As we waited to take off on our China Eastern Airline’s flight from Beijing to Xian, the flight attendant noticed our lack of reading material and very kindly supplied us with an English language edition of The Global Times, China’s version of the NYT’s International Herald. Just beneath the magazine title on the front page was the tag line “Discover China, Discover the World.” Another prominent text box next to the title announced, “Discuss China, Discuss the World.”

On this side of the globe, there is no question what country is the center of the universe, and it isn’t the United States. In the pages of the Global Times we learned that “Chinese investors are attracted by the large US markets, but China still has advantages in overall costs as well as innovation capability.” That “the present-day China is no longer a mere listener to the US” as “China and the US are now on an equal footing,” and that “future US development is inseparable from China.” We also discovered that due to the “irresponsible educational behavior” of the Chancellor of UCSD (John’s and my alma mater), who invited the “exiled” Dalai Lama to give a commencement address, that our degrees from UCSD might not be recognized in China. From the Chinese perspective, “the history education the American students receive remains outdated and full of imperial perspectives,” and that failure should have repercussions. Fortunately, we’re not looking for jobs in China.

This is a nation on the go and full of attitude.

China old and new.

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This was not my first visit to China, but it might as well have been. What we experienced this week was unrecognizable from the People’s Republic that my mother and I toured twenty years ago. In the fall of 1997, Beijing was a bleak, gray, crumbling, congested, chaotic, smoggy, urban mess. Despite ubiquitous signs prohibiting public spitting, sidewalks were coated with phlegm and respiratory distress was evident everywhere. People were drab, dressed in leftovers from the Mao days; dreary greens, blues and browns, nothing that would draw attention to an individual. They buzzed about on bicycles and loud, pollution spewing two-stroke motor bikes. Crossing the street required playing chicken with vehicles coming from every direction. Whoever blinked, lost. Mind you, Mom and I had a good time in 1997. The food was (and still is) excellent. We loved watching the women doing tai chi in the morning in the scraggly patches of grass that passed for parks and, in the evenings, the couples dancing on wide spots in the sidewalks. As two, tall, white women in China in 1997, we also attracted a lot of attention; sort of like minor celebrities. Everywhere we went, people wanted to have their picture taken with us.

Today is DIFFERENT. Where to start? There are so many possible angles. What struck me immediately, perhaps because I sew and love fabric, was the women. Gone were the colorless, shapeless, anonymous caterpillars. In their place; beautiful, look-at-me, butterflies. For a couple of days, as John wandered through major sights I’d seen before (The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City), I followed along and had fun with my camera channeling Bill Cunningham.*

Butterflies on the Great Wall and doing morning exercises in the Temple of Heaven Park.

* For those of you who don’t know who he was, Bill Cunningham was a fashion photographer who specialized in candid and street photography. His fashion spreads ran weekly in the New York Times and were a wonderful commentary on sartorial trends. Bill worked until a month before he died last June at the age of 87. There is a great documentary on him. He was also a friend of Doris O’Neil’s (a tidbit for those who know who Doris was).
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It was Doug’s fault. That’s right, Doug was totally to blame. Wednesday was fully booked. A walk up Diamond Head, a hike up Koko Head, a quick swim and a shave ice. Off we went. The walk up Diamond Head included switchbacks, stairs, a tunnel, a spiral staircase, beautiful views and was sufficiently long and steep to warm us up.

Honolulu and Waikiki beach from the top of Diamond Head

We then went further east to Koko Head. Koko Head used to have a funicular. That is now the official trail. A dead straight path consisting of 1,447 railroad ties spaced unevenly acting as steps of varying heights from too low to too high. It starts off gently then gets steeper and steeper until it feels like you can reach out and touch the ties in front of you. Challenging to say the least.
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[Note to readers: Over the next six weeks, we will be using Tencenturies.com to post commentary on our 2017 trip around the world.]

Background:

A decade ago, John read a book about Genghis Khan; how Khan rose from commoner to ruler and then solidified his vast empire through savvy assimilation of disparate cultures and innovative, peri-modern administrative governance. Somewhere between pages 1 and 352 of that book, a desire to ride across the Mongolian steppes on horseback (perhaps with a pendant fluttering in the wind on a long, garlanded lance) germinated in John’s imagination. There it grew until three years ago it surfaced in one of our periodic “what shall we do next” conversations. At the time, I smiled and give John a vague non-committal, spousal nod. We were mid-way through our Kenyan experience. I secretly assumed that spending two years in one endless arid grassland would dampen John’s desire to venture immediately into another. I was wrong. John pushed for Mongolia in 2016 but the trip was postponed by his mother’s and my father’s failing health. In 2017, Mongolia was back on the schedule.

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