Chapter 1

Off to China again.

Brigitte and I flew to San Antonio to daughter Gaby's on November 2. I stayed until November 5th when I flew off to Beijing where I will be until November 21. I have gone alone to Beijing 3 years in a row for a couple of weeks to immerse myself in Mandarin which I have been learning now for over 4 years. I opted to stay at a small hostel each time as there are few if any foreigners and the staff do not speak English   I have found that lots of people study English in China (in fact more Chinese people study English than there are English speaking people!)  but they never get a chance to use so after a few phrases one can revert to Mandarin and they are quite pleased.  Each year I have written a travel report like this as a means to fix in my memory the events of the trip.  I share it with those who may be interested.

On November 4th,  I had a lovely meeting in San Antonio with my first Chinese teach, Shuqiong. She used to live in Montreal and I spent 3 weeks several years ago there working with her. Since two years, her husband has been transferred to Dallas Texas and the family moved there. When Shuqiong heard I was coming to San Antonio, she decided it would be a good time to show her parents in law the city so she came up with her husband, two children and the parents,.  We met at her Hilton hotel.  The rest of the group went of for a boat ride around the river walk and Shuqiong and I caught up for a couple of hours. She has now landed a job with the second Baptist Church school which has asked her to manage a new Mandarin program.  She is a happy camper as that is what she was doing in Montreal.  The school is near her husband's office so they go in together and leave the baby with the parents in law who have come back from China to help.  It is a great arrangement and it was fun to see how Shu Qiong has managed the change.

On November 5, I flew from San Antonio to San Francisco and connected to a flight on United to Beijing. The Beijing leg was almost 12 hours and it doesn't get any shorter year-by-year. Maybe I should splurge one year and go business class. I did buy myself an upgrade in to economy plus which gave me a seat in the exit row. This, of course, has lots of legroom the risk is that one of the toilets decides to go out of business on a 12 hour flight which can make things wrong or uncomfortable. Going through Chinese customs and immigration was very smooth. Compared to leave 1 to 2 hours it takes in Dulles Airport the Beijing airport was much more efficient mainly because most of the immigration desks were manned by people.  At Dulles airport, there must be 50 booths for immigration but I have never seen more than 20 to 25 immigration officers and  the back ups can last two hours. There's nothing worse after a 8 to 12 hour flight than having to stand in a line for hours.

I picked up my bag and walked out to the main terminal and found the hotel manager Bing  standing there waiting for me. He was accompanied by his nephew who now works with him. We loaded the car and headed into town. 

The weather was typical of Beijing, cloudy and a lot of smog. The traffic between the airport and town was not that heavy going into town.

I have stayed with Bing for the last two years and each year he has had a different hostel in which he is managing. The current hostel has 50 rooms compared to 10 in last years hostel and eight in the year before. Bing is a real entrepreneur and has managed some sort of hostel for the last eight years. He is married and has a five-year-old son. The son, whom I named a few years ago is Mikey and the mother no longer live in Beijing but have moved back to his hometown of Chongqing in the South. His wife does not like the climate in Beijing. Bing and I are scheduled to visit Chongqing later next week. Bing insisted that I spend a week with him in his home town.  The problem is that Chongqing is 1200 miles south of Beijing and they speak a Chongqing dialect.  As the reason for coming to practice my Mandarin, we compromised and I will spend 3 days there next week.

Bing proudly showed me his newest hostel which is located near the Lama Temple in downtown Beijing.  It has two stories although the upstairs is now being reconstructed. I was given that the biggest room in the hotel which is really only 10 x 10 but it has its own bathroom. I found the same furniture which being had bought for me and his first hotel which consist of a long desk chair the lamp and a cupboard for my clothes. None of the other rooms have these amenities and they are mostly very very small rooms. On the upstairs there's construction going on to build a fairly large bar as well as a small suite for Bing to live in and a fairly large room which I will use on my next visit to the hotel. The new location is not as quaint as in the past as it is not near a hutong  which are the old Beijing type of neighborhoods with most of the stores. So far I have not discovered a hutong we had in the past years. This location is more central end is near one of the major attractions of Beijing namely the Lama temple. More on this later.

