Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 5

 

[This is the conclusion of the transcription of my travel journal of my trip to the People’s Republic of China in December 1980 and January 1981.  Aside from concluding my visit to Peking (now called Beijing) and the group’s return to Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong, at the end I wrote out some impressions and observations of both the country and the tour. 

[Things are completely different in 2021-22 than they were in 1980-81, perhaps especially with respect to China and its relationship with the United States.  I’ve bever been very good at prognostication, so my opinions 41 years ago are probably miles off the beam.  Readers can judge that for themselves, however. 

[I thank all the ROTters who’ve read along with this posting.  I hope my account had been at least somewhat as interesting to you as the living experience of the journey was for me.  If it was and you haven’t already done so, I suggest you also read my “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982,” posted in 12 parts from 11 July to 20 August 2021. 

[I’ll shortly be transcribing the third and last of my long-ago travel journals, covering a high school trip to Poland and the Soviet Union in 1965; I will publish that as soon as I can, hopefully later this year.  (By the way, that’s no typo: 1965 is correct.  If you do the math, you’ll see that that was 57 years ago.  I was all of 18 years old when I went on that journey.  Talk about things having changed!)]

Peking [Beijing] – Thursday, 1 January 1981 (New Year’s Day)

We started out very early (5:45 a.m.) to get ready to ride the train to the Great Wall (2 hours).  I put on seven layers of clothing, including my fur “vest” from Nanking [see entry for 29 December 1980, Part 4], and brought along two more. 

[I still have that vest, but it’s stashed in a storage trunk that lives in the basement of my building.  It came in handy in February-April 1981, though, when I did an Off-Off-Broadway production of Macbeth.  It was designed for a rough, primitive look (Macbeth was king of Scotland in the 11th century), so I wore the vest cinched with a wide leather belt with a free-form brass sun-burst buckle that looked “primeval” and “druidic.”]

The train ride was very pleasant; not only was the scenery increasingly rugged and beautiful as we approached the mountains on which the Wall was built [Jundu Mountains], but Elise Miller’s birthday had been yesterday and we had a big cake on the train. 

[Obviously Miller, one of my traveling companions, didn’t run into the same roadblock I did with respect to getting a cake (see entry of 25 December, Part 3).  Maybe the explanation was simply that Beijing isn’t Suzhou.

[On the train ride north, I remember feeling that this scenery was what I saw in so many of the old Chinese scroll paintings—gnarled trees rising up from steep mountain cliffs, sometimes shrouded in fog.  We were riding through a living scroll painting!]

As we neared the Badaling stop (the fortress protecting a pass along the Wall), we caught glimpses of the Wall topping the mountain ridges.  Quite a spectacular sight, even from the moving train.

[Badaling railway station, opened in 1979, is a stop on the Jingbao Railway in Beijing; it’s about 50 miles northwest of the center of the city.  (It should not be confused with the high-speed rail line’s Badaling Great Wall railway station which opened in December 2019.)  Badaling is about 3,300 feet above sea level and is the most visited section of the Great Wall.]

From the train, there is a brief bus ride to the wall itself, but there are fewer buses than train passengers, so some must wait for the buses to return for a second run.  Between the bitter cold and the peddlers selling fake antiques, the short wait was less than pleasant.  It was very short, however, and the Wall is certainly an impressive structure. 

(Unfortunately for me, I had a touch of the runs [probably a 24-hour flu or something; I was fine the next day] and had to trot [sorry about the scatological pun; it wasn’t intentional] back down to the bus area against the bitter wind to use the Chinese public crapper – quite an unpleasant experience!)

[That requires a little explanation—grotty though it be.  Has any of you ever used or even seen a Chinese public bog?  It’s literally a hole in the ground.  There’s a cement floor with a hole in the center; the user straddles the hole and squats, does his/her business, cleans up as well as possible, redresses as well as he/she can—and hopes not to have to return. 

[All the extra clothes I had on made this a hassle as well as a disgusting experience—there are no hooks or pegs for hanging coats and the floor is decidedly not dry and clean!  (The same hole is used for #1, too.)  One has to keep any hanging garments from getting between one’s butt and the hole . . . for obvious reasons.  Get the picture?]

Though it was very cold (ca. 5°F) and windy, being dressed for it made the visit no real hardship [except for . . . you know].  The climb up the Wall was a struggle, and I decided not to make the whole climb.  Then the wait, first for the shuttle bus and then the train in a crowded waiting room with insufficient seats.  That put the only blight on an otherwise pleasant morning.  The train ride back and the box lunch were also pleasant (a far cry from our last box lunch [see entry of 22 December, Part 2])!

We got off and met our buses for our visit to the Ming Tombs.  The tomb itself was less impressive (except as an architectural accomplishment) than the grounds and the approach (particularly the animal statues).

[After the death and burial in Nanjing of the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, in 1398 (see 30 December, Part 4), the third Ming Emperor, Zhu Di (1360-1424; reigned: 1402-24), moved the capital to Beijing.  He and 12 of his successors are buried at the Thirteen Ming Tombs in Beijing, located about 30 miles north-northwest of the city’s center.

[The grounds for the 13 tombs cover approximately 15½ square miles (that’s the size of the City of Alexandria, Virginia).  The monumental animal statues, along with statues of officials, line the Sacred Way that leads from the entrance to the grounds to the 13 tombs; these figures, which include sculptures of mythical beasts as well as living ones such as elephants and camels, guard the resting places of the emperors.

After an early (and not particularly good) dinner at a Henan (not Hunan) restaurant, we took in a dance drama. 

[There are several places in China called Henan and I don’t recall if the one connected to this restaurant was identified.  It’s something of a guess, but logic suggests it’s the Province of Henan in the center of the country, 430 miles south of Beijing (measuring to the provincial capital, Zhengzhou).  Henan cuisine is a mix of influences from all its surrounding regions, but despite the array of flavors available, Henan cooking is known for not taking them to extreme levels; Henan food is renowned for the moderate and balanced mix of flavors in its dishes.

[Dance drama, or wuju, is a 20th-century development in China.  Its origins date only back to the 1950s when Soviet dance troupes introduced ballet to the PRC.  Chinese dance drama is a hybrid of Western theatrical elements and traditional Chinese forms: orchestras mix Western and Chinese instruments (with the Western instruments dominating), musical styles combine Western and Chinese forms, and the choreography is an amalgam of ballet and Chinese folk dances.]

