I visited three cities in Asia previously: Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo, all on a single business trip for Bank of America. This was my first trip to mainland China.

Guangzhou
A city in the Canton region with over 2,800 years of documented history and a current population of about 6.7 million people. It is an important commercial trading city, sitting on the Pearl River upstream from Macau and Hong Kong. It is also modern compared to many other large cities in China. Many high rise commercial and residential buildings occupy the landscape.

The climate is sub-tropical. During our stay, and for much of the year, the temperature was in the 90s and the humidity hovered between 91 and 99%.

The British controlled much of the Canton region from the middle 1800s to 1927, when the communists took over and sent the British running in their ships to Hong Kong.

Crowds
My previous week-long stay in Hong Kong was a good rehearsal for this trip to the mainland, as it introduced me to the character of China and its people. One morning in Hong Kong many years ago, I decided to walk to the office from my hotel, rather than take a cab. Hong Kong sidewalks on busy streets, have pedestrian guard rails to keep people from falling into the street, the potential for this I did not fully comprehend until I ventured out during rush hour that morning. During most of that trek, I could not have seen my own feet had I needed to; people were that tightly packed together. The crowd moved as a river under the power of some unseen force. Had I been wearing roller skates, I could have slept all the way to work. The perpetual motion of the crowd would have seen to it that I made my way to the office.

At one point along the way, forward motion of the crowd simply stopped. People still pushed and shoved and tried to take steps, but they were going nowhere, much like a vehicle spinning it’s wheels in snow. I had the advantage of height and I could see a few yards ahead that another sidewalk was intersecting in a T with our sidewalk. People were approaching this T from all three directions and restrained by the pedestrian guard rails, the crowd had come to a total stop in pedestrian gridlock. I remained wedged in there for perhaps a minute before concluding that since I was bigger and stronger and had a view similar to a periscope, I needn’t remain trapped. So, I just gently pulled people apart and fought my way through, which required perhaps another minute. When I broke free on the other side, I looked back and saw this sad scene of people standing face-to-face, going nowhere. And, everyone seemed to treat it as a routine, acceptable incident.

Under certain circumstances, people in China move as a solid mass. If you hold the door for a lady or a senior citizen, 100 more people will rush past before you can count to 10. I quickly learned that I had to push and shove with the best of them just to get anywhere. We experienced the same crowd perpetual motion phenomenon at the Ming tombs in Beijing, as I had years earlier in Hong Kong. We were far underground, funneling through narrow corridors and the crowd simply became it’s own locomotive. At one point, I said to Fen, "I don’t even have to lift my feet; I can just let the "force" slide me along."

Food
I had briefed myself on the nuances of traditional Chinese cuisine through what I read prior to this trip. I knew that it was quite unlike what I experience in the U.S.. Chinese restaurants here bow to the health conscious, picky appetites of the West. I knew before going, that food prepared in China is usually quite greasy, but I still was surprised by what I saw, tasted and became ill from. After a couple of undesirable post-meal experiences, I adopted a practice of eating very light and stuck to rice and boiled vegetables as much as possible, incorporating small pieces of chicken or beef only when I thought there was a chance my stomach could handle it. This approach, together with supplements from my imported stash of granola bars and pop tarts, proved adequate. All in all, my two weeks in China was a costly, though harshly successful diet plan.

Water is not served with meals and diners drink large amounts of tea with their food. I was told that tea serves partly as an antidote to the grease and oil in the food. I’m not a tea drinker and would have become just as ill drinking it, as I would eating certain of the foods set before me.

The other aspect of the cuisine is the inclusion of tender morsels that I would normally eradicate as weeds, or squirt with insecticide in my own yard. Our hotel in Guangzhou was near the Snake Restaurant, which didn’t get its name because it’s run by an untrustworthy fellow. You pick your favorite dish found among large tubs on the sidewalk, the attendant retrieves it while you go inside and take a seat, the cook either skins it and serves parts of it to you Sushi style, or cooks it for you. I lost my appetite every time I had to walk past that place and skirted it as best I could to keep from being pushed into one of those tubs.

