Maybe it was the slight shaking of her hand that triggered my sentiments. But no, even if she had been steady, I still would have been uncomfortable. The notion that someone old enough to be a grandfather or grandmother walking down an aircraft aisle, which could be caught in sudden turbulence, and serving younger passengers would utterly overturn the Confucian respect for senior citizens.
Since UA is not a Chinese airline and most of its customers are non-Chinese, my culture-specific angst had to be kept to myself in case it created trouble for her. During the flight, I ordered as little as possible and cleaned up my table before she came. I wanted to minimize her workload the best way I could.
I knew it was ludicrous, but I couldn't help it. I was not brought up in a very traditional family, but still that situation unsettled me, to say the least.
The issue is often compounded with sexism. Were the UA flight attendant a man, would I have thought differently? Fundamentally, no. During my first trip overseas, back in 1986, I was placed in a similar but smaller dilemma. Our Canadian host took us, a group of Chinese, to a restaurant and the teenage girls in my group helped serve the food. The host asked me, the translator, whether China followed the "women first" etiquette. I said no, we have the "elders first" Confucian rule.
But I was only half right. Sure, the girls were about 16 or 17, and they were serving a man aged about 40. If we reversed the gender and put a 17-year-old male and a 40-year-old woman in the same situation, the youngster would be the one doing the ad hoc waiter's job.
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