Winnie Chiang: My Life On A New Runway

Photography by Xiahanqing Wu

As Winnie Chiang lies in bed after her 12-hour exhausted on-air duty as a Qatar Airways cabin crew member, she finds it difficult to remember her earlier life in Taipei.

Six jobs in six years. Office harassment. Bankruptcy. Being forced to quit work. The previous life of her was bitter, but the bitter doesn’t last long.

At the end of her fifth job, Chiang started thinking about changing for a better life and career. “I think it’s just the time for me to change to a new runway,” she said with a smile, although “at that time I did not think about tightly tying my life with the runway.”

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Chiang, a 33-year-old cabin crew member from Qatar Airways, describes her previous life in Taipei with a calm and meaningful tone. It sounds that the impact of job failure does not make her drown in pessimistic moods.

Chiang began to think about becoming an airline cabin crew soon after she started her sixth job in Taipei at a travel agency. She had resigned from her fifth job, a marketing specialist for an information technology company, where she directly experienced the turbulence of work in that field.

She also did not expect to work at the travel agency for the long term. Hence, changing-new-runway means not only changing the workplace but also changing an industry.

“I do expect routine work but I hate being stuck in a tiny [office] cube; what’s more, the salary and working pattern matters a lot,” Chiang added.

She kept sending resumes and the idea of being a cabin crew member came in her mind.

The experience in a travel agency helped her approach to every part of the industry, including airlines and cabin crew members. Coincidently, the hiring offices for Qatar Airways and Emirates Airlines were located next-door to Chiang’s home in Taipei. It would not cost much to try. And the reward would be great if she succeeded.

Photography by Xiahanqing Wu

To understand the two companies and the Gulf culture better, Chiang later flew to Dubai and Doha with her mother in 2016. It was her first time to know the region. In the past, she only had bland labels to describe the Middle East – wealth, oil, desert, and Muslim.

“But I can never say, ‘I understand the place’ before I visit there,” said Chiang.

After waiting for over a year, Chiang ultimately started her new job in a purplish-red uniform. A brand-new Winnie Chiang became a cabin crew member of Qatar Airways and a professional traveler. On average, she flies to 10 different destinations per month and her footprint is in over 30 countries now.

Chiang enjoys her routine job above the clouds.

It is not because of the comparatively high salary or nice accommodation, but the simple yet a bit restricted job pattern perfectly matches her expectations – no tiny office cube, no extra hours without pay, no worries about the company’s abrupt bankruptcy.

Even when she feels exhausted and overwhelmed, facing an extremely picky customer after continuously working for 12 hours, Chiang always thinks optimistically, “at least it is better than any of my previous jobs.”

Everything with her purplish-red uniform is just perfect, said Chiang.

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Photography by Xiahanqing Wu

Chiang is on the “Chiang’s runway” in Doha since her life here makes her more independent and mature. In the past, as a single child in her family, Chiang said she never had a chance to live alone, travel alone and prepare money alone for any risks in her life.

“Her life in Doha seemingly forces her to learn everything that a single, lonely-living woman should learn,” said Chiang’s friend, Jessica Ho. In the old friend’s view, Chiang is no longer the Taipei-traditional daughter or an ordinary white-collar that you can meet a thousand times in the breathless morning peak of Taipei Main Station.

Indeed, Chiang appears to have changed. She speaks in the calm and meaningful tone of a professional traveler, expressing her viewpoints rationally. Nevertheless, there is also something in her soul that will never change.

At age 33, she still has a clear job plan – to work for Qatar Airways business class and to become a supervisor.

“She has always been psychologically prepared to any who-knows-when changes in her life,” said a former colleague, Yan Kwan.

Life is unexpected, indeed. Notwithstanding the uncertainties of life, both the earlier Chiang in Taipei who struggled to find the right runway and the Chiang in Doha have always embraced every possibility as an everlasting optimist.