In Beijing, Fen and I walked along a street lined with food vendors who cooked your selection right there on the street. They had vegetables, chicken, pork, beef and seafood, including whole baby Octopus and Squid, but there was also a healthy assortment of insects on a stick.

Fortunately, we saw MacDonald's restaurants nearly everywhere and they are very popular. We also saw many KFCs and some Starbucks and Pizza Huts. In Beijing our tour bus passed an Outback Steakhouse. I considered hijacking the bus, but the thought of 20 years in a Chinese prison had little appeal. I’m still having second thoughts.

Pollution
Having lived in California during the bad air pollution of the 70’s, I thought I had seen the worst. Driving through Los Angeles used to make my eyes burn. Sunset was a day-long event; its dark orange rays struggling to leak through the smog of an otherwise clear day. And, I knew through my pre-trip studies, that China is among the worst regions on the planet for air and water pollution.

Many of the things I encountered on the trip, I had prepared for mentally before leaving home. You cannot, however, prepare yourself for the air of Guangzhou. For my immaculate lungs, the air was unbreathable. I generally have an aversion to breathing anything I can see; the air of Guangzhou can be seen, felt, tasted, rubbed over your body, scraped off your face and sliced with the proverbial knife.

You might recall news footage from the 60s of the streets of Asia dense with bicycles. Advance the calendar 40 years and you find that 80% of those bicycles have been replaced by smoke-spewing motorbikes, busses and cars. The sub-tropical, climate of South China works to push the bad air right down to eye level. I had the impression that inhaling from a Toyota tail pipe of a California registered car, would have been more healthy than walking the streets of a city in China.

Water and ground pollution have made it impossible to deliver safe drinking water from the tap, which must be boiled. Many people rely on bottled water. The Pearl River flows through Guangzhou and is revered as a visual and transportation asset. The city has built public walkways along the river front. Restaurants and hotels are built next to and over the river. Cruise boats ply the waters. People take fish from the river for dinner. In reality, the river is chocolate colored and heavily polluted. You can stand on the banks and watch the dead, rotting corpses of critters float by. It smells like a sewer and you can see sewer lines from the city flowing into it.

By far, my greatest struggle was breathing the air. Beijing was better than Guangzhou, probably due to the climate which was cooler and less humid than South China, but still far worse than any other place I’ve been. Upon landing in Los Angeles on our return trip, I felt like I was breathing pure oxygen.

Transportation
An air conditioned taxi in Guangzhou will cost you a minimum of $.85 (USD) and a maximum of perhaps $4.00. It’s a bargain and better than most amusement park rides, if you have the stomach to see innocent pedestrians cut down in the prime of their lives. Just kidding. I never saw any traffic-related injuries or fatalities in the two weeks I was in China. But, the risks are immeasurable.

Two and three-wheeled bicycles, motor bikes, push carts, rickshaws, cabs, private cars, busses and pedestrians all share the road with equal abandon and recklessness. A two lane street will have vehicles three and four abreast, with bikes and scooters wedged in between and people on foot weaving among them all. It amounts to a very disciplined, almost choreographed chaos.

If there’s a space in the processional wide enough for one car to pass through, half a dozen vehicles of all sizes and shapes will converge on it at the same time at breakneck speeds. Then, at the very last minute, with no more than a paper-thin margin of error, one of those vehicles will succeed and all of the others will yield and come to a screeching stop. No honking horns. No yelling or fist waving. It’s a massive game of Chicken with the winner gaining the respect of the competition. And that happens every ten seconds of every cab ride during normal hours.

I was surprised that China doesn’t handle cars like Hong Kong did when I visited there several years ago. There, when the light turns red, drivers must turn off their engines and their lights until the light turns green again. I suppose that helps reduce pollution.

Guangzhou has a nearly new underground subway, similar to any modern U.S. subway or light rail system. You can go anywhere in the city for a U.S. quarter. It is clean, fast and efficient.

Public busses are cheap, but given the steady cloud of vehicle exhaust pouring in through the open windows, and the countless hard stops, I didn’t find them a very positive experience. A bus can carry perhaps 60 passengers, but only has hard, wood-slat seats for about 20; everyone else stands, or tries to.

