CHAPTER 1

CHINA NEW YEAR

2000-01

DECEMBER 28, 2000

TO CHINA

Our China Day has arrived! Sixteen of us, the extended family of Dold-Schafer-Plaskett-Joyce, this year adding our son-in-law Marty's parents, Walt and Tommye, are on our way to Beijing and the People's Republic of China. For several months we have been preparing for this trip, by far the most adventurous of our annual excursions at New Year. Each of us has been practicing various degrees of cool, as we tell our friends of our trip.

"What are you doing for New Year?" they ask.

"Oh, we're going to China."

It is such a great answer to be able to give. With a little practice it is possible to attain a high level of casualness, which makes people green with envy. Ultimately, they will hate you.

"Where are you going?"

"Beijing, for the New Year's party."

Cities are even better than countries for bragging. If you go straight to Shanghai or Xi'an or Hong Kong, it is so much more impressive than just saying "China", elevating you to the rank of world traveler, possessed of an intimate knowledge of world geography, and even better, of culture. It might be even more impressive to say "The Orient" or "the Far East" because that will let you field additional questions. But a simple "Beijing" or "Xi'an" does just fine. You rarely get a chance to be completely insufferable, and going to Beijing for the New Year is generally unheard of, almost as good as going to Paris for lunch. In fact, it may be better.

So here we are, aboard Air China flight 986, bound non-stop for Beijing, with ten days ahead of us for ancient wonders and modern thrills. 11+ hours of flight and 16 hours of time zones will get us there by 5:30 P.M. tomorrow. We cross the date line tonight and lose a day, which makes it impossible to figure out. I just ask for the time on arrival, accept the report, change my watch and settle in as a local. This is one case where if you leave your watch on California time you are in genuine trouble. On this trip you have to start thinking Chinese. Nothing relates — language, food, music, history, culture, crafts, time. It is best to get there, lose all preconceived notions, and settle in. China is staggering in so many ways.

"What are you doing New Year's?"

"Oh, (yawn) we're going to the Western New Year's Party on Tiananmen Square." Parts of cities are even more impressive than the whole.

"Tiananmen Square? That's in China isn't it? You mean you're going to China? For New Year? Really?"

Mission accomplished!

DECEMBER 29

ARRIVAL BEIJING

I'll have to make up something for today because we lost it somewhere above the Aleutians when we crossed the International Date Line. At least we lost most of it. We left San Francisco yesterday in early afternoon, have been flying for about ten hours and it is still early afternoon tomorrow, or today. In fact it is two hours later a day later. I have never quite figured out if I'm supposed to be really tired or sound asleep or wide awake. Whatever it is, in about two hours we are landing in China and it will be 5 P.M., dinnertime. Haven't we missed a breakfast or two?

The kids have been wonderful. Kasey, age six, is so charming, so huggable, moving around gently from row to row with a happy smile in her beautiful manner. Joshua, four years old, scoped out the airplane structure, analyzed the emergency procedures, crawled under the seats to find the floatation devices, and in two hours declared the aircraft to be okay and commenced patrolling the aisle, flitting from person to person, jabbering away, happy and funny. About nine hours into the flight both of them fell sound asleep, sprawled over whoever happened to be with them. Have there ever been two more beautiful children?

But it isn't just the Munchkins. Everyone is relaxed, laid back, patient, primed for a great experience. Jim got into his pulpit this morning and set forth the "Rules of the Road": no complaining, no fighting, no teasing, no cell phones. We were reminded that we were "on a tour" and individual rights were subordinated to the general good, commanded to enjoy China and be interested in everything. His admonition has been labeled "The Prime Directive." It was a moving speech, delivered with passion and commitment, and it is vitally necessary. It was repeated later for Patrick and Deb and again for Walt and Tommye, although Walt was declared to be "permanently exempt."

"That shouldn't be hard to follow, Harold," yelled Walt in the jet way. Harold, aka Jim, immediately lifted Walt's exemption, piercing him with a baleful stare. Today there is no room for teasing in Jim's, James's, nee Harold's, world.

Just before 6 P.M. we landed in Beijing. Amazing! Halfway around the world, 5,906 miles to be exact, in a single flight and less than half a day, sort of. Our route had taken us over Alaska, across eastern Russia, above the Sea of Okhotsk and on to Mainland China, in 11.5 hours.

Long before we left California, I was with Kasey and Josh in my den where I had a globe. I showed them where California was and spun it around to show them China. Josh was silent for just a moment.

"Papa, won't we fall off?"

I was trying to figure out a 4-year old's answer when he brightened up and solved my problem.

"It's okay, Papa. I'll just put gum on on shoes."

