The guidebooks say that there are four must-dos in Beijing. We did two of them yesterday—climb the Great Wall and eat Peking duck.

The Great Wall is one of China’s relics from ancient times. It runs from the ocean nearly 3,000 miles into the Taklamakan Desert, ending at Jiayuguan on the Silk Road. Consolidated nearly 2,000 years ago by the First Emperor (he of the underground army at Xi’an fame), the current incarnation dates from the Ming Dynasty (or where we were, reconstructed in the last 10 years). Meant to keep the barbarians from the north out (the very Mongols JR and I are traveling to visit beginning Saturday), it failed when put to the test (the Mongols came through in the 14th century and Kublai Khan became emperor of China, with his capital at Dadu, Beijing), and the Manchurians came through (and ruled from 1644 until 1911 as the Qing Dynasty).

The Great Wall remains impressive. Guides used to say it was the only man-made object visible from space, but I think truth in advertising laws made that claim obsolete. The nearest the wall comes to Beijing is about 20 miles, and that’s where we made our pilgrimage (Mao is reputed to have said you’re not a hero until you’ve climbed the Great Wall, and we’re heroic). The area was a crisscross of walls (it was a key pass; Beijing is surrounded by mountains on the north), but we chose the steepest. My GPS said we climbed over 1,000 feet in ½ a mile of horizontal distance. Someone steeped in math said that averages about a 36% gradient, and it certainly seemed that steep. Maybe steeper.

But the wall is not the only Great thing to do. On the way, tourists get whisked to the Ming Tombs, an area which contains the remains of 14 emperors, assorted empresses, and two tombs for the concubines (the other Ming emperors were buried in Nanking, which was their original capital), but for me the impressive part of the tombs is the sacred way. For about a mile, there is a walkway that contains statues of the animals and imperial servants waiting to serve the emperor in the afterlife. It’s an impressive testimony to the solemnity and wealth of the imperial family—and like much of Beijing, a model for other countries influenced by the Chinese. There’re much more modest examples in Korea (I’ve been to the tomb of King Sejong, who gave the country its alphabet) and Vietnam (I’ve been to the tombs of the Nguyen Dynasty in Hue). The Mings were not the first rulers of China to have a sacred way, but they are the closest to Beijing. For example, I’ve been to the tomb of the Empress Wu (the only woman to have been the emperor of China) near Xi’an, and it has an enormous sacred way. What emphasizes the importance of the tombs is that the Qing dynastic founder (whose tomb is in Shenyang) had one constructed for the last Ming emperor, who hanged himself in the park across from the Forbidden City.

The other activity yesterday was the Peking duck dinner, one of the “musts” in Beijing. Over the years, my students have come to refer to it as “duck burritos” since the duck gets sliced and put into a crepe-like pancake, with onions, plum sauce, and cucumbers. Invariably, someone doesn’t like it, which means I can usually eat more than I should, but less than I want.

As for great things, today (Thursday), we continued to sample the delights of a city that has been the capital of China for nearly 600 years, and is imperial in every sense of the word. The morning began with a visit to the Temple of Heaven. Probably the second most familiar building in Beijing (after the Bird Nest and maybe before the Forbidden City), the Temple played an important role in dynastic survival for nearly 500 years. In an agricultural society (then as now), bountiful harvests ensured the survival of the regime. Hence, the emperor’s efforts to tease rain and ensure bountiful harvests made this Temple (to Heaven, not to a Buddha) significant in the empire. The current emperors read history and also know that unruly peasants have overthrown numerous dynasties. At least twice a year the imperial presence trooped from the Palace to the Temple to speak, as only the Emperor could, directly to Heaven, and slaughter the calves or whatever was necessary to feed the people and ensure the stability of the dynasty. This function was so important that when Korea became an empire in 1905 to try to block the Japanese, the king turned emperor built his own temple of heaven. The importance of agriculture (then as now) helped foreign experts (then being the Catholic missionaries, who came with some astronomical knowledge) gain entrée to the Court in Beijing.