Apparently, you are on the affluent scale if you can afford a motor scooter or motorcycle. You commonly see dad driving, mom on the back with one or two little tikes perched on each of her knees.

Freight delivery is still handled by push cart and bicycle. You’ll see in several of my pictures, guys pedaling bikes piled high with boxes and crates.

Style
Most everyone has adopted Western style dress. Even the bums I saw (and there weren’t many) were well dressed. Some elderly people hold-out for the pajama style uniforms of the previous decades, when the party deemed it appropriate for everyone to look the same.

New buildings are built in the style of Western architecture. Beijing is in a race to prepare for the 2008 Summer Olympics, revitalizing older sections of the city (often, at the expense of historical sites), clearing land for an Olympic village and building stadiums and other venues for games. A light rail system is being built. They had to rebuild their airport (very modern) and a freeway system between it and the city just to be considered in the competition to host the games. The airport and freeway includes English signage and is easy to navigate.

Politics
It’s probably not fair to come to make conclusions about a country’s political and governmental state of affairs after a two week visit, but what I observed did supplement my pre-trip studies and what I’ve learned over the past several decades.

I suspect that communism in China will not erode away as it did in Latin America, or collapse as it did in Eastern Europe. I do not believe that the general populace of China cares one way or the other. The premier and central party have cleverly yielded to certain Western cultural and business practices they consider profitable, retaining control over areas of Chinese society that really has little effect on the people. The result is an apparent lack of nationalism on the part of the people.

I get the impression that the daily life of a citizen is conducted first and foremost for their own survival, and second in respect of their cultural heritage and traditions (which cannot be extinguished by a small band of socialists). Historical sites, which due to their age make the discovery of Plymouth Rock about five minutes ago in our past, are heavily visited and respected. Those that were damaged or destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, have been restored. There’s a trace of adherence to Buddhism among the people, mostly in the young who did not undergo the public eradication of all religions during the revolution. A sizable segment of the population simply has no concept of religion, for they were born and raised under Mao and his policy mandating the total absence of religion. The government has licensed a few, large Christian churches, but I never saw one. It is known that many underground, illegal Christian churches thrive in China. I’m sure the government could easily quell this if they had a mind to, but I’m sure they realize it’s not to their advantage to do so.

I expect that the socialist in China will continue to adopt capitalistic behaviors that bring profit to their own pockets, gradual increase for the general economy, and greater satisfaction from a predominantly agreeable population. They will remain in control of leadership and that will probably be just fine with the average citizen. There are enough people in China to overthrow the entire Red Army and the government in one night if they were motivated to do so. It simply doesn’t matter that much to them.

Communist states generally restrict travel in an attempt to keep a tight reign on their people. For a person from the country to visit the city, or a city dweller to go to the coast for the weekend, was nearly impossible 20 years ago. Now, people can move about China quite freely without permits and checkpoints. Freedom of movement buys a lot of satisfaction from a people.

If it weren’t for the massive size of the Red Army, it would be a joke. The average soldier is a teenager, wearing a uniform 3 sizes too large and looking like he belongs on your front porch at Halloween. Officers have commanding presence and look the part of professional soldiers. You see the army everywhere and it is difficult to tell the difference between police, army and private security guards; they all wear similar uniforms and patches.

The gravest Army presence I saw, was in Tiananmen Square. Popular with tour groups and city residents alike, is the daily flag lowering ceremony in the Square at sunset. We were there on a rainy afternoon, with 2,000-3,000 other people. At the appointed time, a contingent of goose-stepping Army troops marched into the Square in formation. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the national flag was slowly lowered, folded and the troops marched off again. Then the lights on all of the government buildings surrounding the square started coming on (very impressive).

As we watched this scene, I noticed the new security cameras on every light standard in the square (I’d read about them earlier). Then I noticed that a half dozen police step-vans had taken up positions around the perimeter of the crowd. On the roofs of some of the vans were remote-controlled cameras and shotgun microphones permitting the occupants to eavesdrop on conversations for the purpose of catching dissidents and other troublemakers.

