IN THIS PHOTO: Your favorite blogger at The Forbidden City, Beijing, China. Other photos taken from my iphone are below the commentary. Many more and far better pictures I took with my digital camera are to come in the days ahead.
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To all of you of the Jitterbug cult, and to fellow travelers in my Christian journey–thanks for all your good wishes and your prayers for me while I knocked around for a couple of weeks in faraway China—which, all in all, is like a whole other country.
My time there was wonderful and the entire trip went without a hitch–all my flights left and arrived right on time and my one piece of luggage that was not carry-on never got lost once–pretty amazing considering all the flights I made and how, in this day and age, luggage doesn’t always arrive where it’s supposed to get and flight delays are normal.
I’m recovering from serious jet lag. I flew out of Beijing around 6 o’clock the morning of Sept. 14 and arrived in Chicago around 6 o’clock the morning of Sept. 14 before my last leg of the trip back home to Dallas yesterday. It’s impossible for me to sleep on a plane, so yesterday I got home and unpacked a bit and hit the bed around 2 p.m., hoping to nap a few hours and then to get back on my regular sleep schedule last night.
As it turned out, I slept like a rock from that 2 p.m. time Tuesday until 8 a.m. this morning, which I think, in my haze of jet lag, must be Wednesday morning. Fortunately, my vacation is still on and I don’t have to be back on hospital duty till Sunday, so there is serious resting ahead for this weary globe trotter.
I’ve got roughly a million pictures I took with my pocket-sized Panasonic digital and will be posting China pix here on occasion. China was as fascinating, colorful, interesting and as beautiful as I expected it would be, but America is still the envy of the world and the Chinese people envy us as much or more than people in any other country. For all the development and progress there’s been in China, we’re still light years ahead of them in terms of freedom, standard of living and anything you can think of. They build dazzling, beautiful and functional skyscrapers and good roads and have state of the art subways, and they have all kinds of great things such as that going for them, including that built-in Asian brand of politeness and good manners and all that.
But until China becomes a full-fledged democracy with freedom as we know it, it will never be a creative and inventive producer like the U.S. or Japan or thriving Western countries. For sure, there’s more freedom in what is still “the People’s Republic” than anyone would ever have dreamed of China having 30 years ago. But there’s not so much freedom that a Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert and David Letterman and Jay Leno can tee off on the powers-that-be every night without disappearing the next day. And there’s not so much freedom in China that her greatest minds can invent something like a computer chip that will revolutionize the world in the the best sense of the word “revolution.” Free enterprise coupled with political freedom is still the greatest thing ever because it gives great minds and-or hard workers the incentive to imagine and envision and create and invent great things without interference. And for all that thinking and envisioning and hard work you reap the rewards.
For all the problems and issues we have in America, and for all the eternal and proverbial messiness our democracy breeds, there’s still no place like this land of the free and home of the brave that I’m so blessed and fortunate to have thrived in for 60 years.
All that said—here’s a few of those iphone photos I took for you, my Jitterbuggers:
Scooters and bikes plow through the narrowest of streets in Kaifeng, the city of 400,000 where I spent the better part of a week.
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This is the lobby of the elegant, five-star Zhongzhou International Hotel in Kaifeng, where I spent a week. My room in this first-class hotel was $44 a night. One of my hosts in Kaifeng, however, later revealed to me that he got me this room at a huge discount rate because he and his wife are good friends with the hotel manager!
Every kind of food imaginable is sold on the streets of Chinese cities, most of it very good. I ate a lot of these sweet bakery goods from outside a Kaifeng bakery every day and it was good stuff. I also bought and ate all kinds of stuff from street vendors in Kaifeng and Beijing–everything from corn on the cob and big slices of canteloupe on a stick to sweet potatoes baked by vendors in their little ovens on the sidewalks. I’ll have a lot more pictures of the street foods and vendors when I post from the pictures on my digital camera.
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This character gives rides to people at the sprawling Millennium Park in Kaifeng. The park is a cross between Six Flags Over Texas, the Texas State Fair and the Rennaissance Festival near Houston–without the roller coasters. It’s a beautiful park with lots of magic shows and everything from women’s polo matches to street actors and musicians to cock fights (which I passed on). The character in this picture gives rides around the park in his horse-drawn carriage. He came up to me and quipped, “Ride in my BMW?” That’s the extent of his English except for the “thank you” he gave me when I tipped him.
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A “Chinese fiddler” and the Mrs. on a sidewalk outside The Forbidden City in Beijing.
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Lots of chopsticks vendors in the People’s Republic.
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My hotel room in Beijing was right next to a Catholic Church where I went for occasional prayer and quietude and also where I attended mass Sunday morning because it was so close and convenient. Of course, I didn’t understand a word that was said in the Mandarin service, and didn’t find any English speakers in church. But I caught the spirit of it. The church had standing room only at mass, BTW.
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This was a little amusement park in Henan Province in a little town I visited after an adventurous bus ride to the countryside outside Kaifeng. There’s no word for “amusement park” in Mandarin, so amusement park translates to “funny zone.” On my digital camera I have all kinds of pictures of signs in English that will blow your mind because, like I say, things in Mandarin language come out pretty strange the English translations.
