This trip was from July 22 to August 4, 2012. The itinerary included Beijing, X’ian, Chongqing, a cruise on the Yangtze, seeing Shibaozhai, the Three Gorges & Lesser Three Gorges, and Jingzhou, disembarking in Wuhan, and ending in Shanghai.

We initially booked this trip in March of 2011. It was the ‘Imperial Jewels of China’ cruise/tour offered by Viking River Cruises. We found it in Vacations-to-Go and booked it through them. From what we had seen, this seemed like a particularly good price, but, despite our prayers for an uneventful trip, we were going to learn why later.

China required a $150 visa for each person. A visa must be applied for in person, either by you personally or by a paid intermediary in person. Since we had a China Consulate in Houston, we elected to get our own visas. We filled in the application, collected the required documents, and went to Houston. We stayed in a hotel near the Consulate the day before and then, early in the morning, we went to the Consulate. They told us to come back in the afternoon. We did not have any problem getting them.

We flew Delta, which is not our favorite airline, but surprisingly, they sent us to Detroit instead of Atlanta and from Detroit to Beijing. The flight was quite empty, so we had three seats each to stretch out in. We left DFW about 3 p.m. on July 22, 2012, and arrived in Beijing at midnight, their time, on July 23. There is a 13-hour difference between Dallas and Beijing, so we were half a day ahead of our time. In all, it took us about 20 hrs. to get there. But we made it with our luggage and were promptly picked up and taken to our hotel.

China has over a billion more people than the United States. The majority of China’s population live in the central river plains and the East coast. According to what we could find out, people, at the time we were there, made scarcely more than one tenth of the US average salary.

Our trip was listed as a first-class trip and that was evident in our hotel in Beijing, the Ritz-Carlton! It was really luxurious and, because our flight would not get us in until midnight on July 23, Viking gave us an extra night before the start of the tour. Our tour itinerary did not start until the 24th, and the tour did not begin until the 25th. It was nice to have a day to rest up.

But by mid-morning on the 24th, after having a tough time choosing what to eat from the best breakfast buffet we have ever seen, we were ready to venture out on our own and decided to find the zoo. Taxis are subsidized by the government, so they are very inexpensive. Our taxi cost us about $2.50. At the hotel we obtained written instructions in Chinese to show our taxi on our way back.

This was our first introduction to China’s ‘teeming masses’ and the heat we would face for the rest of the trip! (This was the reason the price of the trip was reduced, the heat!) We were excited to see the pandas but extremely disappointed at the upkeep of the zoo. The habitats seemed to be dirty and run down and the animals unkept. So, after seeing the pandas totally knocked out by the heat and hanging inert from tree branches, we headed back to the hotel.

Beijing

Our group assembled early on the morning of the 25th. We were a group of twenty-seven from the US, UK, and Canada. And our guide was a 32-yr.-old Chinese man, with the adopted English name of ‘Bill’. He was very personable, conscientious, and quite knowledgeable with a good sense of humor. We learned that there were five groups like ours on this trip, each with their own guide and staying at two or three different hotels. We praised the Lord for the Ritz-Carlton!

Our first stop of the day tour was Tiananmen Square. This is a large city square in the center of Beijing, named after the Tiananmen Gate. It means Gate of Heavenly Peace and is located to the North of the square, separating the square from the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is the third largest city square in the world. On its southern edge is the Monument to the People’s Heroes. The Great Hall of the People and the National Museum of China are on the western and eastern sides of the square. The square has been the site of several notable events, the most recent being the 1989 student protest which was suppressed by the military.

We moved on, through Tiananmen Gate, with its imposing picture of Mao overhead, and entered the Forbidden City. This was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. Built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings and covers 7,800,000 sq ft. The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture. Yellow is the color of the emperor so most of the roofs are yellow. The last emperor left the Forbidden City in October 1925. Since then, the door has been open to the public.

