One In A Billion

- PROLOGUE -

It was a full flight.

Mother and I were on board an Air China Boeing 747 headed for Shanghai from Los Angeles via San Francisco. After a short stop at the San Francisco Airport, we had re-boarded the airplane. Mother looked around impatiently, talking with a passenger nearby.

“It’s so suffocating inside. Why don’t they turn on the air conditioning?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it won’t work while the airplane’s on the ground.”

“It’s been already two hours since we were back in here. What is going on?”

“I am not sure. Something has happened, that‘s for sure…”

Right behind us was a delegation of Chinese farm workers. They had just boarded in San Francisco. After talking with a few members of the delegation, I learned that they had been sent by the Chinese government to work in the United States in the Spring of 1988. Now they were ready to go home after a year. Most of the money they had made would be turned over to the Chinese government. But they told me that even though they would only keep about one quarter of what they had made, it was still substantially more than what they could have made in China in the same amount of time.

Only 17 hours from home, only 17 hours from their loved ones, their mood was cheerful and relieved. They talked light-heartedly behind us. Someone made jokes. All of them burst into laughter.

The cheerful laughs were abruptly silenced by a stern voice. “Hey! Hey! Shut up and be quiet, you fools. If you want to talk, go home and talk! If you want to laugh, go home and laugh!”

I looked toward the source of the contemptuous voice. It was a flight attendant, dressed in a bluish-gray uniform. There were no special marks on his uniform, other than two red pins on the chest, one was that of Air China, the other printed with five familiar gilded characters of Mao’s hand writing: Serve The People. He didn’t wear a cap. But in this stifling hot compartment, his uniform jacket was buttoned up all the way to his neck. He had a young and handsome face with all the right features in the right places. His eyes were dim and shallow, and the corners smooth. From that tightly closed mouth with its droopy corners, a trace of senseless acrimony leaked out. I could tell from the way the other attendants looked at him that he was the man in charge.

The farm workers’ laughs, to my dismay, were thus terminally extinguished. People lowered their heads, lowered their voices, and the chatting turned into whispers.

A little later, several men in uniform hurried into the compartment. They roamed among the farm workers behind us, muttering something in serious but hushed tones, discussing something secretively with several of the passengers. Then two of the farm workers walked out with them docilely and quietly.

I turned around to ask one of the farm workers what happened.

“One guy in our group escaped. He already checked in his luggage. He even bought a few packs of cigarettes at the airport to take home. But apparently he changed his mind. We have to send someone to help pick out his luggage, because there is an airline rule about it…”

I didn’t hear the rest. I didn’t want to ask any more questions either. A powerful surge of nostal