Bing Announced that he had arranged for a dinner for me with a few of his friends as a welcome. An Hour after arriving at the hotel we met up with his friends and off we went for a dinner. Of course I was a little tired. At least this year there not  15 people there as he had done last year. After dinner, we got back to the hotel and I was able to settle in and finally got to bed. 

I woke the next morning feeling terrible with a head cold and a stuffy nose. Luckily I had brought with me all sorts of magic pills and I spent the day today sorry for myself and resting after a long trip. After resting most of the day, Bing announced that he had organized an other dinner with a few more friends.  He seems to have an endless supply of friends, both male and female.  This time, 2 ladies showed up with 2 small trunks which were carried to the restaurant where 3 male friends showed up, one Chinese, one Australian and an other Swedish.  They all live here in Beijing.  We got to a rather dismal looking restaurant with about 10 tables, each with a hole in the middle measuring 12 by 18 inches.  The little trunks were opened and out came 5 bottles of very expensive French red wine while the other trunk held 8 glasses and a wine decanter.  One of the girls is the owner of a wine importing company and this was her treat.  Interestingly, neither I nor she drank a drop.  The next surprise was the arrival of a fire box with glowing coals which was put into the holes in the table along with a leg of lamb on a spit.  We had two such buckets. One is provided with a set of long knives and forks and one cuts oneself pieces of lamb to eat. Various vegetables were also placed on the table such a cut cucumbers, boiled cold cabbage and a few others I had never seen. It was good and I had a great meal.  The meal was lively and all in Mandarin as both the Australian and the Swede live in Beijing and were fluent in Mandarin having studied the language and lived here for several years.  There are still not a huge number of foreigners who speak Mandarin.  So the conversations  got livelier as the evening got longer.  I was able to participate but I tired after a while.  Masses of wine were taken by some of the party. From the labels and the years (2003) I have to assume that these were excellent and expensive wines.  As the restaurant was not far from the hostel, I walked back.  Some of the others continued on to a bar for nightcaps which I really did not need.

The next day, I had my Mandarin lesson by Skype with my teacher who is in Beijing. This is what we do on most days I am at home.  With the 12 hour difference in time, she gives me a lesson when it is morning in Beijing and evening in Virginia. Hao Jie is her name and I have worked for 4 years with her.  I then went out a walked the neighborhood for over 4 hours.  This is how I create situations where I need to use my Mandarin. I walk into stores, I ask questions and sometimes buy small things after going through price negotiations which can last several minutes.  The Chinese are always surprised to see a foreigner who can speak their language and it endears on to them immediately. They are very forgiving and can understand even if one does not get the tones right. I purchased a light weight and cheap backpack to put in my various small items and headed back to the hostel.  I did not want another dinner so I told Bing I would not be going out that night.

The next day, after lessons, my teacher said she was coming over to the hotel to pick up the stuff I had brought for her (thermos, back pack and other items purchased in the US, made in China but which cost half as much as if they were bought in China.  Talk about dumping, that is going on in huge style, but it does keep prices in North America down and inflation in control. She said she would go with me to show me the Lama Temple.  So, off we went to have a bite to eat for lunch and then headed to the Temple.  It is in fact a royal palace which later was given over to become a Buddhist complex.  It is huge extending for about a kilometer in length with some 30 buildings.  It is a quiet island in the middle of bustling and noisy Beijing and operates as a working praying area with monks, smoke candles and people bowing and kneeling in front of huge statues of the various variations of Buddha.  At one point, there were 7 teen age girls all looking very Chinese but speaking English to one an other.  We stopped and asked them where they were  from and found they were from Singapore and were fluent in Mandarin also.  Singapore adopted the teaching of Mandarin to all school children which is a wise move.  The same goes on in Taiwan where Mandarin is also taught to the children.  Given the importance of China to these countries, having the population able to speak Mandarin positions them very well.  These girls were on an exchange visit and were have a ball. 