After walking some distances, we realized it was the wrong time of year to be there!! Almost daily, the temperature rose to well over 100º (up to 120 º at one time!) with humidity of one hundred per cent! It was also the rainy season, but it only threatened rain while we were out.

After lunch, we went to The Summer Palace, which literally means “Gardens of Nurtured Harmony”. It is mainly dominated by Longevity Hill and the Kunming Lake. It covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometers, three quarters of which is water. One end of the lake is covered by beautiful lotus plants which were in bloom. We walked the Long Corridor; a covered walkway built in the 18th century. It is 2,388 ft. long and decorated with over 14,000 paintings.

The Summer Palace served as a summer retreat for Empress Dowager Cixi. She used a Marble Boat, which was in fact a pavilion, as her favorite place to have tea.

We crossed the lake in a Dragon Boat, past shores lined with gracious willows, and by the 17-arch bridge. The reason for seventeen arches is so that, counting from either end, the ninth arch is the center one, since nine is a lucky number for the Chinese. At the end of this tour our guide told us that we had probably walked the equivalent of over five miles in the 100+ degree heat! The hotel was heavenly!

Next day we visited the section of the Great Wall at Badaling. This is the best kept and most visited section of the Wall. This portion of the Great Wall, built during the Ming Dynasty, is 26 ft. high and 16 ft. wide. The Great Wall of China is actually a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect against the Mongols or other forces. Several walls were built as early as the seventh century BC; these were later joined together and made bigger, stronger and unified and are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. In all, it extends 13,170 miles. Badaling was completed in 1505. This section has twelve watch towers and is 12,274 feet long.

After we passed the entrance, we saw the wall extending to the left and to the right. The left was packed with hordes of Chinese. They believe they will receive a special blessing if they reach a certain point along the wall in this direction. We went to the right. The day was hot, humid, and hazy and with bad visibility. Karelin ran out of steam pretty quick and sat down. She let me explore farther on my own. I went up several towers to take pictures. When I came back, I realized that Karelin had become quite an attraction. Several Chinese people wanted to pose for a photo with her. It may have been her gray hair or just that those coming from rural areas are not used to seeing Westerners.

After lunch we stopped at a jade factory. We saw craftsmen at work and many gorgeous and intricate jade carvings and jewelry. Then we were off to the Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs. Thirteen Ming Dynasty Emperors were buried in this area. A seven kilometer road named the “Spirit Way” leads into the complex, lined with eighteen pairs of statues of guardian animals and officials, with a front gate consisting of three-arches, painted red, and called the “Great Red Gate”. Farther in is a Pavilion that contains a fifty-ton tortoise. Legend says that if you rub his bottom, you will have prosperity; and if you rub his head, you will have good health and long life. We rubbed the head of the tortoise because we wanted all of that that we could get! That evening we feasted on Peking Duck, with all the trimmings. Then we attended a performance of the famous Peking Opera. One of the performers in the opera applied makeup and was wrapped in his costume on stage so we could see the intricate process. (Chinese opera is certainly different from what we think of as opera as it is sung in a high falsetto voice!)

Next we visited the hutongs by rickshaw! The Hutongs are old neighborhoods of narrow streets or alleys formed by lines of traditional courtyard residences. These have been joined together to form a hutong, and then one hutong is joined to another to form these neighborhoods. Since the ‘80s, many of these neighborhoods have been demolished to make way for high-rise apartment buildings. Our guide Bill told us that he was born and raised in a hutong that has since been torn down.

There were many contrasts here: open piles of trash and nice cars, some with custom covers to keep them clean and protected. These residences were built before inside plumbing. Only a few have added toilets or showers inside their part of the hutongs. All others use toilets and showers which are shared by the whole block. After touring the neighborhood, we stopped for a visit with one of the residents of the hutongs. She graciously welcomed us into her home and served us a cup of tea. She talked about life in the hutongs and explained that she supplements her retirement income by allowing tourists to come into her home. For Karelin, this was one of the highlights of the trip.

