisine which was a positive point : after a 36 hours trip, all of us were starving and thirsty. Far away from the San Francisco “Chinatown”, we would take time for a leisurely meal and a couple of “Tsing Tao” beers, foreigner’s edition, served in 50 Cl bottles.
Danish and Dutch cows being extremely popular, in a country with an important growth rate and hence an increasing demand for milk, several charters were conducted to PRC ( People’s Republic of China) including flying to the northeastern city of Harbin, the capital and largest city a key political, economic, scientific, cultural and communications hub in Northeast China, as well as an important industrial base of the nation.
Harbin, which was originally a Manchu word meaning "a place for drying fishing nets", ,then grew from a small rural settlement on the Songhua River to become one of the largest cities in Northeast China. Founded in 1898 with the coming of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the city first prospered as a region inhabited by an overwhelming majority of the immigrants from the Russian Empire.
Having the most bitterly cold winters among major Chinese cities, Harbin is heralded as the Ice City for its well-known winter tourism and recreations. Harbin is notable for its beautiful ice sculpture festival in the winter. Besides being well known for its historical Russian legacy, the city serves as an important gateway in Sino-Russian trade today, containing a sizable population of Russian diaspora.
In the 1920s, the city was considered China's fashion capital since new designs from Paris and Moscow reached here first before arriving in Shanghai.
Harbin was a weird place ….Colder than hell in winter, one did not know if one was in Soviet Union (*) or in China as one could find signs in both Chinese signs and Cyrillic letters. If offloading and cleaning up the airplane in Beijing was a difficult task, the conditions in Harbin were even worst. With no GPU ( Ground Power Unit) available and often a faulty APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) we needed to keep one of the 4 engines running during the entire transit of the airplane.
After the offload was conducted, disposable equipment was simply thrown overboard, crashing when landing on the ground, and airplane pallets had to be thoroughly cleaned with hot water in sub-zero temperatures. The airplane was then surrounded with clouds of steam.
Navigation aids in China were known for their lack of reliability. With Air Traffic Controllers certainly more fluent in Chinese than in English, navigating outside of international routes could quickly become an ordeal. Flying Tigers and CAAC had come to an agreement through which when flying to Harbin, we would stop in Beijing for an hour to pick up a CAAC navigator supposed to help translating ATC Instructions from a non-understandable aeronautical English, into something that could be used to safely fly the airplane.
Probably accustomed to Russian made commercial airplanes, the navigator, clad in a WW II type leather jacket made in China, appeared totally in awe of our Boeing jetliner equipped with the latest navigational aids, HF radios,….and even a special opening in the top of the cockpit in case we would use a sextant !
We could have flown on our own, for sure. Most of our pilots coming from the military certainly had the talents to find their way but we were guests of the PRC, representing a reputable US Airline, therefore we had to play by the rules.
The mid 80’s were hard on the body. Monday Tuesday in Beijing, thursday early morning in Kano or Lagos, saturday and sunday in Warsaw…..there seemed to be an unwritten rule at the charter division : work hard, but play hard, so we did both and played even harder when the occasion was offered.
Some of our flights to China could also generate tense situations. One of our missions to Beijing was the transport of Swiss made Oerlikon 35 mm anti-aircraft guns which we picked up in Zürich.
For some unknown reasons, there was a problem with the overfly rights and I was woken up during the night as we just entered the Saudi Arabian airspace .Saudi ATC had no records of overfly rights granted for crossing over the kingdom and, like it or not, we were forced down to Amman airport in Jordan and put to the airport hotel under military custody until next day, when issues had been cleared through diplomatic channels and we were allowed to take-off from Amman and continue our journey to Beijing, freshly catered with Arabic food and cardamom coffee replacing the catering picked-up in Switzerland.On arrival in Beijing, a shitload of military brass surrounded the airplane. Navy, Air-Force, Army, they wanted to see the “test gun” arriving from Europe. Was this specific cargo the cause of our “forced” stopover in Jordan ? Could be ….I never knew….We were just conducting missions… In 1985, 144 years of British ruling in Hong-Kong had left a deep mark into the Chinese administration.
(Crowd in Beijing under The Great Helmsman....no space to breathe...
( A North Korean Air crew: not one ounce of humour)
Just like in England where authorities are always scared of rabies, microbes, and other “far-away” diseases, any airplane entering Hong-Kong after carrying livestock had to be thoroughly cleaned up.
A veterinary inspection was conducted upon arrival in Kaï-Tak airport by officials in dark-blue uniforms wearing a paper mask over their mouth. We had instructions to make sure that not a bit of wood chips used as absorbing material on livestock flights could be found on the airplane.
Extra time was often needed in Beijing to clean up the airplane main deck and when it would be getting close to the end of “ crew duty time”, if was the right moment to negotiate and extra hour or so of crew time, just to make sure that the aircraft would reach Hong-Kong clean as a whistle.
There was no set rules. Most of the times, the full flight crew knew that they would enjoy a dinner at company cost in a nice restaurant that same evening, should they help us to “ move the airplane”.
For sure, moving the airplane back to Hong Kong was certainly much better than another night at the Beijing Airport Hotel !
(*) In 1985, there was still something called Soviet Union…(Mikael Gorbachev was elected as Secretary General to the Politburo mid 1985 following 11 months of ruling by Konstantin CHERNENKO)