An added benefit was a stay at the Tiantan park (where the Temple is located), which is a mecca for retired people to play cards, musical instruments, dance, do tai chi and exercise. It is mostly my generation that gets up in the morning, takes their canaries in cages and other birds to the park, and spends time with friends. Younger Chinese, like younger Americans, either are at work, or played too hard the night before to be in the park, as we were, by 8:30 a.m.

Beijing has other Great things, and we visited them, too, relics of the days when China was the most powerful nation in the world, the middle kingdom between heaven and earth, and the model for nations in the region. In the 1790s, the Qianlong emperor told a British delegation that the west had nothing China wanted or needed, a statement that was pretty much true until the British started selling opium from India….but that’s another story.

The Qianlong Emperor, who ruled for nearly 60 years, was responsible for building what has always been one of my favorite temples—the lama temple, which was his way of saying China is multicultural because it is the largest (and maybe the only) Tibetan temple in Beijing. He converted a prince’s home into a Tibetan temple which houses the largest standing Buddha in the world. As for the Tibetan version, Buddhism tends to absorb and blend with local religions, and Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia is recognizably Buddhist, but its adherents reflect the preexisting demons—there’s a blue-headed demon for example that were I DePaul, would make the mascot. And having been to Tibet, I can recognize more of the differences between the lama Yellow Hat version and the more basic Chinese version.

Near the Lama Temple is the center of the traditional civil service (from the Yuan dynasty to 1908)—the local Confucian temple and the attached university where for nearly 500 years the best scholars in the nation studied the analects of Confucius to prepare themselves for the meritocracy (at its best) that constituted the civil service. At an annual exam, students competed for the right to be officials in the dynastic service; the successful candidates (14,000+ anyway) have their names posted on stone steles for posterity. The “library” has over 100 stone books with 620,000 characters in the Analects of Confucius, the book for the exam for the career.

Our guide told me an interesting story about the Confucian temple that I think shows why people interested in contemporary China should understand the past. She said when she was in college, her teacher’s daughter was applying for college. The teacher took her daughter to the Confucian temple to pray. Sure enough, she got into the school she wanted, which led to her returning and giving thanks.

The final site was the summer palace, thronged with visitors because today is part of a four-day holiday centering on dragon boat racing in the south and the making of a sticky rice item that is exclusive to the holiday. A sign at the palace indicated that there had been 11,000 visitors yesterday, expected 18,000 today, and probably 25,000 over the weekend. There’s a man-made lake with pavilions for residence of officials and the emperor (the Empress Dowager Cixi, who ruled China for much of its late 19th and early 20th century decline, moved the court to the summer palace in the summer from 1903 until her death in 1908). Lost in the walking through the longest covered corridor that has paintings from novels and Chinese scenery are reminders that Western troops ravaged the palace in 1860 and again after the Boxer Uprising, so what we see has been mostly rebuilt in the last century; and reminds us that China has endured a century of humiliation that is an anachronism in Chinese history.

Our farewell dinner was in a “theme park,” the theme being the Imperial Court, a fitting theme given what we’ve seen in Beijing. We came to a former prince’s house that had been taken over by a Hong Kong restaurateur (recently), and retrofitted to look like the Manchus had returned. We had yellow everything (the yellow being the color of the Emperor exclusively), imperial food (including lily and a “concubine’s smile” salad). The servers were dressed in court elegance, and spoke Manchu to us (with an occasional and needed translation into English). An appropriate ending to a 3-week long trip that began with our arrival in Bangkok almost exactly 3 weeks ago.

I said I’d say a few words about what I’ve seen in China. Bear in mind it’s based mostly on what I’ve seen in Beijing, and, despite what Beijingers think, Beijing is the capital of China; it is not China.

Our visit to John Deere highlighted one of the most important issues re: the current government of China—the need to generate at least 8% growth to maintain political and economic stability. That’s challenged in two ways—the first is that China depends a lot on the economic climate elsewhere in the world. That’s a problem; almost 30 million workers in factories that make the goods for the rest of the world went home for the New Year’s Holiday in January and were told not to come back. Further, the importance of tourism, and the existence of a reasonably-priced, world class infrastructure of hotels and restaurants, demands tourists. Tourism is down here, too.