Originally the big residences belonged to one family but after Communism took over, the houses and property were taken over by the state and divided into numerous small residences. People even moved into the courtyards and built structures there to live in. Our guide explained that after the admitted failure of the ‘Cultural Revolution,’ the original residences were given back to the original owners, but most of the occupants could not afford to move out, effectively negating the original property owners’ rights.

Our last visit that day was to a silk carpet factory. We learned about the processing of silk from the cocoon to the silk threads and saw a demonstration of weaving a carpet. We also saw many beautiful silk carpets that we could not afford.

After four nights in Beijing, Karelin and I were far more impressed with China, and with Beijing, than we ever expected to be. This city of almost twenty-two million people has many beautiful modern buildings. We have never seen so many high-rise buildings packed so densely. Most are apartment buildings of 30 to 50 stories. Older shorter buildings and neighborhoods were being torn down and replaced with high-rises to house their ever-expanding population.

With all this population, traffic moved amazingly well. They were effectively restricting the number of automobiles by pricing car tags starting at $10,000! Even then, certain numbered tags can only be driven on certain days of the week. We saw only late model cars, and all were in good shape. Most people use bicycles, motor scooters, or public transportation.

When we were there China still had birth restrictions. Our guide, who is a twin, explained that the policy limits couples to one birth, rather than one child. If a couple chooses to disregard this policy, they will lose their jobs (if they work for the state as most do) and will face a very high fine. Another matter that deserves a comment is Chinese toilets. They are the squat variety! However, everywhere we were taken on the tour we had either Western toilets or both. Praise the Lord!

Whether it is for the toilets or anything else, the Chinese do not respect lines. It is every person for himself! They use their elbows to make room among piles of people trying to get a picture or even just see something.

Another thing we noticed is that the Chinese, although they readily admit that Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” was an abysmal failure and a blot on their history, they still revere Mao and consider him a great leader and founder of modern China.

We also learned that the Grand Canal in China runs from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou in the south, covering a distance of approximately 1,776 kilometers (1,104 miles). The canal interconnects many canals linking various major rivers and lakes in the North and East of China. It was an important waterway and transport infrastructure between the north and the south during Medieval and premodern China. It is the longest artificial waterway in the world.

In the afternoon we flew to X’ian. It was about a 2-hour flight.

X’ian

X’ian one of the oldest cities in China, with three thousand years of history. Our accommodation was again incredible, at the Westin Xi’an Hotel, inaugurated just in January 2012, and in front of the famous Giant Wild Goose Pagoda.

Xi’an is one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. It held that position during several of the most important dynasties in Chinese history such as Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang. The Chinese end of the Silk Road starts in Xian. The city is also the home of the Terra Cotta Army.

Our first excursion in Xian, straight from the airport, was a dinner and the Tang Dynasty Show. The show performs music and dances that originated more than a thousand years ago during the Tang Dynasty, which is considered the high point of Chinese history.

The show took more than a year to put together by many artists and historians. It was inaugurated in 1982, 30 years before our visit, and keeps improving. The show includes dances, opera, an incredible imitation of the oriole birds played on a pan flute, acrobatic dragon, and warrior dances.

The next day, July 27, we took a bus to the Qin Shi Huang Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses Museum. It is located about thirty minutes outside Xi’an. The museum is inside the world largest tomb, the Mausoleum of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. He unified the country starting in 221 BC. The Qin Emperor arranged for his burial place long before his accession to Emperor. About seven hundred thousand workers, from every province of the empire, constructed a subterranean city within a gigantic mound. This took 36 years. In size, the mausoleum is larger than the Great Pyramid in Egypt, approximately twenty square miles.