The temple is a political statement the Chinese government makes to establish the legitimacy of Tibet being part of the Chinese republic based on the historical connection between the country.  As one knows from the news, if one is outside China, there are on going protests by Tibetans against the Chinese presence which often take the form of people setting themselves on fire. It is so bad, that now when the national assembly is meeting in Beijing to do a generational change, the security forces on Tienanmen square the assembly meets, include pairs of firemen with extinguishers standing ready to douse anyone who tries to do a set fire to him or herself...

The 18th party conference is now going on in Beijing a security measures are extreme.  Taxis have been instructed to remove the hand cranks of the passenger windows if coming near any official meeting buildings and security forces are visible everywhere.  But that is all the population knows as no information is provided about what is going on among party members.  Everyone knows who the next president and prime minister will be as these are all determined well in advance of  the meetings. There are some 2000 delegates representing the 82 million party members (out of a population of 1.5 billion, not a large percentage) and they seem to sit around and approve whatever the party leaders put in front of them. It is in fact, a largely ceremonial meeting and a bit of a farce but they go through the sham every 5 years for the appearances of deliberating.  The pictures one sees are masses of dark suits with bad hair jobs.  They all seem bored to extremes and one knows why. But the system seems to continue.  The question is whether the party will evolve fast enough to satisfy the population which is furious about the corruption and graft which is rampant.  There are more millionaires among the government members than in any other country save Saudi Arabia, perhaps.  China's history is a series of putsches installing new rulers when the people decide the current lot are not delivering their security and well being.  The leitmotif of this and any previous dynasty before the current Communist party one is to strive for a harmonious society.  The last thing this or any government can withstand is any of these huge populations getting irritated to the point of taking to the streets.  When these populations of China start that kind of protest, there is little any government can do to put them down.  

On the other hand, I believe that if the current lot were not in charge with an iron fist, this country would probably not withstand a break up into several smaller, more manageable and perhaps more cohesive units.  But more on that later.

Chapter 2

Legitimacy of Power in China and in democracies.

I am writing this sitting in Beijing on November 11. I left the US the day before the November elections.  Even on the day before the elections, it was generally agreed that the results were too close to predict.  The day after I arrived here, the results were announced and it was a landslide victory for Obama.

The following day, the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist party opened to much fanfare.  The city was and still is.  Taxis have been told to remove the window cranks of the passengers, police and security are visible everywhere and the INTERNET has been almost shut down, even when using Virtual Private Networks.  But here the difference is that everybody already knows the results and have for several months.  The congress is to approve all the decisions made by the top leadership of the party and there has been no consultation of the people.  The 2300 delegates brought to Beijing represent the 82 million Communist party members. Their role seems to sit in dark suits with bad hair styles and pretend to be interested in the long and boring speeches being made and then to approve, unanimously please, every decision already taken.  This congress meets every ten years to change the top, middle and other levels of government supposedly to bring in the next generation of leaders.  The congress will sit around for a week or 10 days and then go home.  Whatever decisions are made about who will lead the party, and therefor the country has been haggled out by the 50 or 100 top leaders in back rooms without anyone knowing what kind of deals or compromises were made to finalize the list of these leaders.  As opposed to the US and other democratic countries which spend endless amounts of time laying out their electoral platforms in order to get elected ( and then forget what they promised), in China, the party bosses make all these decisions among themselves.


I find it interesting to contrast these two methods which arrive at the same conclusions using different methodologies.  Both claim that their results are better because of the way they proceed to choose leadership. In a democratic process, supposedly the people decide who will be the leader. This consultation has the same purpose as the communist party congress, except that the decisions have already been taken by the party leadership.  Which process leads to the best result is really the only question which needs to be addressed.  The end of the consultation process is the important matter, not the means to arrive at that decision.

The basis of the democratic process is that the people have the final decision on who will be the best leader.  Yet, if one sees that the percentage of voters who take part in the democratic process rarely is higher than 50%.  Thus to say that the people decide is really pushing the envelope.  