China’s response seems to be to encourage domestic consumption of goods and services. The bailout package here is toward consumers—to purchase cars and appliances, perhaps speeding up the embourgeoisment of the world that Marx predicted, and something that has been happening more and more quickly in the 19 years I’ve been visiting China.

The second challenge, as the Deere manager made clear, is the need for China to feed itself. I marvel as I look out the window of the train at how intensively China cultivates its arable land (much of China is not good for farming). It’s not enough. Yet making agriculture more efficient (the average farm is 1 acre, and if 300 million Chinese left the farm for the city, the average-size farm would still be under 5 acres) presses the need to find more jobs. Hence, the challenge to the regime isn’t from “democracy,” but from those forces that have granted or removed the mandate of heaven for thousands of years in the past—the need for prosperity at home and prestige and security abroad.

The smorgasbord of Asia ends for the class members with their flight back to the United States tomorrow. It’s only a 20-minute flight by the clock; they leave Beijing at 4:10 and land at O’Hare at 4:30, no mean feat. Parents, collect your sons and daughters, mindful that they’ve had a frame-breaking change experience. Someday, they’ll thank me, hopefully in my lifetime.

As my reward, I get to go on to Mongolia. As the Chinese saying goes, “Yi lu ping an.” May you have a peaceful journey.

Two quotes infuse today’s blog. The first is Carolyn’s exclamation: “You’re not making them take four train rides, are you?” Well, no. It’s five, as one of the students pointed out, but the last one—hopefully the one they’ll remember best—was both the longest and on the most comfortable train.

We left Hong Kong about 3:30 in the afternoon (after another torrential rain in the morning, and another wonderful meal with my friend, Eleanor; this one was a dim sum in another upstairs restaurant with no English speakers, no English menu, and no tourist prices, with Carrie and the two students who wanted the experience) for the 23-hour train ride to Beijing. The train was non-stop, meaning we cleared customs in Hong Kong, but did not have to face the temperature gun—literally—until we arrived 23 hours later in the capital of the People’s Republic of China. We had four-person compartments that were sleepers, and I was probably the only one of the group who did not take advantage of the opportunity to sleep for 20 hours. Instead, I was up early, watching the miles roll by (at times we reached 150 km/h (so said the train marquee, though it said we were going 82 km/h when we were standing in the station) and I saw us cross the Yellow River (China’s sorrow, which looked like it was shy of water; I later saw it was down 13% from the previous year, reflecting the drought that has afflicted north China for many years) and go through Zhengzhou, a big rail junction and one of the ancient cities I visited three years ago. We shifted from rice to wheat, but everywhere we saw at least two things: incredible infrastructure spending on superhighways (China has really encouraged the purchase of automobiles, unlike Singapore and Vietnam, for example, which have limited license to purchase auctions, once up to $50,000 Singaporean, now down to $8,000), and high tariffs for Singapore, and high tariffs for Vietnam. See the cover story about Shanghai: the New Detroit in Newsweek), and people in the fields. If you go from Bloomington to Chicago, you never see anyone in the fields unless it is harvest time or planting time. Rice fields especially require a lot of labor. One of the books I finished on the trip was Malcolm Caldwell’s The Outliers, which has a chapter on rice versus other farming, and on math, which helps explain the Chinese work ethic.

So yes, we did have another train ride, but I think it was one everyone enjoyed; recharged batteries will help them in the rigors we have planned in Beijing.

The second part of this blog comes with a quote from J.R. Glenn, a 2005 graduate of IWU who joined us yesterday around midnight. He and I have travelled to Burma and Tibet, and when I suggested Mongolia for this year, he promptly agreed. When we got in from our Peking Opera last night, he was standing in line to check in, his plane having arrived an hour-plus early. “I’m home,” he told me, and it occurred to me that in some ways, I am, too.

