Okay, before I went there, it’s not like I knew most of these things I’m going to blog about.
I was in southern China, close to Hong Kong (which was the airport of entry)–we then took a ferry to the mainland–and that’s really far away from the Great Wall or from Bejing Olympics and other things many of us might think about when we think about China. The first schools were in a blossoming area of China where workers are moving and land is being reclaimed from the sea and turned into…Sea World. Slogan: the world I want.
If the adversiting images are to be believed, the world I want is a world of 1940s America.
I think this is the 1940s.
Yes?
Our hotel was right off the Sea World courtyard where we could get a cup of Starbucks coffee or pop into MacDonalds if we turned out to miss that kind of food with the kind of wild desperation that can overcome a world traveler at any given moment. (And we did go to Starbucks. We were trying to find a wireless connection.)
Once when I was coming back to the hotel, I saw a man leading some enormous stuffed animals on wheels. Later that evening, as we ate, I saw families riding the animals.
We saw lots and lots and lots of construction because new buildings are going up every day.
We also saw (as I saw every place else I went in China) people living in apartments–giant boxes of people all stacked on top of each other. Lots and lots and lots of people. That’s China.