There is the problem facing the democratic system in the US where there are only two parties to choose from to select the leadership.  The spectrum of political positions can hardly be expected to be represented by only two parties.  Other countries have multiple parties which are strongly supported by the groups making up the rainbow of political leanings of the population.  These parties are then strongly supported by the members of these parties as they can strongly relate to the political positions taken by their favorite parties.  Thus environmentalists, libertarians, left leaning, right leaning parties are more able to represent the spectrum of varied beliefs one finds in any modern society.  The problems then faced is that no one of these parties can secure the majority of the votes needed to have a majority in the parliaments and congresses of this world.  This is then resolved by several parties banding together to form a majority government which needs to always heed the positions of the parties making up the coalitions.

In the US with only 2 parties trying to achieve such a majority is almost impossible.  Both parties have extreme wings as well as less extreme centers.  The 

2

more moderate wings of both parties must be assured that their parties will represent them and their moderate potions. Thus, in order to win an election, a party must appeal to the moderates in the voting public.  However, in order to secure the right to represent any one party, leaders must assure the extreme wings that their interests and their concerns will be addressed.  This one saw in the last election where the Republican party was almost dominated by the extreme right under the group name of the Tea Party.  In order to secure the leadership of the Republican party, Romney had to take extreme positions on a whole package of policies in order to convince the right wing, rather radical Tea Party members that he would push their agenda.  It was generally accepted that to hold such extreme positions may get him the leadership of the party but that he would never be able to get the majority of the population, let alone the majority of his party to support him in the popular vote.  Thus one saw how after getting behind all sorts of potty and not generally accepted positions on abortion, gay rights, gnoreign policy, immigration, taxes on the rich and taxes in general, he then started to crawl back to the center where most voters were more supportive. It was fascinating to watch the process.  What was even more surprising to see that the leadership of the Republican  party let the right wing hijack their party pushing it towards policies which clearly did not reflect the more moderate positions of the general voters, or even the more moderate and balanced members of the Republican party.  In fact, one could argue that the Tea Party in fact handed Obama his reelection by pushing such extreme positions and supporting clearly silly and extreme candidates that not only alienated the majority of voters but probably turned off a huge section of the republican party voters.  

This extremism is not typical of the US where the majority of the voters are normal, middle of the road people who live their lives in a normal environment of tolerance and sometimes indifference. Why the leadership  of the republican party allowed itself to be pushed to extreme right by a minority of its members is something that they now certainly regret. One has to suppose that the republican party will analyze their disastrous loss and level heads will tell and or take the leadership forcing more reasonable positions on a whole gamut of policy matters before taking up the next elections.  Whether these reasonable heads like Jeb Bush and Rubio and others will prevail will determine whether the republican party has a chance to regain power in 2016.  One could speculate that they will be excluded from power now for the next decade because of the 2012 loss as the democratic party will no doubt benefit from improving economic situations and a next democratic presidential candidate in 2016 (Hillary?) will win again at least once, perhaps twice.  That takes care of 12 years before the Republican party gets a real crack at the white house.  Thank you very much, extreme right Tea party people!  I can well understand if many republican party members are furious at these extremists which cost them an election which was winnable given the poor economic situation that Obama had to answer for in these elections. 


An additional presumed distortion in the selection of the best leader for the US are the huge amounts of money ($6 Billion) spent by both parties going through the process of convincing the electorate that they had the best person.  How many assumed truths, negative propaganda ads and straight lies were used may one day be established.  What will never be known is how much these vast amounts swayed voters in one direction or the other.  This money was not used to inform voters but to convince them that one or the other candidate was incompetent, inexperienced, unamerican and even a liar.  Did all this money make a better informed electorate?
One needs to doubt it. 

So one can speculate whether the American process actually offered the two best 

3

candidates for the job of president of the US.  Could or would an other process have offered different, better, more competent, more experienced candidates?  There is no way of answering this question.  That being the case the only difference between the US system and the Chinese system is that the electorate is giben the choice of two candidates both chosen by their parties whereas in China the population does not need to be consulted as the party has made the decision for them and there is only one person put forward.