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Hefner’s empire extends all the way into Central China and beyond. This was a store in Kaifeng. The Playboy stores mostly sell nothing more than clothes you’d find on the racks at Wal-Mart–not what I thought they’d sell.
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One of the few quiet streets in Kaifeng that I ventured down.
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The beautiful and relaxing tea room at my hotel in Kaifeng.
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There are few things more intimidating than a restaurant menu writ entirely in Mandarin, with no English translation. I did manage to get a tender Australian beef steak at this particular restaurant in Kaifeng. I don’t know what the side dishes were, but they put me in mind of worms and snakes. In fact, quite a bit of the authentic Chinese food in China put me in mind of worms and snakes. But I did have some incredibly great food in China along with some so hot and spicy or icky looking that I couldn’t take it. Fortunately I love cucumbers and watermelons and cantaloupes, and I found those in abundance everywhere I went. And there was always plenty of ice cream, the universal treat, to be found.
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Down this squalid Beijing alley I found people living in some pretty ugly conditions. They didn’t want me taking their pictures. For all its beautiful glitz and glamour, Beijing still has plenty of squalor to be found if you’re the adventurous walker and traveler that I am and care to see some of it. Every city has its ugly, horrific poverty and Beijing has it, believe me.
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There were lots of serene places outside my hotel room in Kaifeng like this spot where I went to chill out a few times and read my Bible and get myself centered after being on the dangerous, wild and crazy streets of Kaifeng, where anarchy reigns as two-wheelers, three-wheelers, four-wheelers and pedestrians all dodge and weave and play dangerous games of chicken with one another. Every time I walked across a street in Kaifeng or survived another cab ride I said a prayer of thanks to God Almighty my Lord and savior. Beijing streets and Beijing traffic were better, but better is relative. Nothing concentrates the mind like a double-decker bus turning unexpectedly on a Beijing street that you are crossing on foot when said bus is approaching you at a ridiculous high speed. The stress of negotiating traffic in China is surely enough to reduce the life span. I know traffic is crazy and uncivilized in many parts of the world and especially many Asian countries, but China’s happens to be the worst I’ve experienced in my travels. The traffic is something that the people of China–at least those in Beijing–are wanting to improve and make safer according to a news broadcast I watched on Beijing teevee. It seems that the people–and more important the government–are aware that a lot of traffic deaths and maimings could be reduced with more traffic safety enforcement. On my last night in Beijing, I watched in horror as a well-dressed woman, about age 50, get knocked off her scooter by a care. Fortunately she was not hurt, but very shaken up. People in the street just looked on–no one rushed to see if she was OK—except for yours truly and the driver of the car, an elderly woman who was shaken up that she’d run over the scooter. While the woman lay in the street so shaken, the vehicles behind and in front of this little mishap were blowing their horns for us to get out of the street.
Did I say that the Chinese are polite and mannerly? They are, but wrecks and mishaps on the streets are so routine that nobody gets too excited when a woman on a scooter gets knocked off and lays in the street crying and trying to get her bearings. She did, BTW, thank me profusely, in the Mandarin word for thanks, for consoling her while everyone else ignored her or tried to honk her out of the way. She eventually hopped back on her scooter and went on her way and the driver of the car did too, as if nothing ever happened.
There’s plenty of room for improvement in safety on Chinese streets. And I mean plenty.
I have many more and far better pictures from my digital camera to share with you from my China experience, Jitterbuggers. So stay tuned.
Hi Paul,
What a great trip you had. I always wanted to go to China when we were traveling, but Red did not want to.
I have been wondering about you since I hadn’t heard from you. You are really a busy person. I am sure it is very fulfilling.
Take care and keep up your wonderful work.
Blessings,
Max
China has a long way to go and must reap the rewards of democratic experimentation of other countries. In the academe, the Philippines is oftentimes labeled as failed democracy. Probably China is wary of plunging into the same pit.
By the way, great photos and reflections of everyday life in China. Truly entertaining. I like it.
Thanks so much, D. I work with many, many nurses and caregivers at the hospital fom the Philippines and all such great people and warm and compassionate folk. Had interesting conversations with them about the Philippines. You been to the States? If not you need to come see us!
I’ve been to US only twice. The first time was in 1997 when I visited my relatives in California. It was partly a graduation gift from my father so I did visit the obligatory tourists spots for a 13 year old (i.e. Disneyland, Universal and Six Flags hehehe). In 2007, I went to Hawai’i for a job-related trip. But I want to see more.
Well you need to come see middle America–me in Dallas and Melissa Who Should Be Dusting for a taste of the North Country.
I got plenty friends would love to lodge you and we could show you some of North Texas, and Austin is a great area 3 hours away. Dallas has some great international studies stuff going on at my alma mater SMU, you know.
I took my kids to do the obligatory Disneyland thing in Cali when they were young, of course. I think the Founding Fathers envisioned Disneyland and/or DisneyWorld in Florida as the “must see” places in America for all international visitors and America’s summer vacationers to experience. That, and the Alamo down the Interstate from here in San Antone (another great city).
Grace & peace & happy travels