by John Bickel
An ancient Greek saying is that you never step in the same river twice. The water flowing today is not the same as yesterday. Change is a constant all over the world, but the rate of change seems to be greater in China. I last visited in 1993 with the The Consortium for Teaching Asia and the Pacific in Schools (CTAPS) program. I visited a different China this year as a part of the Freeman Foundation trip for 'Iolani students. I enjoyed the company of fellow-chaperone, Maria Au Hoy, and fourteen wonderful 'Iolani juniors and seniors. From the very first sight of the Beijing Airport, I knew the city had grown to the point where I did not recognize much of it. The old terminal I arrived at in 1993 was dwarfed by the other two new terminals. The signs are in roman letters as well as Chinese characters. I thought this was just Beijing preparing for the 2008 Olympics until I saw it across China. The one story "hutong" neighborhoods are few and far between compared to the large high rises that have sprouted up all over the city. The city now covers an area one and one half times the size of the country of Belgium. It has 16 million people. China as a country has 1.3 billion people. The United States is equivalent to only the ".3" part of that figure. Given that some people just round down and state the population of China as "a little over a billion," our population seems insignificant in comparison. 
Large populations provide some benefits and some liabilities. There is an incredible range of products available in China. There is huge pool of labor. There is also a lot of waste produced. In China's case the air holds a lot of pollution. Yet the smell of China is not just the fumes of gas and coal. I smelled something else in the air. It was distinctly China. It seemed to combine smoke of factories, cars and cigarettes with the spices of the food and tea. Combine these smells with the palpable humidity and you get the distinct, lightly pungent, almost peppery air of China. The air is also a reason to visit China beyond just reading about it. I am reminded of a line from "Good Will Hunting" when Robin Williams tells Matt Damon, "The problem with you is that you don't know what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel." He proceeds to remind Damon that his character may know how every part of the ceiling looks. Yet he has never been there and doesn't know what it smells like. He has never had the full experience of being there. The smell of China is part of the full experience.
Beijing has much to delight a history teacher. The greatest sight is the Forbidden City. I was disappointed that Mao's Mausoleum was closed for renovation. The Forbidden City was under renovation but open for tourists. It lacked the grandeur I remember in 1993 when it lacked the scaffolding. This time I got to seem some of the palace treasures on display. Although they pale in comparison to what is in the Palace Museum in Taipei, it was nice to see these in their original home. It is always great for me to roam around a place where history was made. This was the place where China was ruled from the Ming Dynasty through the Qing Dynasty. By tradition it has 999 rooms; in actuality it a little over 800 rooms. It is still a magnificent complex.
The first afternoon in Beijing we went to a Kung Fu school. Students were in preparation for final exams. We did get so see some in action, however. After the school we had a vegetarian dinner at a restaurant just outside the Forbidden City. We then walked through a night market and tasted a local delicacy we called "stinky tofu." It tasted better than it sounds. On the way back to our hotel, we walked through the Wangfujing pedestrian mall. Some students went for Haagan-Daz. Maria and I enjoyed a upscale tea shop.
The next day was my 45th birthday. It began with a mass in the Catholic church near our hotel. For a change I was regretting Vatican II and its acceptance of mass in the vernacular. I would have understood a lot more if the mass was in Latin and not Putong Hua (Mandarin Chinese)! As I got on the bus, Maria led the students in a chorus of "Happy Birthday" in Chinese. We first visited the Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square. As the capital building of China it has majestic rooms and a massive hall for the meeting of the National People's Congress. Next it was the icon of Beijing, the Temple of Heaven. The wooden structure without nails or pegs was originally built in 1420 and rebuilt after a fire in 1889. Near it is the Temple of Earth a flat structure of nine levels each with rows of stones that number in multiples of nine. As interesting as the monuments were, we also enjoyed seeing the senior citizens playing games and singing in the park on the way to the temples. China has a large unemployment problem. To reduce this they have mandatory retirement age to open jobs for young people. As a result a large number of Chinese are healthy and active in their 60s but not employed. They pass their time in activities from Tai Chi to majong, to music. We joined in a game of hacky-sack.