How the Chinese Communist party arrived at its decision to name Li and Ki as the heads of state is completely unknown but one has to assume that their nomination is the result of long discussions and negotiations by the party.  This is similar to what happens in the democratic and republican parties where a small group of leader party members make the decision on who will head the ticket.  Whether the Chinese system puts up finally the best possible candidates can only be  judged after their period in power.  But given the tremendous economic, social and productive advances made by China in the last 30 years, one has to admit that the leadership has taken the hard and right decisions to move the country ahead.  First, they abandoned all the silly Communist policies which only killed jobs and would never have lead China to where it is now.  This also included the shutting of thousands of state owned enterprises which could never have competed on international markets and which would have eaten huge amounts of state resources just to stay alive. The leadership took these hard decisions which changed the ability of China to play on international markets and to earn huge amounts by exporting almost everything we see in the shelves of our stores in the west at prices which have kept inflation in western countries at very low levels for the last 10 years.  It is also thanks to the Chinese productive capacity that prices in the west have been affordable for so many.  Had the Chinese not developed their productive capacity, most items would be so much more expensive if they were made in the West.  Prices of TV's, toys, clothing all would have been much higher had they been made in the West.


This same Chinese leadership also made the wise decision to invest in its own infrastructure in a way and in amounts which are vastly beyond any such effort in the US, Europe or India.  To-day, China has the most advanced and modern infrastructure which will serve it for the next 20 to 50 years.  High speed trains, new airports,  new road, new ports and vast investments in housing at a time that none of that is being done in the West.

Compare this to what is happening in the US in terms of infrastructure alone. Roads built in the 50's by Eisenhower are in a dire need of upgrades. 80% of the bridges in the US will need to be rebuilt quickly or they could fall down.  The rail system has not seen any major investment in the last 20 years.  Part of the reason for this lack of investment is the fixation of the leadership, particularly the republican side on reducing taxes to levels which are currently 6o to 70% below what they were 20 years ago.  The upshot is that the federal government does not have the finances need to invest in new air traffic control systems, in updated radar systems to manage the vast number of commercial airplanes, to inspect the huge amounts of imported goods, to maintain its public parks, pubic forests and so many more of the public assets the federal government is supposed to protect for future generations.  An other area where the most recent leadership of the US has not dealt with at the federal nor at the state and local levels are the pension and social security funding needed to meet the obligations and undertakings made by these entities to their employees.  In order to now try and fund these obligations which should have been built up and paid in over the last 20 years vast amounts of catch up funding will be need or the employees and retirees will never see anything near the pensions promised.  These are decisions and policies which have not been 
4.



made or put in place by the officials elected by the people who entrusted them with taking care of not only their retirement nest eggs but also the future of their children and grandchildren. There has been a total lack of vision by the leadership in the US which has deferred or ignored the hard decisions which needed to be made.

So objectively, one has to conclude that the leadership in China has done a better job as the guardian  of the state than the leadership in the US. This is not to say that there has been no corruption and that this has not been done at a huge cost to human rights but one needs to remember that human rights are not the main concern of the Chinese at this time.  Besides, the Chinese people have a history of 6 or 8 centuries of having a strong central government for most of that period were a series of military persons who replaced each other and then declared they were kings, princes and emperors.  Thus, there is a long tradition in China of a government taking care of the state and providing the population with the need physical security it needs to get on with its life.  I am told that this tradition in China results in the people seeing government as the head of the family and not something outside their own circles.  The Chines still have a lot of respect for the persons in power but those in power also realize that their mandate (from heaven) can or will be removed if they do not take of the people's security and future.  The history of China is replete with governments or dynasties which were ended when the population no longer could identify with those in power.  In China, the current leadership is acutely aware of this and has declared that its goal is “a harmonious society”. Which means, keep them happy or they may through us out. How long it will take until there is a change really depends on how artful and able the government of China is able to convince the population that their interests are being taken care of.  This is why it is impossible to predict how long the Chines Communist party will continue to lead the country as that depends on it putting forward the best candidates who then implement the right policies for the country.  There is little doubt they had been able to do that in the last 50 years.