Like everywhere we’ve been on this trip, we have too little time in this capitol of the world’s largest country in terms of population. I say that about Beijing because I know what one can do here, and I’m doing my best to make sure we do as much as we can in the time we’re here. I’m happy to say we have the best guide we’ve had anywhere (not always the case in this city), and she and I sat down when we got in and talked about what we might be able to do. She’s managed to make most of my requests into can-dos (in return for which I told her we’d do the “factory visits” we didn’t have to do, but she gets credit for taking us to them. I understand how tourism works better than most trip leaders, and I want to see her get the good marks she’s earned with us).

Our days start early and end late. Certainly our day and a half in Beijing fit that description. When we got in, we had a short turnaround time before our trip to the Qingmen Hotel for a brief introduction to Peking Opera (if you want to know more, rent Farewell My Concubine, by Zhang Yi Mou). A brief introduction is usually enough for foreigners, although the program had more acrobatics than singing. The second number featured the monkey king (a figure common in Buddhist/Hindu lands, and some really funny aspects and some spectacular acrobats. When that let out, some of the students decided to walk back to the hotel, but the guide offered to take anyone who wanted to go to Ah Fun Ti, a Xinjiang restaurant that features Hui (Muslim) foods that I’ve had in Xinjiang. About half of us showed up at the restaurant (which has a floor show including belly dancing) just in time to see the end of the show. We ate, and I asked if the manager would start the belly dancing. Instead, he turned on the music, the musical ball, and Whitney Durham and I started dancing, and by the time we were done, the restaurant staff was on the stage with all our students and the few remaining patrons in what could have been dancing, but a good time was certainly had by all.

Today was another busy day. It started with a 6:30 wakeup call, and an 8 o’clock departure for another spectacular place that most of the group had read about, but never been to—the Forbidden City. As many times as I’ve been to it, I’m still in awe. Built by the second or third Ming Emperor by 1420, and about to celebrate its 600th birthday, the palace was home to 14 emperors until the 1911 revolution abolished the monarchy. It’s been a public spectacle since the 1920s, when Pu-yi (known as the last emperor even though there was an attempt by Yuan Shih-kai to name himself emperor for 86 days in 1916), was evicted, I think by a warlord. Pu-yi went on to flirt with the Japanese who made him their emperor of Manchukuo in the 1930s.

We didn’t see many of the 9,999 rooms (a room being defined as the space between 4 pillars, but there’s still a lot of our kind of rooms) although we walked from the southern entrance (Tiananmen, the gate of heavenly peace) to the north. The palace has been refurbished, partly for the Olympics, partly with an eye on the 2020 celebration sure to come, at a cost of several billion dollars, and I didn’t see the faded or peeling paint so common in the past, and the Starbucks that was once in the City has been evicted (as a result of an Internet campaign!), but I did see the mobs of tour groups that prove, once again, tourism is the world’s biggest business. From south to north, we went from impressive public gathering places to the Throne room to the private quarters where the royal family (the emperor had around 3,000 cohorts; he chose his 2-hour companions by drawing their names from bamboo). The new emperors live in a part of the Forbidden City that is, well, forbidden!

We were able to do something I’ve never done on a tour before, but has always been one of the highlights of the city for me—a climb of Coal Hill in a park across the street (now) from the Forbidden City. Builders of the moat dumped the dirt they excavated in a pile which became Coal Hill, a royal playground overlooking the Forbidden City. I convinced our guide it was a good idea to go there, and we got the best views of the entire layout possible without an airplane.

From the Forbidden City, we went to a local area nearby, a “hutong,” the small alleyways where 3 generations of families live in a square compound that is a little version of the Forbidden City, where we had lunch with a local family, who’d owned the place for 3 generations. Though the government has torn down 80% of these quaint buildings (which have public but not private washrooms), this area has been spared the wrecker’s ball, and many of the hutongs fronting on the artificial lake have been refurbished as bars and restaurants (hopefully with internal washrooms).