Our guide, Spring Soong, told us that the Chinese say the Americans travel on buying cheap souveneers; the Japanese travel on buying expensive name-brand gifts; the Chinese travel on their stomachs. We were as Chinese as we were Americans. Lunch on the ninth of June was at a noodle shop. The noodles were outstanding--fresh and served with a delicious soy paste sauce--and so was the dish of blanched potatoes with vinegar. The waiters were a show in themselves as they shouted orders and quickly (and noisily) collected dishes. One waiter carried a stack of a a dozen cups in one hand while collecting a table full of bowls with the other.
Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty spent a lot of money in the 18th century. The Summer Palace just outside Beijing was one of his projects. He had the lake dug and a mountain raised to enhance the gardens. Further enhancement came in the late 19th century when Cu Xi took money for a navy a built a marble boat on the artificial lake instead. We walked around the lake then took a boat ride across it. Dinner that night was in a Sichuan restaurant. Spring arranged a birthday cake for me for dessert. Again I got a chorus of "Happy Birthday" in Chinese. I got more celebration out of my birthday than I would have at home! After dinner Maria and I walked around Wangfujing to the Raffles Beijing Hotel with its luxurious lobby and hallways. They were lined with museum quality artifacts, jades, and craft works dating from the Han to the Qing Dynasties. In a country with so much history, so much history is around--a history teacher's delight.
After a drive through the Olympic Village and a stop at the cloisonné factory, we arrived at the reat Wall at Badalung. Despite the numerous vendors, the views over many miles of mountains an valleys were awesome. The wall twisted and turned on the mountain peaks. From Badalung we went back to Beijing via a trip to the Ming Tombs. At the Shaoli Kung Fu School we were treated to a Jackie Chan style show. Students did gymnastics, flips, jumps, broken boards and porcelain. At times it looked like special effects from a movie, but it was all real right in front of us. Yet the highlight of the day was the Peking Duck dinner at Hepingmen. (Yes our stomachs rule again!) On the way in we saw pictures of dignitaries from Richard Nixon to Helmut Kohl who had eaten there. The duck is served with a lotus pancake and not the bun like back home. The special sauce and spicing of the duck made it the best I ever had. Our table of nine consumed 80 wraps of duck! The group of 16 of us ate four whole ducks in addition to a dozen other dishes that went with the meal. We all left very stuffed.
China is a country of contrasts. That was obvious to us the day we went to the "hutongs" near the Shishahai Lake. We took a rickshaw tour including a stop at a kindergarten. I managed a little shopping on a side street before we had lunch at the home of local resident. She made jiaoze or dumplings. They were delicious. We also enjoyed a chance to sit in an air-conditioned room for a while. In the afternoon we visited Yihai English language immersion school and got an interesting lecture from Dr. Zhou on education. We also got to make paper cuts with the elementary kids.
The overnight train to Luoyang was comfortable enough as long as we avoided the bathroom. Luoyang became the capital of the Zhou Dynasty in 550 BCE and served as a capital for a few dyansties over the next few centuries. We walked through the famed White Horse temple. Still active as a Buddhist temple, it was founded in 68 CE. The current design dates from the 1500s. After lunch it was off to more Buddhist relics at the Dragon Gate Grottoes. After the grottoes we tried to fly kites by a riverside park.
A self-proclaimed eighth wonder of the ancient world is the set of terra cotta statues of Xian. Approximately 8,000 different soldiers and horses were buried over 2200 years ago to protect the Qin Dynasty Emperor Shihuangdi in the afterlife. There are three pits in various stages of recovery/reconstruction. The scale astounds the imagination. So much effort put into an afterlife. So much work just buried. To me it demonstrates the capability of humans to get absurd when they face fears and things unknown.
