Incheon’s inch on

Dalliance in Dalian was our last reflection from the southernmost city of China’s Dong Bei, a light touch by the title, but we remember the not-so-subtle chastisement from an acquaintance that took exception to our title as salaciously suggestive. We were playful in the Hugh Hefner sense!

Dalian has a feminine touch. Mama-san-skilled drivers drive the elongated two-unit spanking new buses. The four-level underground shopping mall fronting the major train terminal station, one of many in the city, are staffed by femme fatale store operators who can navigate through four languages spoken by customers ever willing to part with their ruble, won, yen, and dollar away. No wonder Dalian students lead my Oral English classes at the University! They have ample opportunities to practice it!

So, all right, like everywhere else where the couture and other art forms of Tokyo-New York-Paris are widely appropriated and appreciably imitated, of cosmetic applications, some tend to be on the gaudy side. With two male SAU freshman and a high school student from Shenyang in tow, coming down to Saipan for their summer vacation, our contingent is not short of comments on the poetry in motion of pulchritude abundant in Dalian’s commercial and official services. Happily, refinement outnumbers the garish, loud, tawdry, flamboyant, showy, and even lurid fashion apers.

The female immigration officer at the airport evidently had more advanced customer-service orientation compared to the brusque male counterpart we encountered half a year ago. We might be crossing the line of sexist comments but hey, I enjoyed the thorough pat-all-over of the security officer. In spite of fatigue and the army boots, the officer looked like she just walked out of a modeling shoot at Cosmo and Vogue magazines. (Was going to say Playboy, but I am already in hot water with my feminist friends as it is!) So captivated I was that I almost exited out so I can return for a second patting!  

Maybe it is the ambience. International travel does involve a level of sophistication more than what would prevail at the ground level of the xiao shi chang (village market) but the Hangeul Saram (Korean) in our Dalian-Incheon Asiana flight were a grade higher than the prospective CAAC flight attendants learning English at SAU. Oh, our students are physically stunning, all right, height-wise and otherwise, but communication-wise, their Korean sisters hold a brighter candle on English language proficiency.

In our last short hauls three months before on China Southern, from Manila to Xiamen, and on to Shenyang, our stewards’ concern were on appearance, with their 5-inch heels that are most impractical in navigating the aisle but looks pleasing, particularly to the watchful male of the specie. On the other hand, the Korean contingent had flat comfortable walking shoes, their services efficiently delivered on the 50-minute skirt-around Chosun Saram (North Korea) air space, nothing but effectivity par excellence.

On body appearance, my China flight attendants sport an official head cap, which make them appear more like officers in military uniforms than anything else. I would have preferred the proletarian practicality of the PLA. Their Korean sisters wore an efficient au pair attire with nary a hair out of place, ready to serve boxed meals with grace and land-of-the-morning-calm smiles. One brought me a copy of the Korea Herald daily without my asking for it, just because the attendant heard me speak English.

Never mind that after mouthwash and a touch of cologne, their aura still betrayed a whiff of kimche, but in our case, we swoon on the stuff anyway, and given the clientele, I suspect that only the pickiest olfactory purist would be adversely affected.

I often ask for an exit row seat for the leg space, and on this flight, I got 13-A, right behind what would normally be 12-A. The airline reversed the seat aft the emergency exit and installed an attendant’s seat facing 13-A. So on take-off and landing, as well as the brief moment of turbulence when the pilot advised the staff to buckle up, I had the pleasure of eye balling Mona Lisa with the attractive and alert stare-at-a-distance non-smile.

Incheon International Airport, not unlike its sibling structures around the world, is a verifiable and qualitative feast table, albeit at Manhattan prices. Suvarnabhumi and Changi, Chep Lap Kok and JFK, Narita and Dulles, Charles de Gaulle and O’Hare, Pearson and Pudong, SFO and Buenos Aires, of our passing acquaintance before Lagos Lagoon malaria curtailed our peripatetic pedagogy, are similar steel and glass structures. Coffee costs $4 in Incheon, but will take 22 Renminbi ($3.40) for the same.

George Soros knows this money exchange discrepancy well. The author of Alchemy of Finance who earned a bundle in the pound sterling devaluation of long ago, has also the wherewithal to do something about it. My snotty “phantom wealth” stance, however, puts me in a different league. That’s why Soros sits comfortably in a penthouse while I teach Oral English in the north fields of Zhongguo.

Oh, well.