In the evening, we went to probably the most professionally choreographed show I’ve seen in China, “The Story of Kung Fu,” which made more sense to me than the last time I saw it because I’ve since visited the Shaolin Monastery, the location of the source of Kung Fu. Many of us got dropped off at Wangfujing (which used to be known as Morrison Street when it was part of the foreigners’ forbidden city; after the Boxer Uprising, the legations and embassies had a wall around them fit for new emperors, and it was as forbidden to ordinary people as the nearby Forbidden City of the emperors. Once a street full of quaint shops (including the ancient deer and antler pharmacy, which I think is where linguists discovered the Shang bones that gave them a clue to the origins of Chinese writing, it’s been converted into a shopping mall ala Michigan avenue, name brand stores, etc. There is still a food court there, with hawkers who sell snake, cicadas, scorpions and other creepy crawly things that are not on the usual restaurant menus—nor on anything else.

I’m going to skip our business visit and some observations of Beijing and China until I get a chance later. We’re off to the Great Wall soon and I want to get this onto e-mail. As I said, we’ve been busy. Sleep when we get home! Oh, that’s right, I’m at home here (almost!) Zaijian.

Forbidden City

I was a millionaire before I left Saigon, but in Hong Kong, I’m a pauper.

Part of that came from the currency alone. The unit of money in Saigon is the “dong,” which is in serious need of reducing the number of zeros. One dollar equals around 18,000 dong, so when I had to pay for the group’s 24 rickshaw rides around the old city, I had to pay over 3 million dong. I guess a million doesn’t buy as much as it used to!

By contrast, Hong Kong is a place where you can easily spend a million dollars—U.S. With its incredible setting of the islands and Victoria Harbor, it’s easily one of the most beautiful, and certainly one of the most memorable cities in the world. A duty free special administrative region of China (since 1997; a British Crown Colony for nearly 150 years before that), Hong Kong is a city of almost 7 million that bills itself as a shopper’s paradise, and it fully lives up to its billing.

We flew here from Saigon early—we left our hotel at 4 a.m. for the 6 a.m. flight (that goes on to Chicago!), arriving, with time zone change, at our hotel around noon. Our rooms were not ready, so we scattered to savor the delights of the city—duty free and tax free clothing, electronics, tailor made suits (I went to my tailor and found that indeed I had eaten well this trip), eye glasses, the Scout Shop (the Hong Kong adult leaders have a tailor made dress uniform that looks like a tuxedo), tickets for a Saturday trip to Macau, a jaunt through Kowloon Park, which has a pool with a waterfall—all before checking in to the hotel. My colleague, Professor Trimble, vanished to view Disneyland here in Hong Kong; she’s a former employee of the Magic Kingdom, and HAD to see what the smallest park was like.

I’ve probably spent more time in Hong Kong than in any other Asian city, partly because in the old days, it was the gateway to China. You flew to Hong Kong, then went on to Beijing or elsewhere, then came back from China to Hong Kong before your flight to Chicago. That’s changed to some extent because you can now fly direct from Shanghai or Beijing to Chicago (as the students will do next Friday and I’ll do in two weeks).. That’s a metaphor for what’s happened to Hong Kong as an entrepot for the China trade, too. Once the funnel for most of China’s trade with the West, Hong Kong has a rival in Shanghai, which now draws the Yangtze River valley to itself, as the Chinese government has gone from punishing Shanghai as the former bastion of capitalism, to building it up as its most modern city and financial capital (the New York of China). Hong Kong has a major container port (either it or Singapore usually does the most volume in the world), as the contact point for Guangdong province (you might have heard of Shenzhen and Dongguan and the other cities just north of Hong Kong in the Pearl River delta that produce much of China’s export for the world). Like Singapore, it is a city that depends on location and its human capital. Trade and tourism are down here, too, though the Chinese government has made it easier for mainlanders to get visas, and the word is that rich Chinese (and there are a lot of them; remember, if you’re one in a million, there’re 1,500 Chinese just like you) are increasingly coming to Hong Kong to buy real foreign brands at a savings of 15% of mainland prices. Certainly Nathan Road (the main shopping street in Kowloon) has no shortage of people mobbing the street, giving one the sense of energy that differentiates it from Singapore. One of our business speakers, an IWU alum from Galesburg, noted that Hong Kong is the place to work when you’re single, Singapore when you’re married.

