When I onboarded Cathay Pacific(CX) flight business class to Hong Kong, in transit to Paris on September 02, I encountered a family of three sitting next to me: they were a couple of parents of my age, or younger, and their daughter, as old as mine. Though they were ordinary seatmates in the plane, I’d found something noticeable that drew my attention. The father and the mother looked kind of rustic, totally didn’t understand what stewardesses said to them(you know, CX’s stewardess speaks English with Hong Kong accent to customers first, not Mandarin or even Cantonese.), so the girl, their daughter, translated everything for them in eloquent English, with care and patience. The picture presumably told people that the girl is a pink-collared lady, well-educated and well-off, taking her parents for a costly vacation.

During the transit at HK airport, I met them again in the CX’s lounge room. Similiarly, the parents appeared nervous and timid, and the daughter took care of everything. I didn’t know where they were heading for, but wherever they went, it must have been a pleasant trip ahead of them under the auspices of a daughter of filial duty.

Onto CX flight again, suprisingly I found the family were there in the business cabin again. Gee, they were heading for Paris, too. This time they couldn’t be lucky enough to sit side by side probably due to a sold-out. So the daughter had to shuttle between her cubicle(in the long haul, it’s not simply a “seat”.) and her parents’ to take care the things they were not familiar with: ordering meals, handling those sophisticated gadgets, even trying to have a nice sleep. I even saw her stood tiptoe and craned her neck to watch anxioulsly if her parents were doing ok, when the aisle was blocked by the catering cart and stewardesses. It must have been a tough night for her in a ten hours’ flight. Finally we arrived Paris airport, and I silently uttered a “Bon Voyage” to her and her parents when I saw them happily went thruogh the bridge..

She’s not a pretty woman, at best a jolie laide. But like I always said, “You don’t have to be pretty to be beautiful.”