Seen from afar, it is a hill overgrown with vegetation. Archeologists and experts were still working in the three pits so far excavated. About six hundred satellite pits and tombs have been unearthed in the surrounding area of the tomb of the First Emperor since the discovery of terra cotta warriors and horses in 1974. The museum covers an area of 175 thousand square feet, divided into three sections: Pits 1, 2 and 3. Pit one is the largest and was opened to the public on China’s National Day in 1979. Pits 2 and 3 were found in 1976. Pit 2 was open to the public in 1994 and Pit 3 in 1989.

The site contains about 8,000 terra cotta warriors and horses, along with richly adorned chariots of wood and of bronze; iron farm implements; bronze and leather bridles; objects of silk, linen, jade, and bone; and weapons such as bows and arrows, spears, and swords, cast from an unusual thirteen-element alloy, which are still shiny and sharp today. The clay figures, once brightly painted with mineral colors, were grouped into specific military formations and are about six feet tall.

In March 1974, farmers drilling a well discovered a subterranean chamber. Archaeologists later found that the chamber contained an army of 6,000 life-size terra-cotta soldiers. Experts said that this is the main force of the underground army.

The combat formations of the terra cotta warriors in Pit 2 are more complex, and the units of armed forces are more complete. Pit 2 is 64,600 square feet. It consists of four units containing distinct types of troops, including cavalrymen, archers, chariots, and infantry, displayed according to the military formation of the time. Among the warriors are the famous Kneeling Archer and generals and high-ranking officers of the army and the Standing Archer.

Pit 3 covers an area of 520 square feet. It is built in the shape of the Chinese character that looks like a U. Pit 3 is concave. It is the smallest of the three, containing only sixty-eight pottery figures and one chariot. According to experts, Pit 3 is the command center of the entire army. Here excavators found evidence of the original painted figures.

In all these pits, the warriors were originally free-standing in their formations with the top of the pits covered with wood and mud. When enemies discovered some of these terra cotta figures hundreds of years ago, they stole the weapons and set fire to the chambers. This caused the roof to cave in and pulverized some of the terra cotta figures. The archeologists have patiently put together these pieces. This was still a work in progress.

To the east of Pit 2 of the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum is the multiple exhibition hall. There we found a wide range of artifacts excavated from the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum. Two sets of bronze chariots and horses are representative exhibits displayed in this exhibition hall.

After this visit, we left for Wuhan instead of Chongqing!

We had been hearing about the torrential rains and flooding that China had experienced just before we arrived. Areas of Beijing and the upper Yangtze River had been especially hard hit. The group had wondered if it would affect our itinerary, but questions were side-stepped by the guides until now. Once in Xian, changes were announced. Instead of flying to Chongqing as scheduled, we would fly to Wuhan, our planned debarkation point. So instead of cruising the entire way from Chongqing, we would cruise upriver from Wuhan to the Three Gorges Dam, and then back down river to Wuhan. We would still get our five nights on board, but we would miss the features upriver from the dam because we could not get to them.

There was no choice. The docks at Chongqing were under water and the locks at Three Gorges Dam were not operating. This was the worst flooding in 60 years. Officially, at least seventy-seven people had lost their lives, but it was rumored that it was actually many more.

So, after arriving at the airport in Wuhan, we went straight to embark on our ship, the Viking Emerald. It was built in 2010, and it had six decks. It carried 256 passengers and 145 crew who prepared a great welcome for us. Our cabin and veranda were quite spacious and nice. Evidence of the flood was everywhere. The river was murky brown and full of floating debris. There were also signs of much commerce and industry along the river.

The Yangtze River is approximately 3,915 miles (6,300 kilometers) long, making it the longest river in both China and Asia, and the third-longest river in the world. It flows from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea near Shanghai. This river is an important physical and cultural dividing line between North and South China. Chinese living north of the Yangtze speak varying dialects of Mandarin. Most of the provinces south of the river have native Chinese languages that are unintelligible to Mandarin-speakers. But they all use the same characters when writing. Also, with all the rice growing in the South, the Southerners are referred to as ‘rice people’ and the Northern Chinese as ‘noodle people.’ The Yangtze is referred to as ‘Mother River.’

