Dave Barry - Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up

“MISS?” they are shouting. “CAN WE GET A BEVERAGE HERE?” This is maybe the fifth time they have asked this.

“I’m sorry,” says the flight attendant, with incredible patience. “We can’t serve any beverages until after we take off.”

This answer never satisfies the women, who do not seem to be fully aware of the fact that the plane is still on the ground. They’ve decided that the flight attendant has a bad attitude. As she moves away, they discuss this in what they apparently believe is a whisper.

“SHE’S VERY RUDE,” they say, their voices booming through the cabin, possibly audible in other planes. “THEY SHOULD FIRE HER.”

“YES, THEY SHOULD.”

“THERE’S SUPPOSED TO BE BEVERAGE SERVICE.”

“MISS??”

It’s a good thing for society in general that I’m not a flight attendant, because I would definitely kill somebody no later than my second day. Recently, I sat on a bumpy, crowded flight and watched a 40-ish flight attendant, both arms occupied with a large stack of used dinner trays, struggling down the aisle, trying to maintain her balance, and a young man held out his coffee cup, blocking her path, and in a loud, irritated voice said, quote: “Hon? Can I get a refill Like maybe today, Hon?”

She smiled—not with her eyes—and said, “I’ll be with you as soon as I can, sir.”

Sir.

Oh, I’d be with him soon, all right. I’d come up behind him and strangle him with the movie-headphone cord. “Is that tight enough for you, sir” would be the last words he’d ever hear. Then I’d become a legendary outlaw flight attendant. I’d hide in the overhead luggage compartment and watch for problems, such as people flying with small children and making no effort to control them, people who think it’s cute when their children shriek and pour salad dressing onto other passengers. When this happened, BANG, the luggage compartment would burst open and out would leap: the Avenging Flight Attendant of Doom, his secret identity concealed by a mask made from a barf bag with holes in it. He’d snatch the child and say to the parents, very politely, “I’m sorry, but FAA regulations require me to have this child raised by somebody more civilized, such as wolves.” If they tried to stop him, he’d pin them in their seats with dense, 200-pound airline omelets.

Insane? Yes, I’m insane, and you would be, too, if you were listening to these two women.

“MISS??” they are saying. “IT’S TOO HOT IN HERE.”

“CAN WE GET SOME BEVERAGE SERVICE?”

“MISS?”

And now the pilot is making an announcement. “Well, folks” is how he starts. This is a bad sign. They always start with “Well, folks” when they’re going to announce something bad, as in: “Well, folks, if we dump the fuel, we might be able to glide as far as the mainland.”

This time the pilot announces that—I swear I am not making this up—lightning has struck the control tower.

“We could be sitting here for some time,” he says.

“MISS????” say the women in front of me.

No problem. I can handle it. I’ll just stay calm, reach into the seat pocket, very slowly pull out the headphone cord ...

The World’s Great Capitalists Market to the Old Butchers Who Run China.

They’ve Promised to Be Nice.

If you listen hard, as you wander around Hong Kong, you can almost hear the clock.

Tick tick tick tick tick, it says, over the rushed city sounds of the traffic, the boats, the people.

Tick tick tick tick tick ...

Get ready. It’s coming.

Midnight, June 30, 1997. This will be a very big day for Hong Kong. The biggest ever. Hotel space is already selling out. A lot of people want to be there, to remember what Hong Kong was, to get a glimpse of what it will be.

Then the sightseers will check out and go home, leaving Hong Kong to face ... whatever comes next. Nobody knows for sure what it will be. But it’s coming.

Tick tick tick tick tick ...

Some background. Although Hong Kong is geographically part of China, right now it’s a colony of Great Britain. This arrangement dates back to the 19th-century Opium Wars, which you recall from your high school World History class.

You liar. Probably the only event you remember from World History class is the time Jeffrey Brunderman made a spitball so large that he couldn’t get it out of his mouth without emergency medical assistance. To refresh your memory: In the early 19th century, British traders were making big money getting opium from India and selling it, illegally, in China. In 1839, the Chinese emperor tried to put a stop to this. Britain, which at the time had a vast empire and a major butt-kicking navy, was outraged that some pissant emperor would dare to interfere with the activities of legitimate British businessmen just because they were smuggling drugs.

So Britain sent a fleet to attack. The Chinese were quickly defeated and forced to sign a treaty under which, among other things, Britain got Hong Kong. Over the years Britain added more land to the Hong Kong colony which is ruled by a governor appointed by the crown. Historically, the Hong Kong residents, who are overwhelmingly Chinese, have had virtually no say in their government.

But for a long time Hong Kong didn’t concern itself much with politics, because there was a lot of money to be made. There still is. Hong Kong today is a major international trade and financial center. It’s a busy place—410

square miles supporting six million people, most of them jammed together around the spectacular, hard-working Hong Kong harbor, which we travel writers are required, by law, to describe as “teeming.”

And it is teeming. All day, all night, the dirty brown water is churned

by boats, all sizes and shapes, barely missing each other as they bustle in all directions on urgent boat errands. Many are ferryboats, which cross the harbor constantly, carrying the teeming masses of people—mostly well-dressed, prosperous-looking people—to and from the downtown business district, which looks like a full-size version of an Epcot Center scale model of the City of Tomorrow: dozens of breathtakingly tall, shiny, modernistic buildings, none of which appears to be more than a few days old, with newer ones constantly going up. Connecting these buildings, over the teeming streets, are teeming walkways, which lead to vast, staggeringly opulent shopping centers with gleaming floors and spotless stores teeming with cameras, electronics, silks,jewelry, and other luxury items of all kinds.

This is not a place for quiet reflection. This is the Ultimate Shopping Mall. This is a place where everything is for sale, and you can bargain your brains out. This is a place where you can feel your credit cards teeming in your wallet, hear their squeaky little plastic voices calling, “Let us out! Let us OUT!!” This is a place so rich and modern and fast-paced and sophisticated that it makes New York seem like a dowdy old snooze of a town.

In short, this is a place that screams: “We’re RICH, SUCCESSFUL CAPITALISTS, and we’re DAMNED PROUD OF IT!”

And on June 30, 1997, Britain is going to give it all—the whole marvelous money machine, and all its human dependents—to the People’s Republic of China. China has long claimed that Britain has no right to Hong Kong, and in 1984, after much negotiation between the two nations, Britain agreed to get out in 1997.

So in a little over five years, the people of Hong Kong—Who never got to vote on any of this—will simply be handed over to China, as though they were some kind of commodity, nothing but a load of pork bellies being traded. The Chinese leaders have promised that they won’t make any drastic changes in Hong Kong, but nobody believes this. These are, after all, the same fun dudes who gave us the Tiananmen Square massacre.