The show is a modern piece, based on a legend or folk tale, utilizing Western instruments and Western-style music and choreographed in semi-balletic and semi-stylized movement and pantomime. 

There was no dialogue or singing; the story was all told in dance and movement.  [Two other 20th-century performance forms that derive from Western influence are huaju, or spoken drama (of which Lao She’s Teahouse is a prime example; see entry of 30 December, Part 4) and geju, or sung drama.] 

The costumes were quite brilliant and colorful and the sets were very effective, using mostly painted drops and flats, but very little constructed pieces.  The work as a whole was charming and thoroughly enjoyable, but not exciting in its originality.

[Despite what I characterized as a lack of originality in the dance drama, I gather that it’s a popular form of entertainment in China, after Beijing opera.  With China having so many languages (linguists identify eight dialects, but each of them has many subdialects) and most of them being unintelligible to speakers of the others, maybe an all-dance-and-movement theater form is welcome to lots of Chinese entertainment-seekers.  Just a thought.]

Peking [Beijing]/Canton [Guangzhou] – Friday, 2 January

This morning was taken up with a trip to the Temple of Heaven, a magnificent 15th-century pagoda with several outbuildings located on a hill overlooking Peking, and the Summer Palace, where the Empress Dowager [Chongqing (1692-1777)] held court in a very imperial – and imperious – style.  An impressive layout along a beautiful lake, now completely frozen – to the delight of skaters and ice-walkers – the Palace was entirely built for the Empress’s use to the virtual exclusion of anyone else (except her thousands of servants and eunuchs).

[The Temple of Heaven (or Tiantan Park; the Chinese name means “altar of heaven”), built between 1406 and 1420, during the Ming Dynasty (the same period as the Forbidden City; see 31 December, Part 4), is a complex of 92 religious buildings set in gardens and surrounded by a pine forest.  The emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, considered “sons of Heaven,” offered sacrifices to heaven and prayed for good harvests. 

[The layout of the complex, which covers just over a square mile, and its architecture both symbolize the relationship between earth and heaven.  The design of the main buildings is a combination of circles and squares, which symbolizes the belief that Heaven is round and Earth square.

[The Summer Palace was first built in 1750 (it was destroyed 110 years later in the Second Opium War, 1856-60, and then rebuilt in 1886) is not just a palace per se; it’s an ensemble of lakes, gardens, pavilions, halls, palaces, temples, and bridges 6¼ miles northwest of Beijing.

[The site was originally an imperial garden beginning in the Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) in 1153 and grew over the centuries as succeeding emperors added buildings.  Around 1749, the Qianlong Emperor (1711-99; reigned: 1735-96) ordered a palace to be built near one of the lakes to celebrate the 60th birthday of his mother, Empress Dowager Chongqing.  

[After the reconstruction following the Second Opium War, Emperor Guangxu (1871-1908; reigned: 1875-1908) rebuilt the palace for use by his aunt, Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908; concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor [1831-61; reigned: 1850-61] and de facto ruler of China from 1861 to 1908), and renamed it the Summer Palace.  It became the property of the former imperial family after 1912, but in 1924, when Puyi, the last Qing emperor, was evicted from the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace became a public park. 

[One of the most startling Summer Palace structures associated with Empress Dowager Cixi is the so-called Marble Boat.  Also named Qingyanfang, the Boat of Purity and Ease, it’s a lakeside pavilion, first erected in 1755.  The original pavilion was made from a base of large stone blocks which supported a wooden superstructure done in a traditional Chinese design.

[In 1860, when the Palace was razed, the pavilion was destroyed.  It was restored in 1893 on order of the Empress Dowager, when a new two-story superstructure was designed which incorporated elements of European architecture.  Like its predecessor, the new superstructure is made out of wood but it was painted to imitate marble—giving the pavilion its name.

[On each deck, there’s a large mirror that reflects the waters of the lake to give the impression of floating in the water.  Imitation paddlewheels on each side of the pavilion make it look like a sidewheel steamer.  The Marble Boat was used by the Empress Dowager to view the scenery and for entertaining guests.

[After 1949, the park became a facility of the CCP (among other uses, Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong, lived there) until 1953, when it was restored and renovated as a public park again.]

We had lunch in a restaurant on the Palace grounds.

This afternoon, we flew back to Canton for the start of our homeward journey.  The trip to China is virtually over. 

The flight to Canton was easy and peasant.  I was able to rid myself of my long underwear for the first time since leaving Canton [23 December] and relaxed most of the flight.  When we arrived and got to our hotel (Bai Yun, the one we stayed in before), we had the same jumble to assign rooms. 

Dinner was to be in 45 minutes, and I wanted to take a last look in the nearby Friendship Store for the ceramic lion I missed at Foshan when we were here last, so as we got our rooms, I ran over without going to my room. 

I didn’t find the lion (just as well – at $55 [¥82.50], I really don’t need it!) and came back, freshened up and went up to a decent, but not outstanding dinner. 

At least the weather is warm again (though after tomorrow in Hong Kong, we will have to face winter in New York anyway). 

Tomorrow starts early again, but we are supposed to catch an express, non-stop train to Hong Kong, so we are due in at ca. 11 a.m.  That’ll give me another real half-day in Hong Kong to look around.  I don’t think I’ll shop anymore.

It’s hard to sum up an opinion of the trip now that it’s really over.  Of course, it was interesting and informative, and the Chinese we met, both official and non-, were gracious, charming, and helpful, but I don’t really feel I saw China. 

Part if that is due, I’m sure, to the fast pace of the trip – six cities in 13 days didn’t leave enough time see any one, especially Peking – but some of it had to do with what we did see – too many craft factories and stores. 

Of course, we had those damned shoppers with us who took time in every shop, store, and souvenir stand we passed, and even made us stop at several Friendship Stores I could have done without.  In several cases, they delayed us en route while they shopped and we waited on the bus for them.  I was often embarrassed at how much – and what – they bought – kitsch and junk of every description.

Another part of my confusion is that I really didn’t know what to expect.  Old China is so remote and unreal, and new China so stark and unformed that I had no previous impression to confirm or deny.  Only the people really made an impression on me.  Their energy and commitment is boundless and seems genuine and sincere, even under all the slogans and propaganda.

They are far more open, generous, and receptive than their Soviet counterparts, far less paranoid and frightened, especially now that they feel themselves free of the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four.  Their own relief is obvious all over; the question is not whether they live better, but whether they feel they do – and they do.

