BEIJING, 6 December 2008 - The foggy street in front of the Ping An Fu hotel, Beijing made an impression of an early morning at some remote harbor. The three of us: Kamal (myself), Derek and Huma set our sail for the adventure and left the harbor. The place we were heading was an uncharted land for us. The trip was going to be adventurous, especially because we didn't know anyone there; none of us could speak Chinese, and we didn't have any special arrangements and booking for our lodging and flooding.
The challenges emerged as we left the hotel and most of the times they were about communicating with the Chinese speaking general public. One of the Chinese friends we met on the subway the other day had told us a joke, "If you're lost and don't know Mandarin, find a young Chinese person wearing glasses. They will explain whatever you need in English."
Interestingly, the joke turned out to be no longer a joke. Whenever we felt like we were lost, we searched for someone wearing glasses and we would get the right answer in English. We reached the Military Museum by the subway but after that we had to ask someone our way to the train station. The formula worked and we reached the Beijing Train Station on time. We had enough time before the train would leave. We thought of having some food.
Whenever we thought of having food, we had problems. As a Hindu, I would not eat beef at all, Huma, a Muslim, would not eat pork and Derek, a Christian, would eat everything. Just to make sure that the food we wanted to order does not contain beef or pork, we had no alternative but to either draw a picture of a cow and a pig and cross them out, or act out in all fours a cow and a pig, make some noise like a pig and cow would do and waive our hands vigorously saying 'NOT THIS'.
We entered into the KFC fast-food restaurant by the train station and shared a table with a stranger, as there were no vacant seats. We tried to gather some information about our first destination (Chongching) while we eat. Huma asked the KFC girl if they are mix pork in the chicken burger to make sure she is not inadvertently eating pork. I asked about beef. Derek just sat laughing at us.
We started breaking ice with the young person sharing our table. But this young person would not speak English. He called his girlfriend in Chongcing to help us find a place to stay in Chongqing. His girl friend, Gong Jiang, over the phone, gave us a phone number of one of her friends in Chongqing. She also said he will help us when we reach Chongqing. How nice! How welcoming! That would have been unthinkable elsewhere, I believe. We then headed back to the train.
The train station was one testimony that China is really a big country with huge population. We had to really push ourselves hard through the huge crowd, which hosted all sorts of people. People with sacks on their backs, people with beddings, people who don't look as 'elite' or 'urban' as the ones we saw in the Beijing Capital International Airport. This also indicated the rapid migration taking place in the country.
We had already stuffed our bags with some food packets. The train pulled away slowly at first then faster and faster. The view of rural China through the train window was panoramic. The motor road seen on the other side of the train track would sometime fly very high over the villagers' roofs making it impossible for them to use the road. Unlike the roads in Nepal, the road would not bother climbing down a mountain in a serpentine route. It would just fly from one mountain top to another over a bridge overlooking swaths of green fields and villages underneath.
The passangers in the train were unexpectedly friendly. We made many good friends during the 26-hour journey from Beijing to Chongqing. There were interesting ways to make friends. The Chinese took interest when we would try to speak broken Mandarin. We would ask their name: Ni Jau samma min cha?
The card magic tricks and games helped make few more friends. Derek knew quite a number of card tricks and some of the youngsters came up with really interesting card games. We stayed late night playing cards with other Chinese passengers. We also met a young kid friend, who was really cute - we communicated well in gestures. When we speak Mandarin everyone would laugh and that's what we liked the most. We concluded that the degree of hospitality among the Chinese and their friendly behavior will attract more and more foreigners and tourists into their country. We all agreed to go and try to fall asleep in our respective upper bunk beds.
When we woke up early in the morning the train was still pulling southward, and in full speed. The view outside the window was one of a typical cold and misty December morning. We were still hours of trainride before Chongqing. What we could see through the train window was very interesting. Almost everywhere, we could see huge constructions going on: highways and bridges being built, high r
ise buildings under construction, cranes atop most of the skyscrapers, factories and chimneys and the likes. Somewhere we could see a whole new city under construction. We wondered: whom are these buildings for? Most probably for the 900 million rural Chinese who have not benefited from the recent economic growth in comparison to their urban counterparts. One of the new friends, You Jhi, who was also in the same cabin, said that the Chinese government wants to attract foreign investment in these cities and therefore it is focusing on building the infrastructure first. It sounded opposite to what urban planners were talking back in Hawaii: we need to have seizable population first and think of a city plan.
We reached Chongqing Train Station at 4:00pm. We ranged the new friend from Chongqing. He was requested to receive us at the Chongqing Train Station (take note of this). As we had expected, he arrived there in about 30 minutes. We then went into McDonalds for coffee. One of the staff at the restaurant suggested us to go to Youth International Hostel for accommodation, which she said was really cheap. The new friend's name was Xian. We left for the hotel together.
We checked in at the Youth Hostel, we took few minutes to refresh ourselves. And we went out for the nights expedition. We were all craving for food, some Asian spicy food. 
We had to again draw a couple of pictures of a cow and a pig. We were able to get some very spicy and hot food items. The day was already gone. We had to sleep for a fresher morning.
The train journey from Beijing to Chongqing also explains a lot about Chinese hospitality. They are all friendly people who are peaceful and harmonious in real sense of the term.
Something weird happened that night at the hotel. We heard some scary noises coming from the bathrooms. There was a continuous tapping sound and sounds like someone is flushing the toilet. But every time when we woke up to check what was going on, it would stop. Derek and I wanted to check. Huma confirmed she also hared the same noise. She ran toward the lobby in fear. We looked inside the bathrooms and there was nothing.
The day's trip revealed us two major issues: one is the fact that there is no other country in the world where so much of construction is going on at such an accelerating rate, and the other is China's confidence to take on the leadership role is rising like anything. If we are to avert future conflicts among world's major powers (old or new), the world must respect the modern China, the center of the world.
[In my core team traveling form US to China, I had Huma, a Kashmiri Indian and Patry Derek Pan, a Cambodian American. This piece was also part of our group report we presented to the bigger group led by our US professors. Not all of us had the same conclusion, however. When I came back to Hawaii, US, I could not stop writing about it for a newspaper.
Interestingly, the day before we left for this exploratory visit inside China, under the East West Center fellowship, the ASEM meeting had just concluded in Beijing with a call for a more transparent and inclusive international monitory and financial system, which in a way was also a call for new Bretton Woods after the US financial crisis that was at its worst by the end of 2008. It was a great time to be in Beijing to witness the booming economy and when i was back in Hawaii, I wrote an article covering this new "call" from a new rising power [China] and it was published in Ka Leo Weekly, Hawaii, USA. Read the article here: "Call for a New Bretton Woods"
https://www.manoanow.org/global-economic-restructuring-a-new-bretton-woods/article_3100b37d-fe19-5c01-b89b-6efb18786071.html
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