Onboard the ship, we found the surroundings beautiful, and the service excellent! We were also delighted with the products and services they had onboard for purchase, especially with our tailor-made Chinese jackets. The tailor took our measurements one afternoon, and the next morning we had the jackets.

Our servers and other crew proved to be quite talented in other ways, as well. The first show they performed for us showcased the costumes and dances of the minority people-groups of China.

Another night they did a second show for us of creative numbers. Our favorite was a special mask dance. It is called Bian Lian, or face-changing, and it is a traditional Chinese dramatic art. The performer almost imperceptibly and instantaneously changed from one mask to another with the swipe of a fan, a movement of the head, or wave of the hand. The secret to the quick, successive, hidden transition of masks is passed down only within this family. This dancer, Stan, was also our favorite waiter.

Another highlight of the cruise on the Yangtze was a visit to one of the Viking-sponsored elementary schools at Jingzhou. Viking finds schools at their stops along the river, which need a little help, and provide monetary and equipment help to the school in exchange for their allowing Viking tours to come by for a visit. The children were precious and had prepared some dances and songs for us. We took some school supplies for the children, too, because Viking had sent us a note inviting us to bring things for the children they could use in their school.

We also stopped at a local market, and we visited the only part of the Three Gorges Dam and locks we could see because of the flood. The Three Gorges Dam and Locks, completed in 2009, were massive and impressive. It has become such a tourist attraction that they have put in escalators and a tram to help tourists get around. The dam elevation is 606 ft. above sea level and is 6,556 ft. long. It has twenty-six power generation units, each producing seven hundred megawatts/unit, giving a total capacity of 18,200 megawatts. A 367-mile-long reservoir will be formed when finished, affecting nineteen cities and 326 towns and requiring the relocation of 1.13 million people. Already it is believed to have saved many hundreds or even thousands of lives down river in this latest flooding.

The ship locks are 280 meters long, thirty-five meters wide, and five meters deep, which are thirty meters longer than those on the St Lawrence Seaway but only half as deep. Each of the two ship locks is made up of five stages, taking around four hours in total to transit, and has a vessel capacity of 10,000 tons. The construction of Three Gorges Ship Locks is intended to increase river shipping from ten million to one hundred million tons annually, with transportation costs cut by 30% to 37%. (We have seen news lately indicating that the construction was quite faulty and the Three Gorges Dam is not functioning in its total capacity and causing problems in navigation.)

Viking added a couple of shore excursions to make up for the excursions upriver that we missed. But we decided to skip them and to take advantage of the amenities onboard before saying goodbye to our cruise.

After disembarking, we stopped by the Hubei Provincial Museum before departing Wuhan. This museum has over 200,000 relics, some of them considered national treasures. Most of the items came from the tomb of King Yi of the Zeng State who was buried in 433 B.C. This collection contains a 65-piece set of the largest and best-preserved bronze chime-bells as well as other musical instruments and artifacts of bronze, gold, and jade. After touring this part of the museum, we entered the adjoining Music Hall for a performance on a replica set of bells and other ancient musical instruments by musicians dressed in period costumes.

After the performance, we headed to the airport. Driving through Wuhan, we saw many more apartment buildings, old, new, and under construction. It is estimated that China has 70% of the world’s construction cranes! And we did not doubt it!

Wuhan is a city of ten million people and is the most populous city in central China. It is sometimes referred to as the “Chicago of China.” (We did not know then that in less than two years from our visit to Wuhan, Dr. Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) was going to provide funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a grant to the EcoHealth Alliance. The money started coming in 2014. It included research on bat coronaviruses. The funding was renewed in 2019 but, surprise, it was later halted in April 2020 following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in all the world coming from Wuhan.)

Then we flew to Shanghai, a city of twenty-three and half million people. It is the largest city by population in China, and the largest city in the world, without even counting adjacent suburbs. It is also the busiest container port in the world. Old Shanghai was known for its beauty but the New Shanghai, or Pudong, is also very beautiful.

