Scenes Around Left Wing, by Dianwen

The idea of flying alone still fancied me, no matter how fussy it was to scurry with those stupid trunks behind me,

thanks to my first plane being delayed.

The second flight was from Beijing to New York.

I thought the plane should head straight towards the east;

however, we went northeast, passed over Russia,

crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska, then flew south across Canada,

and finally to New York. This is the shortest route.

Someone told me a smart way to figure it out:

if one end of a thread is pressed against Beijing on an

earth model while the other end on New York and stretched tightly,

then it shows exactly the trail above. Interesting, isn't?

I found it hard to fall asleep, so I walked up and down the cabin.

Twilight fell very soon. I found an emergency window seat in the corridor beside the left wing.

I draped the window and myself with a blanket to survey the dark sky.

The sky was extremely black; you can only tell the horizon from an invisible line which produced stars.

The stars were everywhere, glaring in different levels of brightness.

I had never seen stars showing off so crazily. It was just like diamonds sparkled on black velvet.

Night was unnaturally short. Dawn was arriving.

About one third of the passengers found it difficult to remain in their seats;

many looked outside as well. By the time I watched again, the last star had already disappeared, and the plane was flying over an icy ocean. For hours, everything beneath was large bright white ice, floating on a deep blue surface of different shapes, going slowly by. And the sky was slowly lightening. It seemed like an immense rainbow had flattened itself on the horizon.

We watched there for the sun to turn up. It was getting brighter and brighter,

and the plane kept heading east, until the sun was out of sight.

I wondered how pilots confront the dazzling sunlight.