And their curiosity about us – from our clothes to the more intellectual levels (our economy, culture, city life, etc.) is boundless.  It is very impressive what has been done here in a scant 30 years, especially when 10 (1966-76, the Cultural Revolution) were retrogressive.

My prevailing impression of the Soviet Union 15 years ago [I went there on a school trip in 1965; that journal will be appearing on ROT in the near future] was that life there was drab and gray and without energy or hope of improvement in material ways; here the impression is very different.

Though strictly controlled by government policy and the needs of the country, life, though below our standards, is improving and is productive and progressive [I didn’t mean that in the political or ideological sense, just that modernization was moving forward].  Cooperation, though enforced, seems intuitive.

My one small fear is that with all their hunger for modernization, they don’t import too much of our plastic, throw-away culture and destroy that which is old and good in their own.  (Our American-built hotel in Peking is a foreboding example – built and furnished like a roadside motel with Holiday Inn décor and atmosphere, it probably will be run-down and tacky in two years.)

Another small feat is that as the influx of tourists increases, the Chinese do not lose the charm and earnestness they evince now.  Already with the buying and shopping, are coming the complainers – those who expect the Hilton slickness and American food and cannot accept the cultural hardships as someone else’s way of life to be accepted and adjusted to with some grace and tact.  In our group alone were several who wanted to turn China into another American Chinatown or large Taiwan.

HONG KONG

Canton [Guangzhou]/Hong Kong – Saturday, 3 January

Our departure from Canton was uneventful (though delayed by a small number of our group), and we got on an express, non-stop train to Hong Kong.  The ride was both pleasant and scenic.  I  hadn’t notice the scenery coming in, except the New Territories on Kowloon and the farms – I never saw the hills and picturesque bays and inlets we passed on the way back.

I got Patsy to recommend a tea house that served a dumpling lunch [dim sum], the Luk Ye Tea House on Stanley Street, and walked over after check-in at the hotel.  It wasn’t the kind of place that served from carts, and I got a menu to mark my choices all in Chinese.

I got the waiter to recommend four dishes (all were very good) and had a pleasant lunch alone.  (After 13 weeks of eating with 92 other people, I needed the privacy!)  [Actually, of course, there were only 93 of us in one place the one time the three IPTIC groups crossed paths in Wuxi (see entry of 28 December, Part 3).]

After lunch, I walked to the bus terminus and rode to Tiger Balm Garden.  I met Yosif, an Iranian Jew now living in D.C. and teaching at Howard University (after studying at Georgetown).  We wandered through Tiger Balm and he asked me all kinds of questions about China.  He was on a very extended trip around Asia and on to Europe (he has family in Israel).

[In 1935, Sino-Burmese businessman (best known as founder of Tiger Balm, an analgesic heat rub), entrepreneur, tycoon, and philanthropist Aw Boon Haw (1882-1954) built a villa in the Wanchai section of Hong Kong.  The Haw Par Mansion was surrounded by an ornamental garden that was open to the public. 

[The centerpiece of the 8-acre garden was a 7-story pagoda, and the rest of the phantasmagorical park was festooned with hundreds of figurines and sculptures that depicted ancient Buddhist beliefs (because Aw was a devout Buddhist).  It was a popular spot for many Hong Kongese on their day off. 

[The garden was closed in 1998, the year after Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control, and sold to a property-development company.  It was demolished in 2004 and the site is now occupied by a residential high rise.  The Haw Par Mansion is still standing and has been renovated as a museum.]

After Tiger Balm, a Chinese whimsical fantasy land, I took the Peak Tram up Victoria Peak to see it in daylight.  The train was odd in that on the way up, we felt straight [i.e. level] and the buildings looked tilted!

[The Peak Tram opened in 1888, originally for the use of the British colonial governor and the Peak’s (expatriate) residents.   It now is available to everyone as one of the oldest funicular railways in the world.  The tram has undergone several up-dates since its beginning, including a comprehensive rebuilding in 1989 and a substantial upgrade starting in 2015 and continuing today.  

[The Peak Tram runs at 10- to 15-minute intervals between the Peak Tram Lower Terminus in Central to the Peak Tram Upper Terminus at the Peak and the journey takes approximately 8-10 minutes.  The fare, when I was in Hong Kong, was HK$2 (40¢).

[It’s a visual experience, as I observed, as skyscrapers glide past at what appear to be impossible angles while the tram makes its ascent.  This phenomenon, known as the Peak Tram Illusion, is explained as “induced by a change of the subjective vertical caused by the tilted visual environment and reclining body position of observers inside the tram.”]

For dinner, I arranged to go to a Szechuan restaurant near the hotel, the Sichuan Garden Restaurant in The Landmark commercial complex at the intersection of Des Voeux Road Central and Pedder Street.  I met Norman and Cherna Weinstein on my way, so they joined me for a very fine dinner.  We had a few drinks on me afterwards, and then we split for the night.  (The Weinsteins were staying an extra day gratis.)

DEPARTURE, TOKYO, & HOME

Hong Kong – Sunday, 4 January

On our day of departure, I took a walk to the Hong Kong Zoo (not very impressive as a zoo, but pretty and with a nice view of Hong Kong below) and, in the afternoon, to Wanchai [pinyin: Wanzai], the Suzie Wong district, full of night clubs (many topless) and tattoo parlors.

[The 14-acre Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens, on the northern slope of Victoria Peak, is one of the oldest zoological and botanical centers in the world, and the oldest park in Hong Kong.  It was founded in 1864 and opened to the public in 1871.

[The zoo is too small to house large mammals—so no pandas—but it has a varied collection of birds (including flamingos and parrots), monkeys, orangutans, sloths, meerkats, and tortoises.

[The reference above to “Suzie Wong” is to The World of Suzie Wong, a 1960 British-American romantic drama film directed by Richard Quine and starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan.  Although set in Wanchai, the film was shot in locations around Hong Kong and serves as a historical record of 1960s Hong Kong and some of the lifestyle was depicted in the movie. 

[(Interesting, but irrelevant factoid: in the Broadway play of Suzie Wong, 1958-60, the part played by William Holden in the film was played by William “Capt. Kirk” Shatner; he won a Theatre World Award for his performance.)]