Having experienced Bird Flu and been criticized for not doing anything about it, Hong Kong is determined to avoid the swine flu. You may remember that a Mexican tour group got confined to a hotel for a week (and left praising Hong Kong, meaning even being confined to a hotel might be considered a treat). When we got to the Cityview Hotel, which has been running at 86% capacity for the year (I saw the figures and experienced the result), we were greeted by masked employees who shunted us to a corner where they scanned us for temperature before we were let in. The hotel had a sign on the elevator buttons that indicated a sanitizing of the buttons every hour.

One of the joys of visiting Hong Kong is visiting friends here. When I went to a conference in 1994 in Saigon, I met a Chinese professor from the City University of Hong Kong, and every time I’ve been here, we’ve visited. It’s become a tradition for her to take my group out to a Chinese restaurant for a very Chinese meal, not the kind that the tourist agencies arrange. Here are my tips for a great eating experience:

1) you get in an elevator and go higher than the first floor (there’s a ground floor then a first floor)
2) when you get off the elevator, no one speaks English. In Hong Kong, that may include not speaking anything but Cantonese.
3) you don’t see the people staying in your hotel, or any tourists for that matter.
4) there’s no gift shop.
5) there’s no menu in English, and no pictures on the menu.
6) your Chinese host says, “I don’t know the English name for this…”

I do know we had some exotic items that my friend said were very expensive, and I know we had roast goose (because the head was on it), and a big fish, pig’s tongue, and chicken feet, and lots of semi-identifiable and “you don’t want to know” foods. Can you imagine the look on students’ faces? We have one who had never eaten rice or fish….

Yesterday combined business and pleasure, which is a great way to travel. Our alum, Matt Dredge, who works for PWC, got six of his coworkers or friends together, and met us at the PWC conference room. They came from a variety of countries and states, and not all were accountants, but gave us a great picture of what it’s like to work in Hong Kong. The general consensus was, “Work hard, play hard,” and the advice for Americans who want to come to Asia was, “Be invited by your company, because if you are, you’ll get an expat package, which includes housing allowance, transportation, and many other amenities.” If you come because you want to, you’ll have to pay—and in Hong Kong, real estate can be expensive. One rents a 350-square foot apartment (I have a tent that size, I think) for nearly $1,800 a month. No wonder so many restaurants and bars exist; it you’re going to party with friends, you have no room at home to do so. And they did point out that the expat privileges are becoming fewer and fewer as more companies retrench. The students also raised a tough question—repatriation. I would imagine it’s difficult to go back to the states after Asia. I empathize. Sometimes it is for me, too.

The city tour takes you to four or five places that aren’t as easy to get to as the main shopping and residential areas (Hong Kong has a subway, ferry, bus, and train system that moves people quite well). The trip includes Aberdeen, which used to be the home of the “boat people,” but they’re fewer and fewer in number, Repulse Bay, which has a nice beach protected by a shark net, and a newish and splashy temple, Stanley (site of a world War II prison camp, now a place that entraps foreigners, with it’s combination of lower priced Western brands and pretty neat Chinese items, not the standard “tourist market,” and the 1,200-foot Peak, which provides the backdrop for the skyscrapers in the central part of the city. I remember the first time I took Mrs. Hoyt here. I asked her what she wanted to see. She said, “Old buildings.” I said, “There’s one. It’s from 1950.” Which is almost true. See the movie, “The World of Susie Wong” if you don’t believe me.

Hong Kong, according to our guide, grew into what it is during the 1960s. It was probably due to two events: the Vietnam War, which channeled a lot of money to Asia, and the Cultural Revolution in China, which sent almost a million refugees into Hong Kong. The incredible energy here is palpable.

