The City of Eternal Spring: Kunming

Now Kunming streets are full of cars. Photo: Wikipedia

An article that came out in the Star in August on Kunming, written by Azizul Jalil, made me nostalgic and took me back to 1965 when I had taken an unusual trip to that city. Kunming is not only a city of 'Eternal Spring' but it was Chairman Mao's winter resort with the Yellow River flowing by the side of China's most beautiful, clean green city. Chairman Mao used to pass his time swimming for hours in the unfrozen Yellow River.

In 1965 I was the first Bengali pilot of PIA to fly eighty bulls and ten cows in each flight from Karachi to Dacca to Kunming. A Chinese vet used to be on board to watch my out-of-the ordinary passengers – in case they got unruly or misbehaved which would leave the vet with no other alternative but to inject them with sedatives so that they would fall asleep again.

At Kunming Airport it was a strange spectacle. Hundreds of Chinese were there to receive the bulls and cows. A broad wooden plank was attached with an exit door of the Super-Constellation. Looking at the wooden plank it reminded me of my school days going to Barisal by those steamers with curious names - like Ostrich and Kiwi – steamer ghats which did not have any pontoon. A couple of wooden planks use to be attached to the steamer and the river bank for the passengers.

At Kunming when we landed everything seemed to be in place. But when it was time to disembark, the first bull that came out of the plane decided to make a run for it and sprinted away with scores of its Chinese 'hosts' running after it!

We, that is the humans, were taken to a hotel near the airport. There was no room servic;e two huge thermos flasks stood by, one with green tea and another with hot water. Next morning we were taken out for sight seeing- the city was so unbelievably clean – and so green; there were hardly any roads only boulevards. I asked our guide why, since there were no cars, buses or any vehicle for that matter, did they have all these boulevards. “Captain” he replied, “who knows after 20 years from now we might be having cars of our own.” How very correct his prophecy was.

My last flight to China was February 20, 1971. On March 15, 1971, after flying back from Tokyo, the authorities grounded me because I was a Bangali.

Years later in 1978, I flew President General Ziaur Rahman to Tokyo via Shanghai. I was surprised to see the radical change, those big billboards against America had vanished, even the national tunic seemed to have disappeared – everyone had adopted western dress-suits and ties and dresses. We too had undergone a great change – we had become an independent country and had become Bangladeshis. As for that green city Kunming which had no cars back in 1965, thirteen years later the prophecy of my guide had come true: Now everybody in Kunming owned a car!

The writer is founder, Biman Bangladesh Airlines and former Director Flight Operations.