May 27, 1999, Yangshuo in Guangxi Province, China:

The menu read as follow:

"Choose your snake,
play with it,
have your photo taken with it,
watch it be killed,
drink the blood,
eat the meat,
take home the skin,
WHAT VALUE!!!"

Other specialties of the house included dog -- with a picture of Snoopy, and cat -- adorned with Garfield.  I immediately became a vegetarian. 

The food is one of the many acquired tastes of China, a wondrous mix of third-world living and 21st century aspirations.  In Beijing hundreds of gleaming office towers rise majestically into the thick yellow haze that is the atmosphere.   Dozens of others sit abandoned, steel and concrete skeletal remnents of the Asian financial crisis.

Walking through the darkened streets of the city, the only light is provided by fires burning on the sidewalk.  The bus and bicycle traffic remains consistently heavy.   Street vendors cook unknown delights and patrons sit at the doors of  cafes.  Trash is everywhere.  People stare at you. 

Always they stare at you.  On the bus, in a restaurant, on the street, the stares are constant.  You do not belong here.  They will, however, take your money as they have adapted admirably to capitalism.  "CD music, like to buy CD music?  Postcard?  Come to my house for dinner?" 

"Buy from me" the old women sing.  "Buy from me."

New This Week:
Take a tour of China in my Chinese Photo Gallery.   If you missed Tunisia, click on Tunisian Photo Gallery

We arrived just two weeks after the bombing of the Chinese Embassy and the demonstrations that followed.  The U.S. Embassy was closed.  We arrived at night. 

Our man, Mr. Reney,  met us at the airport.  "It is natural for Chinese to be angry" he said.  "Do not worry, China is safe.   Please allow me to exchange your  U.S. dollars.  I save them for my daughter."

As he drove us into town the western influence was immediate.   Immense billboards for Motorola, Ford, Erickson, and Sony were overpowering.   We were strangers in a strange, bustling, and surreal  landscape. We had crossed into the movie Blade Runner.

Where are we?

We are at KFC at the base of the Great Wall.  We are riding in a rickshaw during a horrific game of chicken with a bus.  We are standing  in Tiananmen square exactly ten years after the massacre.  We are riding a boat up the Li River through the limestone mountains.  A man on a small fishing boat watches us pass.  I open a can of Coke -- 5 RMB ($0.60).  It is more than he will earn today.

We are taking photos at the Summer Palace in Beijing.  A group of fashionable young Chinese approach.  A man walks up to me and points to my camera.   I show it to him.  No, he points -- you and me -- picture.  Oh, I see.   We stand together and his friend takes our picture.  We have done our part for international diplomacy. 

"China is a sleeping giant.  Let her lie and sleep, for when she awakens she will astonish the world." Napoleon