13. An Emotional Goodbye to the Boat Crew


Virginia with friends and tutors from the lounge

Day 12

We have been dreading this day. 

Since day 3, we have been having breakfast and dinner and spending some wonderful evenings with members of the ship's crew. There were even some days that we stayed on board, foregoing the trips ashore. By now, we thought of some of them as ... well, almost family.

The very impressive skyline of Chongqing

Nearly all of the crew members lived in Chongqing. Many came from poor families. We reckoned that their salaries came to no more than $100 US per month. They shared quarters on the lowest deck, with up to eight per room in bunks up to three high. Two of the waitresses in the lounge were just eighteen but apparently had reached the limits of their formal educations. After a round trip down to ShangHai, then back to Chongqing -- about 20 days -- each would have all of four hours to visit his/her family ... then, back to the ship. Wow!

At breakfast, we said good-bye to the young lady and young man who had been serving our meals. One last picture should be taken, just in case those we had taken earlier might be flawed. Neither of them was proficient in English -- crew members learned only what they needed to know for their respective jobs -- and shamefully, we had paid too little attention in our opportunities to learn Chinese. We hoped that the words we could not say might somehow be spoken through our eyes ... and it seemed that it might be so.

They saw to our every need in the dining room

She quietly kept our cabin ship-shape

Having packed our bags the night before, when we found it so hard to retire, we had little more to do. We checked out, being immensely surprised that our bill for all of this had come to so little. 

Then, we proceeded to the lounge to await the call to leave. We were scheduled to disembark at 10:00 AM, but river traffic at Chongqing was horrendous. In the lounge, three of our crew favorites were on duty ... they were such sweet and lovable people. The two ladies and another on a different shift had spent much time trying to teach Bill fragments of Chinese. In our 'conversations' with each of them over these ten days, we were able to glean only a little of the background of each. But that and the warmth we felt for them made this a painful goodbye. 

We have had little experience with Chinese culture and traditions. Among members of our family and many of our friends, a handshake or a bow would be just a little too cordial. But Virginia learned that young Chinese men do not take to being hugged readily. 

One of the waitresses proved to be every bit as emotional as Virginia. Her tears and Virginia's flowed as they hugged. This would have been a good time to leave the ship, but we had not yet been called.

It was comfortable outside on the deck, but there were no seats available. We stayed inside with our fellow travelers. Virginia looked like a 'wet blanket', her face flushed, her eyes red. An Armenian lady, with whom we had become close, was concerned about Virginia and she too was close to tears, though she had no idea why Virginia had been crying.

Time passed slowly as we waited. It was 11:00 AM when we finally disembarked.   Bill got the mailing addresses for some of our crew friends and promised to send pictures. And then, it was time for good-byes all over again.

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