Beijing and Shanghai China Vacation
October 2001

My trip started with flying from Houston to San Francisco for a one day lay over before leaving with my good friend Dan Lee.  I stayed at Dan's Townhouse and we ran some errands and checked out shift cart tracks which is similar to what Dan was looking into as an investment in Shanghai.  The next day we few to Beijing with the flight going over the international date line.  It is a strange feeling to leave and loose a day even if you know if you get it back on the return flight.

We arrived in Beijing just after dusk and the first thing we did was exchange American Express travelers checks for Chinese currency.  As we were doing this, we were approached by black taxi cab drivers, which are the unlicensed taxies.  Dan and I got a strange feeling about the approaching and asked the bankers at the airport which explained what they were.  Their name came from the usual aspect that their cars were always black.  We ended up taking one of these black taxi rides, because we were told that they were half the cost, which was not bad but our choice on not taking the toll road and paying the toll was.

The ride from the airport to the Beijing Hilton is a 30 minute drive by the modern toll road and a 45 minute otherwise, which consists of a very old parallel road next to the very well lighted toll road.  We were in a very small old Volkswagen with a driver and what appeared to be his boss.  The temperature outside was in the 70 degrees Fahrenheit so the taxi driver had his windows opened.  We ended up following many big rig trucks along with very old cars which had no marking of make, all of which had very bad exhaust problems.   I was a little nervous because the road was dark, with not many street lights, and we could see people appearing to be living in the woods along the road.  Dan asked our taxi drivers in Mandarin about our ride progress and Dan told me all was well.  After making it to the Hilton Hotel, the air quality did get better, but the whole trip in China had many areas of bad air.  I learned after the trip that China up to around the year 2000 had burned coal for generation of electricity and general heating.  There was a saying that the "Sun finally shined in Beijing in 2000 after 75 years."

Over the many days we were in Beijing, we took in all of the sites we could as see.   The city and people were very pleasant.  The funny part of the trip in Beijing and Shanghai was that people often thought that Dan was my tour guide or I was the "big boss".   Suspecting that I would be treated differently in a good way if people thought I was important, I often played up to the part but not to the demeaning of Dan, but by dressing in a way to further stand out such as wearing a Shell Oil Company shirt and sometimes sporting a baseball cap with American logos.  Dan also told me that he noticed people looked at him very differently.  Dan found out that because he styled his hair and his clothes were a little rich for the locals, along with his accent, the locals thought he was a rich, spoiled kid.  I told Dan that he should take it as a complement that he doesn't look his age of 36.  I am 41.

When visiting many historic monuments such as the Spanish forts in Florida or the Alamo in Texas, I was accustomed to seeing recreations of cannons, desks and general furnishings of the time which we didn't see in the sites in Beijing.  Yes, there was some rooms which contained many of the original or recreated duplicates of furnishings, but most places were empty.  The immense size of the walking areas and courtyards of the Forbidden City, Summer Palace and Temple Of The Heavens made the missing furnishings more evident.  Tour guides explained that the different revolutions caused looting and burning of many treasured works in these places.  An unknown fact was that we learned there use to be a great wall around Tiananmen Square which was torn down and now all lament the loss of and great historic significance of it.

We flew into Shanghai at night also, and we were immediately struck by the very modern airport, roads, highways and buildings.  The air still had smog but it was not as thick as it was in Beijing.  The lighted highway into the city from the airport was one of the most beautifully modern lighted roads I have ever been on.  We crossed over a suspension bridge which was architecturally amazing, which we learned later was the largest spanned bridge in the world.  We next went down a huge four level circular highway known as the Dragon's eye.  Once we got to our hotel and saw the view, it was extremely captivating to see the beauty of the city!

It was a good piece of luck that we had gone to Beijing first and Shanghai second.  We both felt that we would have felt like we had gone back in time 30 years and into a very dirty city if the trip had been reversed.   We heard that China had spent some 30% of its GNP to modernize Shanghai and Beijing was next in line with an estimated completion in time for the 2008 Olympics.

The Shanghai leg of the trip consisted of visiting its great site seeing spots along with setting appointments with the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, American Chamber of Commerce and some other business specializing in foreign investments.  We learned a lot and were disappointed to find out that Shanghai already had 5 shift cart racing tracks (Beijing had 1), still there were other avenues which Dan is looking into which I might be able to get involved in also.

In both cities, we often were out late at night walking streets to see and experience the personalities of the city.  There was no place we felt unsafe, in fact, quite the opposite.  Everywhere we saw there was always a police officer or army patrolling, always without guns, rarely with a billy club or even a two way walkie-talkie.  I was stunned once when we saw an armored car outside a bank where there were three officers carrying shot guns. 

Lastly despite being in two cities with 12 and 14 million people respectfully, there was limited traffic with lots of bicyclist.   The strange aspect was that practically everywhere we went, drivers use their vehicle horns almost non stop to let each other know they are next to them or to get out of the way (no hand gestures).  Also, vehicles often drove right in front of on coming traffic which would start a chain reaction of organized confusion with horns blazing which would make my memories of New York City and Mexico City traffic look tame!  Despite this, there was never an accident and we didn't see any cars with dents or in disrepair.  When we asked our driver in Beijing about this, he explained that the consequences of a vehicle accident or a car out of repair  is to expensive.  Police investigations of accidents, being ticketed for a car out of repair or with dents can go many days with possible vehicle loss, fines and always income loss. 

(click here for pictures / film clips of the vacation)