Even though Snow Mountain and the other monstrous peaks that keep it in eternal company are behind me now, its memory can never fade. With a touch of sadness, I must admit that I will likely never again find such a overwhelming sight in my remaining years here on this planet. The moment in our trek that we crested the pass that had been our goal for two days, and stood in the full presence of Snow Mountain,we actually fell to our knees and screamed like children on Christmas morning. All the climbing, all the fire in our lungs were forgotten. Incredibly, there, thousands of feet above the treeline and with snow all around us, millions of tiny flowers beckoned our imaginations to be all the more incredulous.

But as with every dream, there is its contrarian in real life: once we had finished our descent the next day, we had over twenty hours of unnerving rattling and swaying in a van on a rock-and-dirt Jeep trail to the nearest place with a bed to rent for the night. One thing is certain: the “world”s most dangerous road” has its meaner brother here in the shadows of Tibet. How we didn’t end up rolling down into some bottomless ravine is beyond my comprehension. That we pulled into Shangri-La at two in the morning alive and with our organs still inside our skin tells me I’m not to die anytime soon.

There is still plenty of filming to do. Most of what remains are what is referred to as “detail,” including interviews with each of the cast and close-ups of our faces. Today’s filming is just completed and now it”s beer time and a good long round of jesting at each other’s performances.

I am writing this from a beautiful and delightful little city called Lijiang. You might think of it as the Jackson Hole of China. It is far, far removed from the grimy and crowded dens of noise and unwashed masses I am used to seeing in most cities here in the “wild west.”

At this moment I am reclining in the open and airy front lobby of the Oak Garden Inn just inside the original ancient market area. The air is sweet with the perfume of flowers and breakfast being cooked. Just outside, only yards from where I am writing this, a steady stream of pedestrians, some pushing bicycles or three-wheeled food carts, flows past on its way to the myriad shops that line the narrow side streets.

Just this second, someone has gifted me with a huge platter of the sweetest strawberries marble-sized cherries lips ever had the pleasure of brushing against. And this is on top of the egg omelet my trek guide, Chilly (pure Tibetan eye candy to every woman who sees him), bought for me from a tiny street peddler a few minutes ago. Also adding to the romance of this sun-drenched cool morning are the dozen or more thimble-sized teas “Dragon” has unfailing poured me each time the cup is empty. Dragon is the other trek leader, and, as always, she a beacon of toothy smiles and impeccable fashion. She makes me think of you, each time I look at her.

Chilly is singing as usual in his sweet voice, his body (as is normal here) touching mine as if we are brothers. With the bamboo outside swaying in a gentle breeze, and snow-covered peaks poking a cloudless blue sky, I cannot help but feel I am in Shangri-La. But I know I am not in that particular place because I was there yesterday. To my surprise, it is an actual place. But if it ever was a place of mythical beauty, those days are gone. Lijiang is what it was always thought to be.

I have recovered fully from the physical battles of the trek into what is surely the wildest region of China and am now in a circle of good foods, incredible friendship, and storybook exoticness. I really wish you were here to experience this magic. And that it would be like this every morning for a thousand years times a thousand.

I have already promised Chilly and Dragon I will be back…with a special lady.

Steven

My travels throughout the eastern half of China these past five weeks have found me going in a huge circle that took me as far west as Tibet, as far south as Hong Kong, as far north as Beijing, and as far east as the Yellow Sea. I’ve traveled probably well over six thousand miles in total via private cars, a filthy sleeper bus, more than half a dozen domestic airliners, a couple of boats, too many taxis, and on foot.

Along the way, I’ve stayed in the homes of the poor and the middle class,in dozens of hotels and motels, and even in a posh resort or two. As a result, I’ve had an intimate look at the highs and the lows of the Chinese society—from the criminal element to the inspirational. And I’ve been fed enough meals—in restaurants and in homes—to make me want to go on a month-long fast.

So I guess it could be said that I’ve seen, heard, smelled, touched,and tasted more of China than the vast majority of travelers.

However, I know I would be silly to think I’m any sort of expert on the lifestyles or the customs of the Chinese. For even with all the tens of millions of Chinese I encountered directly or indirectly, there’s another billion I didn’t even come close to rubbing elbows with.

Still, I have filed away in my head several causal observations I think might fascinate my readers and even make me seem all the more worldly (not a bad thing when you’re called “the worldwalker”). None of these items will make a difference in how the world thinks or acts, but they might make for some interesting conversation starters the next time the subject of China comes up.

First, there are thousands of Chinese whose job it is to sweep, with old-fashioned twig brooms, the shoulders of the freeways. Now at first I thought it was totally an insane concept; placing elderly and middle-aged sweepers with witches’ brooms within inches of speeding semi trucks and turbo-charged European sedans, in a country where drivers pass on the shoulders, seemed a sure way to get explosive roadkill stats each day. But, somehow, the “broomers” and the vehicles evidently don’t get into many games of tag. Thus, I’m now convinced China has come up with a rather clever way to put to put to work a lot of otherwise low-skilled people.