In Shanghai, we would stay at the Portman Ritz-Carlton, a five-star hotel. But direct from the airport, we first stopped at the Bund, the famous waterfront and riverwalk. It has been regarded as the symbol of Shanghai for hundreds of years.

We visited the Bund on the west bank of Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze. It is about one mile in length. The most famous and attractive sights on the West side of the Bund are the twenty-six various buildings of different architectural styles including Gothic, Baroque, Romanesque, Classicism, and Renaissance. However, for us, the real attraction is the view of the Pudong area, on the East side of the river, with its modern buildings and high-rises. Since 1990, Pudong has been the financial center of Shanghai.

At our hotel, the ambiance was excellent, and the restaurant was wonderful, with an international buffet.

On the morning of August 3, we headed to Old Shanghai, the Shanghai of novels and movies about opium and human trafficking. Shanghai developed during the late Qing Dynasty as one of China’s principal trading ports. During the First Opium War, British forces temporarily held Shanghai. This Opium war was fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty of China over control of the spread of opium. After this war, the United Kingdom obtained the cession of Hong Kong Island. Old Shanghai is still full of British, French, and European influence. Today Old Shanghai is all commercialized with modern stores and of course their own Shanghainese language which is not understood by the majority of the country.

Hidden away in Old Shanghai is the YuYuan Garden, our next stop. It is an extensive Chinese garden located beside the City God Temple in the northeast of the Old City of Shanghai next to the Yuyuan Tourist Mart. The garden is unique in that it was created and owned by a private citizen in the 1500’s. The major attraction is the huge Exquisite Jade Rock. A boulder, more than nine feet high and weighting five tons, rumored to have been salvaged after a boat, taking it to the imperial palace in Beijing, sank just off Shanghai.

After the Garden tour, we were free to shop at the adjacent YuYuan Tourist Mart. Then, for lunch, we went to a restaurant in the Gu silk embroidery place. This kind of embroidery is the most famous local craft. This art has been alive for five hundred years in Shanghai. Most of the embroideries looked like paintings, rather than needle-craft, and were displayed on the walls–many were replicas of famous paintings. They were a total dream and with prices from around $2,000 to $50,000. According to tradition, the thickness of the silk thread used in these pictures is one seventh of a human hair.

After lunch we visited the Shanghai Museum which contains ancient Chinese art. The building was designed in the shape of an ancient bronze cooking vessel called a ding. The museum was inaugurated in 1996 and has five floors. It has a collection of over 120,000 pieces. It includes an exhibit of Chinese minority people’s apparel. It also has collections of ceramics, calligraphy, furniture, jade, ancient coins, paintings, seals, sculptures, minority art and foreign art. The Shanghai Museum houses several items of national importance, including one of three existing specimens of a “transparent” bronze mirror from the Han Dynasty.

That night we were treated to a special traditional dinner with Lazy Susan tables and duck. Then we went to see the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe, a top-level performance group. They told us that this was the group that Nixon saw in his historic visit to China in 1972.

There is a high-speed train in Shanghai, called Magnetic Levitation Trains. When we were there, they had only two commercial MAGLEV transport systems in operation, with two others under construction. The train line was designed to connect Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the outskirts of central Pudong, where passengers could interchange to the Shanghai Metro to continue their trip to the city center. It regularly achieves 268 mph, making it the world’s fastest train in regular commercial service. It can reach up to 311 mph.

In April 2004, Shanghai began commercial operations of the high-speed Transrapid system. Beginning (March 2005, Japan began operation of their HSST “Linimo” line in time for the 2005 World Expo.) People’s Republic of China was also building a low-speed MAGLEV line of their own design in Beijing.