When we were in Guangzhou, we stayed at two hotels, both of which are on Shamien Island, a centuries-old man-made island on the Pearl River. It is close to the riverbank, with the river on one side and separated from the rest of the city only by a narrow canal or moat. I don’t know who built the island or when, but it became the central place for Western embassies and consulates when Britain controlled South China nearly 100 years ago. Most buildings on the island are left over from that era, and the Chinese government has put plaques on them so you can read what country they originally belonged to, and what purpose they served. The British had the biggest and largest number of the buildings. They are built to colonial standards and look like they belong in London. One of our hotels, the Victory Hotel, was one such building before the Chinese ran the British off around 1927.

It was a curious experience to wander around the island, through the embassy gardens (several pictures of which I’ve included in my collection), and to imagine what it was like in that little remote piece of Europe, set apart only by a narrow moat from what was then a fairly primitive Chinese society. There are two or three stone bridges (dating to about 1865) crossing the moat. I’ve seen a movie or two about that period with the small British army contingent barricaded at those bridges, trying to hold-off thousands of attacking Chinese.

People
The nicest part of my trip was meeting and encountering people. Everywhere we went, we were treated like friends. Certainly, all of Fen’s family and friends were very kind, generous and gracious toward me. Even though I could not converse with most of them, I feel like I have many genuine friends in Guangzhou. The people on the Beijing tour with us, treated me like a good neighbor and expressed kindness in every way they could.

People stopped us on the street to practice their English, or to simply take a picture with the bearded American. That aspect of the trip was a lot of fun. I’m in a hundred snapshots with people I don’t know. Waiters and hotel staff tried to practice their English with me. Young children loved making faces at me, and loved even more, the faces I made back at them. I saw a lot of smiles and heard a lot of giggles on the trip and wish I had an audio recording or videotape of them.

Before I lost the digital camera, it was a great friend-maker. I would take a picture of someone and show it to them immediately on the LCD screen. It was a big hit. I lost nearly 150 pictures when the camera was stolen; great candid people pictures that only a small camera can get quickly and unobtrusively. Half an hour before the camera disappeared, I considered replacing the memory card with a new one to preserve what I had, but I didn’t. Should have followed my instincts.

Foreign adoptions
China has to be the new world center for baby adoptions. We probably saw a hundred Western couples (Americans and Germans, mostly) pushing strollers around the hotels and streets of Beijing and Guangzhou with Chinese infant girls. I was aware that many American families adopt babies from China, but I did not realize the scope of this until our visit.

Population control in China consists of a government policy mandating one child per family which, if exceeded, costs you in penalties and career opportunities. When you combine that policy with the traditional Chinese view that males are of greater value to society and the family, the result is an oftentimes diabolical bias against newborn girls. The divorce rate is also very high in China, because a man will often leave his wife if she insists on keeping her baby girl.

For decades, a large percentage of newborn girls have been killed or abandoned after birth by their own parents, or with the help of attending nurses and doctors. This practice continues, but in recent years, noise from the West gave the Chinese government the idea to appease their critics and make a profit by allowing foreign adoptions (essentially baby selling).

I had mixed feelings about what I saw. I was certainly grateful for every living, breathing, giggling, little girl I saw that was being rescued by a family in the West. It was also a constant reminder that many, many more babies are killed ruthlessly everyday in that country.

It was comforting to see, that at the age of 6 months to 2 years, the estimated age of most of the babies we saw, they have formed no bonds. When they are selected from an agency, they are instantly taken into the loving arms of a person who wants them more than anything else in the world. That little girl probably experiences more touching and love in her first 24 hours with her new parent, than she has since her birth. We saw one set of girl twins, and one brother-sister combination, but no lone male babies.

Culture
You would not look twice if you were to see an average citizen of Guangzhou or Beijing walking the streets of Miami, Seattle or London. Their dress is usually Western and contemporary. They would only rate your attention if they asked directions in Cantonese or Mandarin, or attempted to pay for something with currency bearing the likeness of Chairman Mao.