Therefore to conclude, one should not come down to sanctimoniously on the methodologies used in China to chose its leadership.  If it works, perhaps one need not to fix it.  What happens down the road is anyone's guess and I stress the word guess.  But, in my opinion the success to date of China  in 40 or 50 years going from an underdeveloped country to one that now rivals the US and Europe and which has far surpassed Russia and India is undeniable.  That the country continues to be a unified one despite it huge population and physical dimensions is an achievement which cannot be denied.  In fact, one could make the point that without the hugely powerful central government, China would probably breakdown to a number of small sates based on geography, languages and ethnicity.

As the years pass, vast efforts will need to be made to improve the lives of the people in the countryside who have been neglected because of the focus of building up the urban populations able to provide the labor needed for the current industrialization. Let us hope for the sake of the Chinese populations that they can continue to improve their lot while taking care of the neglected, the older persons and the vast number of young people now being churned out of the universities.  There would be nothing more volatile and dangerous that an increasing number of unemployed, educated yet frustrated university graduates who have nothing to loose if they stand up and start hard protests.  The Arab spring revolutions were led by exactly that class of the populations and the Chinese government is petrified by the prospect of such huge numbers of people taking to the streets of China to try and remove them.  Petrified is perhaps an understatement as the leadership is almost neurotic about avoiding such a situation.
The Chinese are a content lot and studies have showed that up to 80% approve of the 
5.



headship.  This is a much higer approval level than anything one sees in the West. The most recent congress (republican controlled had the respect and support of only 13% of the population according to some polls. But given the short tempers of the Chinese, if protests were to become widespread they would be impossible to contain even at the cost of vast numbers of lives.  So let us see how the Chinese leadership being put in place this weak addresses these challenges and opportunities in the next decades.

Beijing, November 11, 2012

Chapter 3

Chongqing, China yesterday and today.

While in Beijing in the last 3 years, I have stayed at small inns managed by Bing Chao. He is around 35 and has gradually moved from running an inn with 6 rooms, to one last year with 10 rooms. This year, he has taken over an inn with 60 rooms. He is a real entrepreneur who has the financial backing of some friends which has allowed him to gradually grow into managing his current inn. Over the years , he has become a friend and we enjoy each others company.

His current inn is located near the famous Lama temple of Beijing, and on a main street rather than in a traditional Hutong, or old neighborhood of Beijing as were the first two inns he ran. As usual, when I stay at his inns, I get the biggest room in the place and I am fed lunch and dinner with the staff, if I wish. In addition, I end up paying only around US$ 35 per night. The current inn does not have much charm, but while I was there this year, they were completing construction of rooms on the second floor along with what will be a large bar and area where guests can gather. Bing has promised me the largest room in the new addition and I suggested he name the room Da Wei, my Chinese name. This should be completed by the end of the year 2012. The location is better served by having access to 3 different subway line stations as well as buses which go by the inn entrance on Anding men road.

This year Bing insisted that I visit his native town of Chongqing which is some 1800 km s (1000miles) south of Beijing. He wanted me to go for a full week but as I only had 2 weeks this year we compromised and planned a visit of 4 days. So Thursday afternoon, two friends of Bing, Chun Lei and his wife Song Ping picked me up at the inn and we went by taxi to the South Airport, Nanyuan to catch the flight to Chongqing, The flight was on time and used a brand new Boeing 737-800 which could not have been older than a few months. The flight was full but service was efficient and 2 hours later we landed in Chongqing.

Chongqing is a city state and is a huge megalopolis of some 30 million people. It is set at the meeting of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers in an area of China which is very mountainous. Being in the such an area means that the views are spectacular. The city rises up on both sides of the Yangtze and consists of very high mountains and large valleys. This has meant that the city requires very extensive roads built to allow traffic to move in this mountainous terrain. In fact, the road system of this city is the most spectacular I have ever seen. There are 3 huge bridges across the Yangtze river which feed into tunnels and high rising roads. A fourth bridge was being built while I was there in November 2012. Coming of one bridge, one can either enter a mile long tunnel through the mountain or take a rising road which circles upwards to well over 1000 feet above the river and crosses the mountain into the next valley.