The trip home was long because we had to go from Shanghai to Tokyo to Detroit to Dallas. The flight from Shanghai to Tokyo was great because we were surprised with fist class seats. But the flight on Delta from Tokyo to Detroit was almost thirteen hours in a full plane, with space between seats too small for even our size!

We were so tired when we arrived in Detroit that the trip to Dallas was a blur.

Some notes after the trip:

China had many rulers. History shows 15 Dynasties starting from 2500 BC to 1912 AD.

China is beautiful. Exotic, ancient and modern. It is filled with unbelievable antiquities and history. The people each engaged in their own thing. I did not perceive the spirit of community even in the Hutongs.

They have made much progress, but when we visited, masses still struggled for survival, collecting trash to be sorted and sold for recycling. There is much poverty, suffering, and entrenched customs, beliefs, and perspectives. They truly have a different reality.

One of the most interesting things we learned in China was about the relationship between the Hukou system, migration, and the sweatshop economy.

When the economy bottomed in 2009, 23 million Chinese migrant workers, coming from the countryside to the city, were laid off as a result of the drop in exports. This was one of the largest casualties of the crisis globally.

China had experienced explosive urban population growth in the last 30 years. Since 1982, China’s cities had grown from just over two hundred million to more than three times that figure in 2010. The rural population had also steadily increased but dropped in 2000 owing to rural workers migrating to cities. China’s urban population growth was not expected to slow in the future either. Predictions were that the figure will reach one billion by 2030.

China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission reported that the national census data on urban and rural populations from 1953-2010 showing that rural population figures are falling in contrast to the urban population boom.

Migrants are vulnerable because of a Maoist-era institution known as hukou that continues to function in China today.

Hukou is a system of residency permits used by the Communist Party beginning in 1958 to minimize the movement of people between rural and urban areas. Chinese citizens were classified as urban or rural based on their hukou. Urban residents received jobs and social services from the government, while rural residents had to support themselves. This disparity led many rural Chinese to migrate to cities and this continues today. They were the sweatshop workers.

There are currently 150 million migrant workers in China of whom 6.5 million works in the clothing industry. China is the world’s biggest clothing exporter. In 2009 it produced 34% of the world’s clothing exports. In 2009 alone, approximately one million workers suffered industrial injuries and about 20,000 were victims of occupational disease. In 2010, the average monthly salary, including overtime, for a migrant worker was CNY 1,690 ($268), insufficient to cover basic needs for workers and their families. In 2010, only 13.6% of migrant workers were part of the government pension scheme; 18.9% were part of the government medical insurance scheme and 26.2% were protected by government work-related injury insurance.

The Chinese government acknowledges fourteen million Christians in China, but it is believed that there are an additional seventy million or more not included in that figure. Christianity started in China in the seventh century through a Catholic Franciscan missionary. Although an established presence since the seventh century, Christianity in China declined because of persecution during the tenth through fourteen centuries. Chinese over age 18 were permitted to be involved with officially sanctioned Christian meetings but government authorities still often tightly control religious practices.

Our guide informed us that people living on less than $1.25 per day are considered poor. In 2008, thirteen percent (173 million people) of China’s population still lived below $1.25 a day. In 2012, urban per capita annual income of US$2300 was approximately three times that of the rural per capita annual income of US$766. Rural residents are increasingly being marginalized in higher education. Rural students in universities were less than 17 % in 2012.

We learned that all the “Made in China” goods we have in our stores in United States are not to be found in China. They are only produced there for export.

Also do not expect to find Fortune cookies in any restaurant in China because they are not Chinese!

Yes, we saw a lot in China, . . . and learned a great deal more.

The scripture that came to my mind after visiting China is in First Corinthians 14. Paul is referring to “tongues” but he also clearly said in verses 10 and 11 : ” There are many different languages in the world, and every language has meaning. But if I don’t understand a language, I will be a foreigner to someone who speaks it, and the one who speaks it will be a foreigner to me.” (“Bible Gateway Passage: 1 Corinthians 14:10-11 – New Living Translation” 2019)