I had a quick lunch (Western – Salade Niçoise) in the coffee shop and we left for the airport and the flight to Tokyo.  We said good-bye to Linda Chan, Group C’s IPTIC guide, at the hotel and Patsy (Pepsi Cola) Cheung at the airport.  We are on our own from here on out!

Both Patsy and Linda were wonderful and helpful along the way.  Patsy was a little more patient with some of our less tactful and easy members, but Linda took her share of hardship, too.  She let herself get angry too easily, but she did her best.  (Both had some tough challenges to meet, and I wonder how well I would have done!)

Anyway – we’re on the way home now – for better or for worse!

[That’s where the journal ends.  The flight home, on JAL again, had an overnight stop in Tokyo; the airline put the continuing passengers up at an airport hotel which was like a high-tech, white molded-plastic, stationary sleeping car on a mid-20th-century train.  We slept in little cubby holes no wider than the single bed; there may have been a sink. but I’m not sure.

[I had a little problem with jet lag after my return to New York.  I had an acting class the next afternoon, but I actually slept through it!  I don’t remember now if I woke up while the class was still in session or if it was over by the time I opened my eyes, but I remember having to apologize to my teacher and I felt a little sheepish when I explained why I missed class. 

[I used to be such an inveterate long-distance traveler that a little body-clock disruption was a small matter.  The worst I remember was on the first morning after a trans-Atlantic trip to Rome: I awoke in the predawn morning because bedtime had come sooner than I was ready for it.  A friend on the same trip also woke up in the wee hours of the morning, and we came across one another wandering in the residence where we were staying.

[So as not to disturb anyone else with our restlessness, we decided to go out for a walk.  We walked from Trastevere into downtown Rome as the dawn came up.  We watched—and heard—the city wake up.  It was about a five-mile stroll one way, then we went back and joined everyone for breakfast.  After that, I was fine!]

[There were a couple of occurrences during this tour that more or less spread across the whole excursion.  They’re part of what I remember about the trip, so I’ll recount them here, at the end of the journal report.

[Almost every morning, when we boarded our bus for the first outing of the day—this really didn’t start until we began our travels in the PRC—someone inevitably asked the guide who greeted us, what was happening with the hostages.  We were, of course, asking about the U.S. embassy workers in Tehran who’d been held by Iranian “students” since November 1979. 

[Negotiations for their release had heated up after our 1980 presidential election in November in which Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) defeated President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924; 39th president of the United States: 1977-81) and we all felt that the release of the Americans might occur on any day, perhaps while we were in China. 

[The first morning we asked about the hostages, I think it flummoxed the guide, who was unprepared for that question.  She said she’d check at her next opportunity and tell us what was happening.  After that, our morning guide was always ready to answer the daily inquiry. 

[As it happened, after many delays and glitches, the hostages were returned home on 20 January 1981, the day President Reagan (40th president of the United States: 1981-89) was inaugurated—and 16 days after we all got back to the States.

[The other event was a story one of my tour mates told me one day early in the trip.  It was one of the Long Island matrons, but I’ve long since forgotten which one.  We must have been driving somewhere on the bus and she was my seatmate, but I’m not exactly sure of the circumstances; it could easily have been on one of our plane or train rides.

[In any case, the woman told me an incredible story—and I’m not sure I believed it completely at the time.  Not until we got back and I heard some of the details recounted on TV; then I checked it out.  Some readers who are old enough may remember this tale, which continued to make news every now and then for almost 20 years.

[My travelling companion’s account went like this: The son of a friend of hers on the Island had transferred from one New York State community college near his home to another one upstate.  When he arrived in September—that would be 1980, just before we left on the trip to China—other students whom he didn’t know began greeting him as if he were a good friend.  Men clapped him on the back and bro-hugged him; women kissed him.  And they all kept calling him Eddy, though his name was Robert.

[When he protested, the schoolmates explained that he looked exactly like a friend who’d been at the school the previous year.  Finally, a friend of Eddy’s discovered that Robert had been adopted, just like Eddy, and that the two young men had the same birthday.  Some checking led Robert and his schoolmate to conclude that he and Eddy were identical twin brothers, and after some phone calls to Eddy’s home, they confirmed that that was, in fact, the truth—Eddy and Robert were twins adopted separately and raised from birth by different families.  Neither adoptive couple knew their son had a sibling.

[The story of the remarkable coincidences that led the young men, then 19, finally to meet and be reunited, was picked up by the local newspapers, particularly Long Island’s Newsday, and when another adopted young man with the same birthday read the front-page coverage of the fantastic story and saw the photo of the twin brothers, he suspected he, too, was a lost sibling.  Sure enough, the adoption agency confirmed that there had, indeed, been triplets, and that David was the third boy.

[After the three brothers met for the first time, they discovered that they had had remarkably similar traits, habits, tastes, and experiences—even though they had been separated since just after they’d been born and didn’t even know of their brothers’ existence.

[When I got home and started to hear reports of this event, and saw the three young men on TV—they made the rounds of daytime talk shows and even appeared in some movies and television series episodes—I did a little research and collected some articles on the story.  (I later taught writing and kept a collection of provocative articles for reading assignments.)

[I won’t relate the rest of the story of the triplets, who’d all be 60 now (Eddy committed suicide in 1995) except to reveal that the young men’s names were Robert Shafran, Edward Galland, and David Kellman, so readers can look up the story.  I’ll also report that there was a documentary by CNN, aired in 2018, called Three Identical Strangers.  I will also reveal, but without details, that the story is not all happiness and food fortune—but, of course, I didn’t know any of that in December 1980 and January 1981.]

 

Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 2

 

[Here’s the second installment of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980.”  I’ll be covering my arrival in the PRC from Hong Kong (then still a British colony) and my visit to Canton (now Guangzhou) and the start of my visit to Shanghai. 

[The start of my travel in the People’s Republic introduced a number of experiences that became typical of the tour of China in the period.  These include, among others, the hotel experience and facts and practices surrounding how we ate while touring the country.  (We had our first official banquet in Shanghai.)

[As I said in the afterword to Part 1, I’ll be posting the installments of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980” every three days; the next part will be published on Thursday, 30 December.  It covers the end my trip to Shanghai and the visits to Suzhou (formerly called Soochow) and Wuxi.

[Readers who are just starting this journal are strongly urged to go back and read Part 1 (posted on 24 December) before picking up with Part 2.  Many things won’t make a lot of sense if you miss my explanations and introductions in previous entries.]

PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Canton [Guangzhou] – Monday, 22 December

Change of plans – we’re staying overnight in Canton.  [Canton, or Guangzhou as it’s now called, was a city of 5 million in 1980, the capital of Guangdong Province.]  We were supposed to leave right away for Shanghai.

[I’m surprised I didn’t record the explanation of this comment.  What happened was that, as a consequence of our tour group being one of the first which any ordinary traveler could join—just plain tourists—it was simply larger than the CITS guides could handle in one bunch (there were 93 of us!).  The decision was to split the IPTIC group in three, approximately 30 in each group.  (I was in group C.)

[Originally, the plan was to take the train from Hong Kong across to Guangzhou, the only access point between the West and the People’s Republic (until direct flights into the PRC were permitted in a year or so), then travel north immediately to Shanghai, almost 900 miles away, and work our way north to Beijing and then back to Guangzhou and see the city before taking the train back to Hong Kong again.

[Now, a third of the initial group would follow that itinerary, another third would go directly to Beijing, and the last third—mine—would start in Guangzhou and work north to Beijing before returning to Guangzhou to cross the border by rail into Hong Kong.]

The train – or rather the trains – to Canton were grueling.  Hong Kong to the border was slow, but steady.  Then the walk through customs.  First Hong Kong, which was relatively fast; then PRC!  The train was delayed, and we were disappointed for lunch again – too many people to feed in the station, so box lunches on the train.  And what a lunch – inedible.  I can’t wait for a real Chinese meal!

[As the only route into and out of the People’s Republic, the Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR) was busy and crowded.  Foreign tourists and Hong Kongese essentially had to travel this way until the PRC opened to visitors a little more.

[The train’s southern terminus (i.e., in Hong Kong) is in Hung Hom, an area of Kowloon in the southeast of the peninsula.  Owned by the Hong Kong government, the line takes passengers the 21 miles to Lo Wu, in the New Territories on the border between Hong Kong and mainland China, about 90 miles southeast of Guangzhou. 

[At Lo Wu, we had to change trains to the China Railway (CR), which connects to all the routes to stations in the PRC and even beyond (Lo Wu is the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway through the Soviet Union into Europe)—except that Lo Wu and its train station is a restricted area and passes and documents are required to go beyond the border. 

[As accredited tourists with CITS on our way to Guangzhou, we crossed the border—after negotiating the Hong Kong customs—walked across the footbridge to the People’s Republic customs, went through that rigmarole, and boarded the CR train to Guangzhou.

[That box lunch, by the way, was some kind of cold chicken, a drumstick, as I recall, probably roasted—but who could say?  As I said, it was inedible!  Bu hao!  (‘Not good.’)]

The train ride was long, but comfortable enough.  We arrived ca. 3 p.m. and had a bus tour of Canton.  We met our local guide, Yü, and our national CITS guide, Mr. Chang.  Miss Yü is really wonderful – speaks excellent English and is very knowledgeable and pleasant.

We stopped at the Memorial Park for the Martyrs [of the Guangzhou Uprising].  A pretty layout, but unimpressive flora.

[The Guangzhou Uprising of 1927 was a failed insurrection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) against the Kuomintang (KMT – Chinese Nationalist Party, ruling party of the Republic of China on the mainland, 1911-49) in the city of Guangzhou.  The uprising occurred on 11 December 1927, but it was suppressed at the cost of more than 5,700 communists dead.  The park commemorates the uprising and the casualties.

[The park, 26¼ acres (L.A.’s MacArthur Park is 35 acres), opened in 1957 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the uprising.  The door in the stone wall was engraved with the text “Guangzhou uprising martyrs cemetery” by China’s first premier, Zhou Enlai (1898-1976; in office: 1949-76).  Among its monuments and memorials, the park contains a mausoleum for the uprising’s martyrs.

[The park is landscaped with a small lake, walkways, and iconic arched Chinese bridges among cypress, pine, and willow trees.]

The people really do stare as we have been told.  Even more than in Russia [I’ll mention this in the upcoming journal of my 1965 trip to the Soviet Union; it also came up in Part 5 of “Going to a Swiss International School,” 11 May 2021].  But they seem to enjoy our visits  They smile and laugh a lot – perhaps some joke about the funny round-eyes, but they seem good-natured and happy.

Dinner at Bei Yuan Restaurant, presumably the second-best in Canton.  Not impressive, though good enough.  Disappointing first taste of native Chinese cuisine – especially in Canton, renowned for its food and restaurants.

[This was our introduction to not only Chinese cuisine in the PRC, but how it was served to groups like ours—fairly large numbers.  The restaurants and hotel dining rooms all served us “family style.”  In other words, each dish was brought to the table in a large bowl or platter which was passed around by the diners.  (We didn’t order the food; the menu was always pre-selected.)  The tables were all for 10 or 12 people; smaller groups and individuals would be seated with strangers.

[I learned a few things about the way Chinese eat that I never knew before.  First, they don’t customarily have soup as a first course; it always came at the end of the meal.  I developed a theory to explain this, but I didn’t confirm it.

[The soup we got during the whole trip was always a clear broth—either chicken or fish broth; sometimes there were a few vegetables or other food bits in it—nothing as large as a wonton—but we never saw any thick soups like hot-sour soup or chicken-corn soup.

[Except for breakfast, the Chinese don’t usually drink tea with the meal.  It, too, came after the food.  The common beverages to accompany a meal were beer—usually Tsingtao (named for Tsingtao, or Qingdao, in eastern Shandong Province on the Yellow Sea coast, where the brewery is located)—or a sort of pink soda that tastes like bubble gum.  (I never got a name for this drink because I never actually drank it; I went with beer once I learned that that was the preferred drink among adults.  It was a new practice I brought home with me as well; I drink beer with almost all Asian cuisines now.)

[My ad hoc theory about why the Chinese have soup and tea after a meal instead of before or during: Traditional Chinese cooking is mostly steamed or fried in oil—and the cooks don’t spare the oil (another complaint from my tour companions).  The broth that seemed to be common and the tea are essentially hot water.  I think they’re drunk after the food as a way to cleanse the system of the excess oil.  No one confirmed this and I never looked it up anywhere, but it makes sense to me.

[Cantonese food was the dominant style of Chinese food in the U.S. until the latter part of the 20th century when Szechuan and Hunan cuisine was introduced.  Most Chinatowns were Cantonese by culture in those days; Hong Kong (which was historically part of Guangdong Province before becoming a colony of the United Kingdom) is also culturally Cantonese.