One other treat for me is to take advantage of the ferry system and the fact that Hong Kong consists of a number of islands other than the main one and Lantau (where the airport is located). Hence, last night Carrie and I took the ferry to Cheng Chau island, a place where the locals get away for a weekend. It was fun navigating the subway system to the wharf area, where we caught a boat and got to the island. Finding a restaurant was hard/easy because they met most of my requirements set out above, but there was no Eleanor to help us order. The upshot was that someone took pity on us, we ate, took the ferry back to the Star Ferry, then the subway back to our hotel. Hong Kong is truly spectacular at night.

Saturday, I bought tickets for the jetfoil to Macau. Macau fascinates me because it was one of the first European possessions in Asia, and also the last. Conquered early by the Portuguese, it remained in Portuguese control until 1999, when it was handed over to the People’s Republic. Like Hong Kong, it’s now a special administrative region. Though it’s probably best known as the Las Vegas of the East for its gambling casinos (which have increased in number since the handover to 26, some owned by Americans; under the Portuguese, Stanley Ho had the monopoly; the money he made earned him four wives and a home on the Peak in Hong Kong) Macau still has a Mediterranean feel. The government buildings are in pink (you read it correctly); the town is 40% Catholic, with a number of churches that one of our students remarked remind her of colonial churches in Mexico. The Franciscans and the Jesuits contested each other and the dominant Buddhist religion. At one of the temples, Caleb Cushing signed the Treaty of Wanghsia with China that got Americans into China’s Century of Humiliation, extending to China the rights Britain had gained by force in 1842. Because Portugal was neutral in World War II, the Japanese did not invade its colonies, so Macau was not destroyed then. Development may do so. There’s now a tower that has skyjumping and bungee jumping—about four times the height of more famous places in New Zealand.

We split into groups, and I gave my thoughts on what to see (the ruins of St. Paul, the most famous non-church in Asia—it burned in a fire in the early 19th century, leaving only a wall; the old fort and the new museum; the Leal Senado, the center of commerce, which is very Mediterranean in its pastels; the churches; the Protestant cemetery, whose tombstones tell the litany of life in Asia—died storming the forts at Canton, died at sea, died of malaria, died during childbirth), and where to eat (the old Portuguese officer’s club is now a restaurant). And we went our separate ways.

Two things altered my wonderful plans. One was the weather. I just had dinner with Mark Sheldon, and IWU alum who lives and works here, and he said, “I thought it was a typhoon.” It rained steadily and violently all day, and Mark said he wondered if the jetfoils would run. They ran, but we had a hard time doing anything outside other than sloshing.

My group had an experience that they’ll remember for a long time. I talked with a driver about getting a van tour, and listed all the places I wanted to go, including the gate to China, the island of Taipo, etc. “No problem,” he stated, which should have alerted me; no problem usually means, “we have a problem.” We didn’t know it, but we would.

He took us where he wanted in the morning, and when we asked about lunch at the officers club, he said he knew a restaurant much closer that had Luso-Chinese food (that’s Macau), and left us there, telling us to meet him again in 3 hours for the rest of the tour.

Fighting the rain by staying in museums or under eaves as much as we could, we were back at the anointed spot at 3—and no driver. By 3:30 we realized we had no information about him—his name was “Ronald,” he told us, and I spotted “Choi” on the license he showed us, but I could not name his company or license—and he had purses and cameras in the car.

Some took a taxi back to the Ferry terminal, while the rest of us pondered what to do. We finally realized the driver had contacted the restaurant originally, so maybe the restauranteur could contact him? As it turned out, the restaurant was closed, but Dan Cummings (bless him) knocked on the door, and the owner told us that the driver had been in an accident and wanted to talk with me. He said he was “sorry” and would be there in time to get us to the ferry.

He did. When I suggested that he might refund some of our money because he had not fulfilled his contract, he got indignant about how much the accident would cost him, etc., etc., but finally eased our pain. But not enough to prevent us from reporting him to the tourist bureau, and putting the story into my marketing class as a poor example of service recovery.

As you can tell, we are having an adventure. I think everyone will be reluctant to leave Hong Kong, but you can see why I am not leaving here a millionaire. Too much to do, too much to buy.

On the beach in Hong Kong