The city boasts a very extensive elevated train system which covers so much of the city that it is estimated to carry over 30% of the daily traveling public. It is raised about 300 feet of the ground and the trains run on a central cement track of about a meter in diameter and on two track on the sides of the central track. It is fast, silent and clean with stations which look like something out of Star wars. Traffic on these modern freeways is often down to a crawl but one can still get around the city fairly quickly. There are endless huge apartment buildings of 20 to 30 stories as one sees in most Chinese cities. All these mega complexes have been built in the last 10 years and are not unpleasant to look at. The amount of housing built in China in the last 20 years is staggering and has kept up with the huge influx of people into the cities.

Bing who had left earlier to Chongqing was at the airport to pick us up when we arrived around 8.30 PM. The first thing I heard when we approached the crowd awaiting arrivals was:” Da We, Ye Ye”. It was Bing's now 5 year old son whom I had named Mickey three years earlier. I had not seen him in a year and he had grown but he recognized me, calling me by my Chinese name :”Da Wei” and adding “Ye Ye which is grandfather. There were about 10 persons in the welcoming committee, all friends of Bing.

We all went off to a diner with Mickey and the friends of Bing at a typical restaurant. Interestingly, I have noted that when one is brought into a group of people, no body is really introduced so I have no idea who the 10 or 12 friends were. Everybody was very careful to protect me from the traditional hot foods of the south but I found them not to be that hot. It was a fun dinner with lots of beer, laughs. People took care to speak clearly but inevitably they quickly slipped into the dialect of the area and I was lost to understand. After dinner, I was taken to a studio apartment belonging to a sister of Bing who was out of town (I think). Bing came up with me to the flat on the 17^th floor to let me in and to show me how to operate the heating, gas stove and gas water heating. It was a one room flat with a large bed and little furniture.

I have no idea where the flat was except to know that we drove almost an hour to get there. Mattresses in China do not provide the comfort we are used to. They are usually only 1 inch thick and lay on a hard board surface. The first night in the flat gave me sore hips from sleeping on the hard surface. Then I discovered a couple of pillow-case sized pillows full of seeds and used them to soften up the sleeping area. Heat for the apartment was supplied by a split air conditioner. These units are installed on the wall, near the ceiling and provide both heat and cool air. The heating is not very efficient as the units are high up and heat tends to rise. But it was warm enough. I also learned to deal with the Chinese squat toilets. Now this is an art one needs to learn as a child. I solved the problem by using a small plastic stool which I put over the hole to do my business. Great solution. I leave it to the reader's imagination how that works...

The next morning, Bing picked me up with the 2 Beijing friends and told me we were off to see the mountains in the region. He had several other people already in the van including his son Mickey and an other young couple. He said we would drive through a pretty area of mountains and that it would take some 2 hours. Off we headed south along a super highway north of Chongqing. After an hour we headed off the main road and started up a small road into the mountains. It was in fact a beautiful drive through country and farming areas. It was all still green as we were very far south almost at the level of Hong Kong. These are the areas which feed China. Intense farming could be seen with terraced rice paddies extended down whole valleys. After driving 4 hours we came to a temple site ghost temple situated on the north shore of Yangtze river, in Fengdu about 170 k ms . It is a huge complex of temples built on two hills. Each level has a different temple to a different deity or figure. Confucius, Buddha, Tao and many other. I guess the builders wanted to cover all the bases and make sure that one of the temples would ensure they had a good life thereafter. We climbed for over an hour reaching the top after going through 12 or 14 different temples. All were in excellent shape and the Chinese with me made the climb with great reverence. For people brought up without religions, these temples are obviously something they can relate to. Across the Yangtze river stands the actual city of Fengdu with a population of over 1 million. Most of these people live in high rises along the river and were the people displaced when the Three Gorges Dam started to back up the water 100 miles before the dam. These people were relocated as the water rose almost 400 feet in most places covering houses, towns and factories as well as historic sites lost forever.