[The neighborhood where I grew up in Washington, D.C., and suburban Maryland was fortunate because we had a neighborhood Chinese restaurant, the Peking Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue south of Chevy Chase Circle, that served Mandarin cuisine, so we had a choice back in the ’50s and early ’60s. 

[The meal at Bei Yuan, as I observed, was unprepossessing.  One dish was, for all intents and purposes, beef stew.  (The food wasn’t bad in any sense.  It just wasn’t interesting.  It was a disappointing culinary experience that, happily, was never repeated again during the rest of the trip.)

[One more side note: I remarked earlier that many of my traveling companions complained about the food—not its quality, really, but just the fact that it was always Chinese.  What really aggravated me was the way they would sort of poke at the food in the bowls or on their plates and utter little noises like “eww” or “ick” and ask, “What do you suppose that is,” with a kind of grimace on their lips and in their voices.

[When my table mates did that at Bei Yuan that first night—it was over the “beef stew”—I quietly said, “I know what it is.”  Then I sat shtum.

[“What is it?” someone asked.  I looked up from my plate and looked around the table and said, “well, I don’t know . . .,” as if  were reluctant to say.

[“It’s dog,” I stated with certainty.  Silence.  I’m not real good at keeping a straight face usually, but this time I managed.  I don’t know if everyone believed me, but they were all uncertain at least.

[The thing was that on our last bus tour of Hong Kong as we drove through a residential neighborhood, someone commented on the many dogs running around.  This led our guide to tell us that many local Hong Kongese ate dog meat, even though the colony’s government had made that illegal. 

[It was still a practice among older Hong Kongese and it proved hard to eradicate.  Remember that I said that Hong Kong’s culture was Cantonese?  In other words, there was precedence for my statement, so it didn’t seem entirely outlandish.

[I did not make a lot of friends among my fellow travelers that night—but I was mighty annoyed with their consistent attitude about the food we were served.]

After dinner, we were taken to a performing arts compound [Guangzhou Cultural Park] where we were treated to a show by the [Guangzhou] Young People’s Acrobatic Troupe.  Very good show – with flying work, rope tricks, whip tricks, [and] balancing.  We had to leave at intermission because of our early rise this morning [5 a.m., as you recall] and our schedule for tomorrow.  Too bad, though I am tired.

The hotel, White Cloud [Baiyun], though the newest in Canton (1977), is rather rude, though certainly adequate.  Much like a hostel or second-class Gasthaus in Europe.  If things don’t get worse, I’ll certainly survive.

[Two more comments about the hotels—this was true of all of them in the PRC: first, the lights in the rooms were only turned on when we were expected to be in them.  The same was so of the dining rooms: the lights were out from some central switch somewhere.  So, if we arrived at the dining room a little early for a meal, it would be dark, and if we went to our rooms off schedule, say, during a meal, it, too, would be dark.  The reason was to save electricity since power was expensive and fuel for the power plants was scarce.

[(When I lived in Europe in the ’60s, this was also a common practice in a way.  The lights—and also the heat—wasn’t controlled centrally, but in shops and stores, lights in display rooms or sales areas that weren’t in use by customers were kept dark until someone went in.  In apartment buildings, hallway and lobby lights were on timers so they’d turn off automatically after a visitor or resident left the space.  The reason was the same: power was expensive and fuel was scarce.)

[The other thing was that every room was supplied with a thermos of hot water.  (Those Chinese thermoses were remarkably efficient: kept closed, they maintained the water at near-boiling temperature, even overnight!)  It was there ostensibly, I think, for making tea—but just about all foreign visitors used it for something else.  We’d all been warned not to drink the tap water in China; it was in the IPTIC guidelines and my parents had cautioned me before I left the U.S. 

[It wasn’t so much that the water was unclean, but that, also like many places in Europe and elsewhere, its mineral and microbial content was different from our sanitized and treated tap water and would very likely give one a good case of tourista.

[So, what we were all advised to do was take the cap off the thermos when we retired at night, and then use the cooled water in the morning for brushing our teeth.]

Canton/Shanghai – Tuesday, 23 December

First of all, what a lunch we had today!  After a tour of a ceramics factory and a Taoist temple, we went to lunch at the CITS center in Foshan – the food kept coming and coming – and all of it delicious!  I thought it would never end!  At last, what I’ve been drooling for for days!  A native Chinese meal that I’ve never tasted at home.

The day started early (6:45), and breakfast was OK – Then off we went to Foshan [a city of 250,000 (1980) in Guangdong Province], an ancient town [current city founded ca. 628 CE] near Canton [21 miles northeast of Foshan] that was a pottery center 1,000 years ago. 

We visited an art ceramics factory [Shiwan Artistic Ceramic Factory] where some beautiful pieces of decorative porcelain are made – figurines, animals, vases.  Some are whimsical and cute – obviously souvenirs—others are more “serious” art.

One I saw was very humorous in a way – a young boy riding on a water buffalo and reading a book; hanging from one of the buffalo’s horns was a bundle of other books.

Some of the pieces are molded and pieced together before painting and glazing, but some are done entirely by hand, including some magnificent landscapes with bonsai trees, pagodas [religious buildings in Asia usually multiple stories and typically having upward-curving roofs], and figures.  Some of these sell for ¥1000 ($666 [1980]) and more!  [The artificially high official exchange rate in 1980 was 1.5 yuan to 1 dollar.  The rates have changed considerably since then.]

I also saw a wonderful Fu lion I would have bought if I didn’t have to carry it around for 2 weeks.  Maybe at our last stop – or back in Hong Kong.  [I never saw the lion again and mildly regretted not buying it at the factory shop when I saw it.  I never asked if the shop could ship the figure to the States as I did for a bronze sculpture I bought in Israel and a print I bought in Taos, New Mexico.]

The Taoist temple [Foshan Ancestral Temple], dating back to the 15th century, was the first bit of ancient China we have seen.  Intricate and elaborate frescoes and friezes of ceramic, limestone, and wood decorate various parts of the temple.  There were also two magnificent gilt carved wooden altars and a sandalwood carved screen. 

A museum in the temple, near a “theater” [Wanfu Stage] used for special performances for the god (North God or Water God), contained some examples of ancient local art and handiwork, including pottery from 5,000 years ago, and some beautiful Fu lions and a cinnabar covered bowl.  Too bad they’re not for sale!