My tour companions and Fen’s family were quick to order me a fork at meal times, but I adapted to chop sticks fairly quickly and got passing grades and many laughs from the experts. When I realized that I was providing the entertainment at dinners, I obliged and made the most of it. On one occasion, Fen was finding it impossible to grab a slippery piece of celery with her chopsticks and I made a big deal about handing her my unused fork, which brought a few laughs on my behalf.

Civility and politeness are ingrained into me much more deeply than I was aware. Even when being trampled by the masses, I found it very difficult not to hold the door for a lady, a child or a senior citizen. If I were to live in China, I think I would make it my personal objective to influence the entire society to be more polite. I’m sure I would fail, but I’m stubborn enough to try.

Everyone I met, everywhere we went, was clean and nicely dressed. More so, than I believe, than you could say for large numbers of people wandering about Los Angeles or Phoenix on any given day. However, when you see the homes that some of them emerge from, you wonder how it’s possible for them to look so well groomed and stylishly clothed. We walked among the back streets of Guangzhou, where some homes are little more than three walls and a roof. For many, running water is from a community faucet. Many people don’t have dedicated kitchens or sleeping areas; one room serves all purposes, including their business.

I realized that things I saw as hardships, were very appreciated by the people living with them. I saw housing as demoralizing, but people I met were proud to show off their living quarters. I found the cuisine – they serve the same basic diet for three meals a day – monotonous, but they are very enthusiastic when any meal time rolls around and eat hardy. I could not imagine more than 5 minutes on a Guangzhou city bus, but regular riders were reading, sleeping or chatting away just like you would find on good public transportation in any U.S. city. The air quality was the worst I’d every experienced, yet young children ride on bikes and busses, sucking up that pollution with smiles on their faces and adventure in their eyes. The inconvenience of never drinking or brushing your teeth with tap water, even making sure you don’t swallow a drop when showering, is second nature to a resident of China. (However, thousands die every year from dysentery and cholera from making one mistake with the water.) Tipping has not been universally adopted yet in China, so if you give a bell boy or cab driver a tip equivalent to a U.S. dime, you’ve made a friend forever. Shopping on the street requires negotiating and if you don’t speak the language, you negotiate with a calculator and facial expressions, which is a lot of fun.
 
Ghosts
This is my favorite topic, one which I learned before the trip through the education provided me by Fen.

Many cultures and peoples around the world consider themselves to be special. The Chinese are no different. They traditionally have considered themselves to be the world’s purest race. There’s a long, mythical story that recounts why this is so, but I can’t remember all the details so I won’t try to tell it. The bottom line, is that a person of 100% Chinese lineage is a member of the purest race on earth.

In Chinese dialects, the term for their pure race equates to the English word "human." The Chinese term for all other people groups in the world is equivalent to the English word "ghost." However, this application of "ghost" is not as we commonly use it. It doesn’t represent a spooky spirit in a white sheet. It’s just their way of labeling a non-Chinese person.

Fen warned me about this several weeks before we left, because she said I would likely encounter that concept when I began to meet her more traditional friends and family. I thought it was hilarious and didn’t think too much about it. But, low and behold, I encountered it frequently and I enjoyed it immensely each time. Frequently, Fen would translate a conversation for me and I would be referred to, not by name, but as "the ghost."

One of the more memorable incidents was when we boarded the tour bus in Beijing at the start of our tour. The guide stood at the front of the bus, introducing herself and the second guide, describing where we would go that day and general procedures for our week together. Of course, it was all in Cantonese, so I didn’t understand a word of it (or for the next 5 days). But, at one point, the passengers laughed and looked toward the back of the bus where and I Fen were seated. Fen said to me, "oh, the guide just say, this is special day because we have a ghost on tour and they want you to wave." I waved and they all clapped. They considered it very special that a ghost would choose to spend 5 days with them on a Chinese tour, with no English translation (except for what Fen did for me), rather than take a tour designed for Western tourists. All that week, everyone treated me like a very special "ghost."

Believe me, it’s hard to be humble when you’re the only ghost around! So, I didn’t even try.
 

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