After putting the kids to bed Thursday night, Maria and I walked to the public space near one of the old city gates. Standing between the ancient city walls of Xian and the Gucci store in the HSBC building, hundreds of people gathered to sing and dance and play games. Dozens of people in a circle are directed by a conductor and accompanied at times by a single alto saxophone. They sing the praises of Mao Zedong. A few feet away dozens more dance with brightly colored fans and umbrellas (men and women alike) in styles reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution. There is China. Simultaneously it stands in the shadow of both its ancient glory and the new capitalist giants that have fostered unprecedented economic growth. There between the ancient splendor and the majesty of capitalist skyscrapers are people singing the praises of communism at the same time they are living very capitalist lives. No one was wearing the Mao jackets mandatory in the early communist years. Entrepreneurial vendors sold fans, sausages, and drinks. Others sold the right to play games of chance and skill. The spontaneous yet nightly activities cost little money but brought people together. One man wearing a white scarf on his head and cumber bun like belt on his waste demonstrated the strength of provincial Shaanxi culture and style. Our past indeed lives in our lives. The Chinese especially demonstrated the power of the past even in the current times of fast paced change.
Probably the most eye-opening experience of the trip was a visit to a school in the farming village outside of Xian where we stayed a night. The village and the homes we stayed in were not as primitive as we might have expected. The school was. The bathroom was an outhouse with no running water. The walls look like they had not been painted since the school was built in 1976. The village home did have western-style toilets and air-conditioned bedrooms. Mrs. Wen and Mr. Wang hosted Matt Kor, Jon Wong, Kevin Duong, Misha Han, and myself. Our hosts didn't speak English so the students were forced to practice their Chinese. We helped the host make fresh noodles for dinner and then enjoyed a dance in the town square afterward. The next day in the fields was not very productive as all the ripe fruit had already been picked. We got a nice walk in the fields nonetheless.
From London to New York to San Francisco to Honolulu, so many Chinese paintings depict the karst topography of the Guilin area of Guangxi Province. I remember geology class in college studying these limestone features. Finally I got to see them up close. If anything, they inspire more awe than the best of the art they have inspired. The rough rugged edges, Osthmanthus trees, the fog, and the Li River make for some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. Despite the high humidity, I fell in love with this area. the city has helped preserve the beauty by limiting buildings to about seven stories. Around many corners, one can see greenery, rock, or water. Nature has come to perfection of visual beauty in this place. In addition to the natural beauty of Guilin, we enjoyed a great lunch at a restaurant known for the vidual beauty and design of the food. After that we had a fun afternoon entertained by students at Guanxi Normal University.
From "Indochine" to "Apocalypse Now," Hollywood has portrayed the lush tropics of Vietnam and life along its rivers. In the province just north of Vietnam, we rode the boat down the Li River. The beauty of Guilin's karst topography continued to be on display for the over three-hour cruise. We even got to see the mountain depicted on the back of the 20 Renminbi note. We arrived in Yangshuo, a town that has grown from a sleepy village by the river to a haven for tourists. The plethora of shops and constant activity reminded me a bit of Kuta on Bali. The Chinese flavor the city with better food and great variety of goods to shop.
The Yinzi or Silver Cave has more stalactite and stalagmite formations than any other I have been in. Some parts were huge rooms with columns of stone reminding me of European cathedrals. Lunch was hot and humid but with the best view on any restaurant on the trip. We had a panoramic view of karst topography like being surrounded by artwork. After lunch we went to a village call Lugong Island and visited a local couple's humble home. The two-story abode had one electric light, curtains around the two beds to keep out mosquitoes, dirt floors and only one wall decoration, a poster of Mao Zedong.
Our last sight in Guanxi Province was to see the Elephant Trunk formation at Guilin on the way to the airport. It is an icon of the city and Maria had to use her persuasive powers to get the guides to let us stop there. It was well worth it.
In Hangzhou we visited an orphanage on the outer edge of the city. The facilities were better than I expected. They had some air conditioned rooms and a swimming pool. (Although it lacked water when we saw it.) After lunch we took a boat cruise on Xihu (West Lake) and visited a tea plantation and a silk factory. I enjoyed learning about how they dry the tea first by air and then in a hot wok like pot. The smell of the tea was wonderful. They also explained how healthy green tea is for you. We were able to smell the difference between the early clippings and the later less fragrant clippings.