[The Foshan Ancestral Temple was actually built between 1078 and 1085 CE and rebuilt in 1372.  In the early Qing Dynasty, it gradually became a temple complex, and in 1449, by imperial order, it became an official ancestral temple, a shrine dedicated to deified ancestors.  In 1899, Foshan Ancestral Temple was renovated to its present appearance and after the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949, it was converted into the Foshan Municipal Museum which houses Taoist cultural relics and local Foshan folk art.

[Taoism is a Chinese religion whose adherents attempt to live according to the Tao—the “Way”—which Taoists believe governs the universe.  It’s based on the teachings of Lao Tzu (571 BCE ?-5th C. BCE) as laid out in his Tao Te Ching, first known in the late 4th century BCE.]

After that magnificent lunch, we went to the Folk Arts Center where artisans made lanterns, cuttlefish-bone carvings, scroll and fan paintings, and paper cut-outs.  Most was not very good-looking, but it was fun.

[Guangdong Folk Arts Museum, housed in the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, the most famous architecture of Qing Dynasty in Guangdong province, was founded in 1959.  It’s mission is to collect, preserve, display, and conduct research on folk arts and traditional crafts from Guangdong Province and other parts of China.]

Thence to the airport to catch the flight to Shanghai.

The airport [Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, replaced in 2004 by a new airport with the same name] is, of course, bare and spartan.  Not unlike the little airports in the U.S. – like Hyannis [Massachusetts] and Roanoke [Virginia].  Certainly functional.

But one very amusing thing was going on – they played Western music over the PA – old tunes like the Mexican hat dance, “Turkey in the Straw,” and “Coming ’Round the Mountain.”  They also stuck in “The Star-Spangled Banner” – and we all weren’t sure if we should stand or not.  We decided it wouldn’t be appropriate and that the Chinese didn’t really know what the song meant. 

They also played “Old Black Joe” [1860, by Stephen Foster (1826-64)] and I wondered if that song could even be played in the U.S.

[“Old Black Joe” isn’t blatantly racist—though some of Foster’s other songs contain strong racist elements—and there are no specific mentions of slavery in the lyrics.  The song, however, was a popular one for blackface acts and minstrel shows.  Written on the eve of the American Civil War, which ended slavery in the United States and, with it, a way of life in the South, the song’s melancholy seems to stem from a sadness for the loss of the “old South,” including for the character of Old Black Joe, perpetuating the myth that enslaved black people were happy with their lot and even loved their slave masters.]

They don’t waste any time taking off.  As soon as everyone was on board, the doors were closed, and we began to taxi.  Then, off we went, without even a mention, beyond the obligatory airplane welcome.  Wham, bam, off we went to Shanghai.

We arrived in Shanghai in the early evening [it was about a two-hour flight, about 890 miles northeast] and were driven to our hotel, the Jing Jiang [right in the middle of the city], formerly a French residential hotel [the Cathay Mansion, 1929].  It’s vast and, by Chinese standards, luxurious.  In many ways, it was like some of the older European hotels.  Dinner was marvelous, and the room was very comfortable.

[The Jing Jiang Hotel, or Jinjiang Hotel, was actually created in 1951 by combining three pre-revolutionary buildings: two wings of the Grosvenor House, originally built in 1934, and the Cathay Mansion, a residential hotel in the French Concession.  (The modern-day hotel was renovated in 1998.) 

[In English, Cathay was an archaic name for what is now called China, in use from medieval times until the 19th century.  Today, it’s used in poetic contexts.  (Cathay Pacific Airways, for example, is the flag carrier of Hong Kong.)

[From the middle of the 19th century, “concessions,” which were territories and sectors of cities governed and occupied by foreign powers, existed in late Imperial China and the Republic of China.  The concessions were usually granted by the weakened Chinese government through forced or otherwise coerced treaties. 

[In Shanghai, three nations had concessions: France, Great Britain, and the United States; the U.K. and the U.S. combined their concessions into the International Settlement in 1863.  The legacy is that Shanghai is the most Western-looking city in China.  Today, all concessions in the country have been dissolved.]

After dinner and a wander through the Friendship Store branch, I went to bed.

[The Friendship Stores in the People’s Republic were like the Beryozkas in the Soviet Union when I was there in the ’60s.  (I mention the Beryozkas in Part 5 of “Going to a Swiss International School”; see above.)  They’re state-run stores which catered exclusively to foreign visitors and tourists, diplomats, and government officials.  (Most stores have now closed and the few still operating are now open to all customers.)  The Friendship Stores sold imported items as well as high-quality Chinese art and crafts.  Prices for the imported goods were higher than in the countries of origin and the stores accepted only hard currency (i.e., dollars, pounds, marks, francs, etc.).]

Shanghai – Wednesday, 24 December (Christmas Eve)

After breakfast, we paid a visit to a rug factory [Shanghai Ji Mei Carpet Factory, specializing in silk carpets], where much of the work is hand-done.  Most of the visit was devoted to shopping in the factory store.  This is the “buyingest” group I’ve ever met! 

Next door is a jade factory (also some ivory) [Shanghai Jade Carving Factory], and again, a retail store.  (I did see a lovely piece, 2 Fu lions playing, in dark green jade (malachite) – it cost ¥1200 ($800), so forget it!

From the factory we went to the Bund, the waterfront drive along the Huangpu River [the English name, derived from a complex line of sources, means “embankment”; the Chinese name means literally “outer bank”], across from the buildings of the former British Concessions.  We immediately drew crowds, especially people who wanted to get up English conversations.  We are such a curiosity – and so many Chinese learned at least some English – that we attract crowds and stop traffic everywhere!  Everyone’s extremely friendly.

[I encountered a similar situation in Russia, which I describe a little in “Going to a Swiss International School,” Part 5, referenced earlier.  It will feature, with more commentary, in my journal for that trip when I transcribe and post it in an upcoming Rick On Theater.]

After lunch at the hotel, we visited Nanking Road, Shanghai’s 5th Avenue, and the No. 1 Department Store (not only Shanghai’s largest, but China’s), so called [that’s its actual name] because it serves Shanghai’s 1st District. 

With 11 million people in Shanghai (China’s largest city and second in the world), even an ordinary day is a mob scene on the street and in the stores.  Totally impassable!

[I’m shocked that I didn’t write down a description of the Nanking Road and the No. 1 Department Store.  I’ll try to insert it now—and this will be no exaggeration, believe it or not.