* * *

As I knew he would, Walter Horatio (Shui Heng Jong) was there inside customs waiting for us. Though we only met last April on my first trip to China, we have become very good friends. He came to our house in California later in the year and the bond only got stronger. He is such an attractive person, always smiling, witty and very interested in everything around him. Our travel groups have all come back from China thrilled with the experience and the quality of the service, all thanks to Walter, who runs the Beijing office.

It is almost an anticlimax going through China customs. They smile and stamp your passport. That's it! You collect your luggage and simply walk into China. Whatever happened to the grim intimidation of Communism? It almost lulls you into dropping your political guard. Indeed many European countries and certainly the U.S. are harder to enter.

Vickie Lee, the director of San Francisco's Ananda Travel office, who does all of our China travel, was waiting for us outside, not being possessed of Walter's diplomatic passport that would give her access to baggage area. Also waiting was Li Xiao Sung, or Sam, our Beijing guide, who will be escorting us for the next few days. Sam has escorted several of our groups already and is almost a familiar person, though I have never actually met him before.

Not knowing exactly when it is or where we are, we trudged to our waiting bus and Mr. Sun, our driver, headed for the city. It's interesting that all bus drivers in China are addressed as Mr. and Mr. Sun would become a decades long friend, who eventually became simply "Sun" for us.

With Beijing and other Chinese cities, you never really arrive at "city center". It sprawls over a dozen square miles, encompassing nearly a dozen million souls, and just when you think you have reached the center you turn the corner and enter another blitz of neon and high rise. With Beijing the glare spreads in every direction, radiating off of Chang an Avenue and Tiananmen Square. Four Ring Roads girdle the old city spreading the population further and further into the desert, accommodating to the reality of 11,000,000 people.

Sam kept up a running commentary into the city, pointing out historic and modern buildings and beginning our introduction of Chinese customs and habits. Modern Beijing is spectacular at night, especially at this time of year, when a growing Christmas and Western New Year interest prompts light demonstrations on most of the buildings. Beijing is a cacophony of light, sometimes discordant and blaring but just as often artistic and innovative. Trees flow with color. Two Rainbow Bridges, glistening with lights, arch over the highway. Freeway guardrails glow orange; modern buildings are etched in streams of color. Elegant art in light is scarred often by giant, glaring golden arches and KFC walls. The Western food culture has hit China hard, clad in neon. Sam told us there are forty Starbucks in Beijing, all in the past year. McDonalds now numbers 160, accompanied in the invasion by forty KFCs, a bunch of Pizza Huts, Dairy Queens, Baskin Robbins, Chili's, Hooters, and Roy Rogers. Dim Sun they aren't, but they are definitely here to stay. They are emblematic, in their explosive growth, of the incredible market that China is opening to the world.

Josh and Kasey were honed in completely, listening intently, thrilled by the bright lights and huge buildings of Beijing. Josh misses nothing, pointing out the overloaded bicycles, the colorful lights, the many Christmas trees, the trains, buses and trucks of the city.

"What did he say about the water?" he asked as Sam was admonishing us not to use the tap water. I said he told us only to use bottled water. "Oh, okay," Josh said matter-of-factly. "Actually, that's what I always do."

Josh is ready.

We cashed in our bodies at the new Radisson Plaza State Guest House, a 5-star hotel just outside the 2nd Ring Road. Jim, Mary, Annie and I wandered out to the local shopping mall, and McDonald's, but the crush of thousands of shoppers was more than our weary minds could absorb and we quickly retreated to the hotel.

We'll explore tomorrow.

DECEMBER 30

FORBIDDEN CITY/TEMPLE OF HEAVEN

Zhao san hao! Good Morning! Or just plain Zhao!

I don't think any of our group expected the kind of breakfast buffet the upscale Chinese hotels offer their guests. They include full American stuff like bacon, ham, omelets and cereal; European fruits and cold meats and maybe a bratwurst or two; Japanese sushi and other live critters; and of course Chinese noodles, dumplings and "porridge," called conchi. I always double my breakfast intake overseas, because I add the local fare to the American. Here in China you have four layers to pile on, that is if you can deal with raw fish. At best you have three cultural breakfasts to amalgamate before you can even think of touring. It is particularly difficult in China, because there is bound to be ten hours of tomb and palace walking, plus a Chinese lunch of about fifteen courses and a dinner the same size. That's the price of world traveling.

Breakfast conquered, we headed for Tiananmen Square, crowded today because it is a national holiday. Sam cautioned us about pickpockets and thieves: "In the same forest there are different kinds of beasts." In general, China is a safe place, but crowds always attract the fast fingers.