Our last Friday in China we took a comfortable train to Suzhou. After a good lunch at our hotel, the Suzhou Hotel, we went to an awesome high school. The facilities looked better than UH to me. It was a public school but students have to pay tuition to go there. It was a first rate facility. Some of our students got to play basketball. The star of our team was Grace! The Chinese team was pretty good competition, but Grace often got the best of them.
After a morning visiting the Fishnet Garden and an embroidery factory, we spent the afternoon at the Tiget Hill Pagoda park, the most famous in all of Suzhou. The city is known for its canals and gardens. The gardens around the pagoda demonstrate the Chinese appreciation of nature and their ability to imitate and manipulate it in subtle ways.
We spent some time at a rural village called Lu Zhi. Unfortunately by this time in the trip, the students were tired and their immune systems weak. In the afternoon, the girls went to the hotel to rest and I escorted the boys on what was supposed to be a shopping outing. Haagan Daz was the first stop; so much for "shopping."
From Suzhou we took the bullet train to Shanghai. Like the Japanese Shinkansen, the train sped over 100 mph to its destination. Again we saw a garden and did some shopping. The afternoon was spent at the Shanghai Museum. It has greatly improved since 1993; even then I was awed by its collection. Among the historic and beautiful jade, paintings, furniture, and statues, I was particularly impressed by the porcelain. My favorite is the piece dated 6800 BCE!
Before dinner we managed to get in a performance of the Shanghai Circus the finale of which was spherical cage of about forty feet in diameter. Into the cage drove five motorcycles. They managed to whiz around each other without a collision. We were all amazed. 
Given his connections to "Iolani and his place in world history, Sun Yatsen is near and dear to my heart. Therefore I was thrilled to pay another visit to his home. Like all the other sights I went back to, this one had been much improved in the last fourteen years. There was a whole museum built next to the actual home. The museum included a large copy of the picture of him at age eighteen, his "Iolani yearbook photo. Not only has the museum changed since 1993, I have changed. I read the book "The Soong Dynasty" and seen the film based on it, "The Soong Sisters." So I not only appreciated the house as the home of Sun but also of his wife, Soong Ching-ling.
After our farewell banquet, we took a cruise on the Huang Pu river to see the lights of the city. The whole eastern section of the city, Pu Dong, didn't exist in 1993. A little less than the size of Manhattan, it has all grown up in the last decade and a half. Shanghai has a population of 17 million. It is trying to outdo Hong Kong. Soon it will have the tallest building in the world. It already has the fastest train in the world. We got a chance to take this train on our way to the airport to leave China. It went 431 kilometers per hour. This Maglev train has no wheels; it was levitated and propelled by magnetic force. The Germans designed it. 
Shopping on Nanjing Road in our last binge before we left China, I noticed that in that pedestrian mall were some of the most expensive boutiques in any city. They were not far from little backroom joints that sold cheap fake designer goods. Some of the small shops just off the main road were vendors willing to make deals and sell goods for prices way below that in the United States. As a rising economy in the world, China has the nouveau riche who are practicing the same kind of conspicuous consumption of those in the west a century ago. They live in expensive condominiums, drive luxury foreign cars, and wear sheik labeled clothing.
Yet this country has massive unemployment. One third of this year's college graduates will not get a job. The competition for jobs is so severe that wages are very low for most. For entrepreneurs, the wealth can be beyond that which would have been dreamed by their parents. Many poor people from the country come to cities looking for jobs. Some are living in the train stations having found disappointment in the job markets of Beijing, Xian, Hangzhou, or Shanghai. Many in the villages live in poverty. Their public facilities are in greater need of repair than some of the worst facilities in Hawaii.
While some in cities have the most modern transportation, many others have bicycles or their own feet. While some are getting very wealthy off of the over ten percent growth in the per capita Gross National Product, some see no positive change. The country is working hard to put on a good face for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
They want to showcase the positive side of their economic growth. They can take pride in the rich history of past greatness. They can point to great potential for the future. They cannot prove that all their people are enjoying the blessings of their prosperity. Of course that inequality belies its communist heritage. The posters and songs adoring Mao are there. But those old values are falling and falling at a price.