[First, a little preparatory information.  Shanghai’s population is so huge that the city can’t handle everyone being free from work at the same time.  Furthermore, China in the 1980s had very few private cars on the roads, so nearly everyone traveled by public conveyance; in the case of Shanghai, that was the city bus system.  There were also lots and lots of bicycles and, of course, pedestrians.

[In addition, the system in the People’s Republic didn’t distinguish between weekdays and weekends.  People went to work in three shifts of five or six days a week with each shift getting days off on different days of the week.  That meant that three days out of each week was a shopping day for one third of the workforce—approximately 3-3½ million Shanghainese (omitting bosses, party officials and political officeholders, soldiers, students and school kids, and such) were on the streets on each work break.

[As it happens, Wednesday was one of the break days.  (It’s probably needless to add that Christmas and New Year aren’t holidays in China.  They mark them for us tourists, as you’ll see, but to Chinese citizens, they’re just ordinary days.  In this instance, Christmas Eve fell on a break day.)  When we arrived at Nanking Road, it was full to the gunnels with shoppers.

[The first impression I got was that Nanking Road was literally a river of people.  They filled the street and sidewalks from building line to building line without a hair’s breadth of light between them.  In those days, nearly everyone in the PRC wore a Mao suit in green or blue, topped with a matching Mao cap.  So the mass of moving people all blended together into what really looked like eddying water!

[While we were still on our own tour bus right across Nanking Road from the storefront and had a little perspective on this scene, the next thing I noticed was the city buses trying to make their way down the street.  Riders were literally hanging off the sides of the bus or out the open windows and doors while it was moving.  It was like some old cartoon scene come to life. 

[Since no one could fit onto the already overflowing bus, would-be passengers just grabbed on, pulled their legs up, and caught a ride until they dropped off a short distance later.  Because of the crowds in the street, the buses didn’t move very fast.

[We got off our bus, the intent being to have look inside the department store—but I watched a few of our companions head for the store’s entrance.  The flow of bodies filling the street, however, was so relentless that no one could cross the street and end up actually in front of the store.  Anyone who actually made it across, came out way down the street from the entrance—like trying to ford a fast-moving stream or negotiating a riptide.

[I gave the crossing a try, managed to get back to the store and set foot inside—but the crown inside was as unnavigable as the one in the street outside, so I decided not to go any further and made my way back to the bus.  After all, I decided, I didn’t really need to buy anything, so I’d gotten a sufficient taste of the No. 1 Department Store in Shanghai.

[On a later stop on our trip, we also went to the city’s main store and I did end up buying something.  I’ll explain that in a bit because it bears on the experience of traveling in China.]

There are many surprising consumer goods on display and though many are expensive for the workers, they can be purchased.  [This was in contrast to what I saw in Moscow at GUM, the Soviet counterpart of China’s state-run department stores, as recounted in that section of “Going to a Swiss International School.”]  Radios, TV’s, washers and dryers, as well as daily necessities of clothing, kitchenware, and toiletries, are available – many imported from Japan (watches, stereos, cameras).

From Nanking Road, we were taken to a Children’s Palace [Shanghai Municipal Children’s Palace], an after-school center of play and study in the arts, crafts, and science and math for kids 7 to 15.

Dinner was a special banquet at the Jing An Hotel for Christmas [I said the holiday was observed for Western visitors].  Marvelous and exquisite! 

[The Jing An Hotel (or Guest House) opened in 1978, so it was virtually brand new.  I still have the menu from this Christmas Eve meal; here’s what we ate (I’ve corrected the Chinese idiosyncratic English):

Fruit Cocktail
Clear Turtle Soup
Baby Fish (Sea Bass) Mandarine Meuniere
Veal Brochette
Roast Stuffed Turkey with Chestnuts
Combination Salad
Christmas Pudding
Coffee
Fresh Fruits

[The “Combination” Salad is Chinese English for “Mixed Salad” and the Christmas Pudding is a British holiday tradition sometimes also known as plum pudding.  The steamed or boiled pudding is made from raisins, currants, citron, spices, and other ingredients. 

[Shanghai, because of its history as a European enclave, is proud of its reputation for European cuisine.  This meal was our group’s first banquet of the trip.  (The great lunch we had in Foshan when we visited Guangzhou wasn’t officially a banquet, though it might as well have been called one.) 

[At the time I took this trip, it was common for the tour leaders to treat the group to several banquets along the way, usually in the headquarters city of the guides, in our case Wuxi and Nanjing, and at other stops.  I don’t know if this is still a practice, though I suspect it’s not.]

After dinner, a party was going on at the Jing Jiang Club, across from our hotel.  The club is only open to foreigners and overseas Chinese [the common appellation for Chinese expatriates and émigrés whom the PRC was trying to woo back].  I elected not to go, and went to bed instead.  Rest was much needed.

There was some general disappointment [among my tour mates] that we are being shown so many factories and so few cultural and historical sights.  A few tactless members of the group argued with our hosts, who graciously arranged special tours for those few.

Though a little more seeing and less buying would be my preference, I feel it’s better to go with the flow.

[I didn’t feel terribly deprived seeing the factories because they were all centers of traditional and ancient Chinese crafts: pottery/ceramics, jade and ivory carving, rug-making, and silk embroidery and tapestry-weaving.  Also, I’d seen that this was a common practice in societies like the PRC, since I had the same experience in the Soviet Union; they like to show off their products and industry.  And at least they didn’t take us to furniture factories or tractor plants! 

[I could have done, though, without the time, which I considered wasted, set aside for visiting the factories’ retail shops.

[Now, news flash!  This stop was the first one since we learned about the possibility of requesting Chinese breakfast that we were in a position to do so.  Tomorrow, on the morn of my 34th birthday, a small group of us would get to try it out.  A small, but enticing, culinary adventure!]

[Well, we’re now well and truly inside the People’s Republic of China.  In the next installment, coming on 30 December, we finish our visit to Shanghai and travel to Suzhou and Wuxi.  (Wuxi, you’ll learn, was the CITS office out of which our trip was administered.  The headquarters of our CITS branch was in Nanjing, formerly Nanking, which we visit in Part 4, coming on 2 January 2022.)

[I hope all ROTters will return to the blog for the continuation of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980.”  I found this trip a fascinating and memorable experience; I wonder if any of you also find it so.]