It took two minutes for Sam and I to figure out that our group would take some "organizing" if we were going to see more than one site in China during our ten days. We hit the square and immediately dispersed in ten directions and purposes. Sam geared up to begin talking and found no audience. Eric was 100 yards away laying on his back, capturing the underside of a pigeon atop the Monument to the Heroes of the Republic. Matt was off interrogating a perplexed Chinese plainclothesman about the relative merits of the Cultural Revolution, and Nancy was chasing Josh in the direction of Chairman Mao. The rest of us were standing around in awe of the world's largest public square, 90 soccer fields in size and capable of containing at least half a million at a People's Party rally. Walter is already floating around finding things to buy for us. I fear if he adopts Kasey and Josh, Nancy will have to buy a ship to get everything home.

Sam was at first a bit perplexed by our lack of cohesion, but things will get better the longer we are on the road. We are not yet the smooth running touring unit we will be by day's end. I had forgotten that the family is not tour-hardened like one of our busloads of octogenarians. We actually have individual expectations and plans for each site. That is hard to break. We are also bringing in at inordinate amount of background information; there are a dozen different guidebooks among us, which have actually been read. Questions lengthen tours and the family has never been known for a paucity of inquiries. Now that I think back on that fact, we were lucky to get out of the Forbidden City by dark.

The 72 acres of Forbidden City were home to thirteen Ming Dynasty Emperors and eleven from the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty. It's actually pronounced "Ching" just as the first Qin Empire is pronounced "Chin." The Ming Capital had been Nanjing from 1368-1421, but was moved to Beijing by the great third emperor Yongle during the latter part of his reign (1360-1424). The Last Emperor left the Forbidden City in 1911.

You enter the Inner City through Tiananmen Gate, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, today draped with the five-star flag of the People's Republic of China and a giant picture of Chairman Mao Zedong. The flag has a large star symbolizing the Communist Party and four smaller ones for the workers, students, office workers and soldiers. Inside the Gate of "Peace" you enter another world, of imperial power and despotism, euphemized by terms such as "tranquility," "harmony" and "union." It is a world that was forbidden to commoners, and, after dark, everyone else except Emperor, wives, concubines and eunuchs. If you stop to think about it, the municipal absence of testicles may indeed promote increased levels of tranquility.

The Meridian Gate is the true entrance to the Forbidden City, rather than Tiananmen. It was so named by the Emperor because he asserted that the Prime Meridian ran through his house rather than Greenwich, England. We laughed at that when Sam reported it, but why should we casually accept the arrogance of the British Empire and not the Chinese? I am perfectly willing to accept both since I can't see any way that it affects my happiness in Fairfield, California. I'm for giving everyone his or her own meridian if it will keep them in balance.

The Golden Stream meanders through the Forbidden City, crossed five times by a series of three bridges. Only the emperor used the middle bridge, tried by others at the risk of their lives. The royal family walked to his right and the court officials to the left. There were dozens of things in the Imperial world that were permitted only to the emperor — the number 9, the colors purple and gold, the 5-clawed dragon. Certain trees and flowers were royal perquisites. Only the Emperor could display a dragon in front of his house. The common soul lived or died in a complicated world of taboo and restriction, capable of losing his head a thousand ways. But apparently the Emperor himself was far from immortal. Trees were banned from his city since it was feared they might harbor potential assassins. Outside the Hall of Supreme Harmony the brick flooring is fifteen layers thick to prevent tunneling.

Annie led the family over the middle bridge, a vibrant symbol of her modern age.

Life for the Emperor in the Forbidden City was largely symbolic and ceremonial. He came to the Meridian Gate to give out moon cakes at the Spring Festival. Twice a year he traveled to the Temple of Heaven to pray for favorable crops. He prayed at the Hall of Supreme Harmony at the Ceremony of the Winter Solstice, at New Year and during the Summer Festival.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony is the picture symbol today of the Forbidden City, the most often photographed of the royal halls. It is the tallest of all the halls, built on three levels, symbolizing the heavens, the human world and the earth. Sam hit us with a torrent of statistics. There are 308 huge water jars in the city, 18 bronze incense burners and 18 bronze jars, one for each province in Qing days. There are two bronze storks and two tortoises, royal symbols.

As you wander toward the Emperor's throne, the harmony halls progress from Supreme to Complete to Preserving Harmony. At Complete Harmony, the Emperor checked seeds, the land's and his own, reviewing his family tree to find out exactly whom he had fathered over the past year, important if you worried about relatives tunneling or climbing trees. At the Hall of Preserving Harmony he married off princesses and reviewed student examinations.