[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.]