After climbing mount Ming we had a simple lunch in the courtyard at the foot of the mountain. Food in China is cheap and available everywhere. Eating is a social event and the Chinese take the time to eat, even if the meal is simple. The food is tasty and they use fresh vegetables and very little meat.

We then left and drove an other 5 hours back to Chongqing. Again, the evening was around a dinner but not before being taken to a lookout high above the Yangtze river to see Chongqing by night. It is a really spectacular sight as all the buildings of the down town are lit up with different colors which are constantly changing. In addition huge laser beams are being sent out from 2 towers on top of the mountains behind us. Of course, the Chinese are very proud of these sites and really enjoy such scenes.

After a nice dinner, I was dropped off at my apartment for the night.

The next day, Bing announced that we would be having lunch with his 80 year old father who still lives in the apartment where Bing grew up. We drove to his father's place which is down on river bank of the Yangtze. It the old part of Chongqing and it gave me an insight of how far China has come in the last 30 years. The father lives in a small three story apartment building which was badly built and falling apart. His flat had two bedrooms and a small living room with a basic bathroom. It was all very small and Bing showed me his room which was no more than 8 by 8 feet. It was dark and damp and a far cry from the modern apartment on the 17^th floor in which I was living. It was this kind of experience which brings home how China has evolved so quickly in just a generation. We went to lunch with his father who had fought in the Korean war and was given the apartment when he returned as a veteran. The father was an educated person who enjoys writing. At lunch, I was placed beside the father who was so elated to be visited that he proudly told me the story of his life. Sadly with my basic Mandarin and his lack of teeth, I could not follow too much of what he was saying. After lunch, we parted great friends with his invitation to come back anytime to visit him.

That evening, we took a cruise on the Yangtze to once again admire the night lights of the city. This time Bing's wife Jojo joined us along with Mickey. She lives in Chongqing as she is unable to bears the climate of Beijing so the family is separated. Sad, but she suffers from a weak immune system and is highly sensitive to sunlight. She is a beautiful women but has aged since I saw her two years ago. She used to be a professional classical Chinese dancer.

The next day we had two more meals with different people and took the 10 pm flight back to Beijing. We arrived at midnight and there were no taxis so we ended up on a bus which took us to Tiananmen Square where we got a taxi back to the hotel.

I had two days before I left Beijing. On the last day, Chun Lei and his wife Song Ping, insisted on taking me to the area tea market area of Beijing. Like most Chinese cities, markets are arranged around one product, spices, pearls, tea etc. Thus in Beijing it is a two block area with buildings with multiple shops selling tea and tea accessories. It is amazing to see how much industry is built around tea. The huge number of teas to start with but then there are shops selling tea trays, tea sets, tea paraphernalia such as kettles, wooden utensils and finally ceramic little animals which live on the tea tray. This is what I had been looking for and the market had thousands of these. I bought a few and then Song Ping who is from northern China and looks more Eskimo than Chinese set about negotiating the price. Chinese people, particularly women love to bargain. She eventually brought the price down by half and everybody was happy. The little critters now live on my tea tray in Virginia.

On the last evening Bing organized a small dinner to say good bye to a few friends. I had told him that I insisted on paying for dinner as I had not been able to pay the whole time while in China. It was a great meal of Beijing Duck and other fine things I had never seen and had no idea what they were. When the food stopped coming I slipped out on the pretext of going to the bathroom. As we were in a private room, no one saw me tell the waiter I wanted to pay the bill which I did. I returned and soon there after Song Ping called the waiter to pay the bill only to find out I had settled it. This caused much consternation but it was finally settled when Bing confirmed that I had set as a condition to dinner that I pay for all. This meal for 10 persons came to US$60. Not bad, when the same meal would have cost US$ 60 per person here at home.

I left China sad and at the same time happy to be heading home after 2 weeks on my own. I find that to be the limit of time I can put up with being unable to really express myself as an adult. But the visit was lots of fun and helped me gain an ever increasing insight into that country. I hope to be able to bring my Mandarin skills up to a level where I could spend 6 months traveling around this beautiful country and meeting its diverse and friendly people. One day perhaps.

Reston Virginia

December 2012