Next, there is the matter of Chinese food being served unrelentingly at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But don’t Americans eat American food for every meal, you may ask? Well, yes…and no. What we call “American food” is actually a mix of many ethnicities. Our society is a hopeless mix of virtually every race and culture on the planet, and, as such, each of us can’t make it a month without dining on foods that originally came from such places as Italy, Mexico, Germany, Poland, England, and, yes, China. Indeed, we love our eclectic mix of “foreign” foods—from hamburgers to spaghetti to tacos. Who among us doesn’t make the rounds between the Olive Gardens, and the Sizzling Woks, and the Texas Roadhouses more than once each year?

But here in China, it’s always Chinese. Breakfast…lunch…dinner.

Whether it’s 8 a.m. or 8 p.m., what’s spread all over the table, in bowls and on plates that everyone dips their chop sticks in and out of, has a distinctly familiar look and smell and taste. Didn’t I see yesterday (and the day before) that same transparent spaghetti-like stuff? And what’s with that soapy-looking concoction of carp soup again? Oh my, not boiled squash and tofu?

Of course somewhere in there will be savaged bone particles, chunks of animal organs, and way too many gotcha! hot peppers. I always somehow chomp into one of the peppers, and it always shocks my poor tongue and throat. As sure as the sun rises each morning, there is nothing on the table other than cups of boiling water to douse the fire inside me.

Having not cooked for myself for five weeks, and having been fed in too many rural households, I know with absolute certainty most Chinese do not eat anything closely resembling what the local Chinese eateries in
flyover America are serving on the buffet lines. Fried frog legs would be candy here.

Love TOM AND JERRY cartoons? They’re shown for hours each day on television here. Half the Chinese know every one of the cartoons by heart. Maybe that’s why when a Chinese person gets into a conversation with another their voices inevitably rise and their body language becomes overly animated within minutes. It looks to me as if a good fight is in the making. (But, then again, I don’t understand a word. Maybe it’s just that everyone has bad hearing. Or maybe it’s just another example of their propensity to make everything bigger and more complex than it has to be.)

Hate indoor plumbing, hot water, showers, flush toliets? You’ll love rural China. Go outside the cities, and you enter a paradise of wash basins and outhouses.

Miss the good old days when billboards were as numerous as grazing cows along the sides of the interstates? Not a problem here; hop in your car, pick any freeway or toll road, and once you get within a hundred miles of a city you’ll be lucky to see the sky for the next hour. In fact, you’ll be fortunate if you don’t have whisky and luxury cars on your brain for the next several days.

There is the chance, though, that you may not even see the billboards, because you can’t tear your eyes from the lane markers blurring past.

I think I once saw a posted speed limit. I think it was set at 100 mph. But it may have been wishful thinking. More often than I care to remember, I found out how many G forces my brain can take without blacking out. It’s a LOT! The brakes and pistons on the average Chinese driver’s car are absolute marvels of strength. I have no doubts that when the Chinese get around to going to the moon, they will do just fine both accelerating to it and then braking inches from its dusty surface.

I hate to ruin it for the crowd in the USA that still thinks the Chinese are a miserable lot with few freedoms. That just is not true in the least. Most I met, especially those under 40 and college educated, are some of the happiest and most optimistic persons I’ve met anywhere on this planet. They are definitely less gloomy or angry than the average American adult. Life has never been better, they’ll readily tell you. Many, if not most, of those who live in the urban settings are hip, suave, have money to blow, and confident in the job market. They absolutely love their leaders, primarily for bringing in so many jobs and tripling and quadrupling their wages over the past decade. Those that have a car or SUV (and it’s a scary number who do) have no worries about going to anywhere in China they need to get to. And if the heavy volume of traffic on the highways is any indicator, it’s apparent neither the $6-a-gallon gasoline nor the traffic police is a deterrent.

Finally, there is the somewhat exaggerated conception that religion isn’t tolerated at all here by the officially atheist government. While it is well known the government has indeed oppressed religious groups over the past fifty years, what I find here now is a case of where the government has a lot more pressing things on its mind than chasing down and penalizing the individual Christian or Buddhist or Muslim. Indeed, religion (as long as it stays out of politics) seems to be making a comeback. I have yet to meet a Christian or a Buddhist here who feared to display the trappings of their religion on their body or in their home. Indeed, encountering someone wearing a crucifix or burning incense at a home shrine to Buddha or Krishna was very common for me. What did perplex me was the usual bust or poster of the ultimate atheist, Mao, in those same homes. Strange bedfellows indeed. Interestingly, some Christian scholars believe China may actually have a larger Christian population than any other nation. It may even be close to double that of the USA.

The American literary giant John Steinbeck once pointed out that Americans traditionally have always had a bit of an aversion to authorities wearing a badge. Perhaps that explains why I do find the police here too prevalent, too authoritative, and too scowl-faced for my liking. (However, I didn’t say that to the six officers who gave me a motorcycle escort through one city two weeks ago at the start of my walk on the Great Wall.) It should be noted that the police here almost always have the newest and most intimidating-looking buildings in the cities. All of which says to me that they are VERY important to the government for reasons other than merely chasing down the usual criminals. Obviously they aren’t getting such a huge chunk of the new and improved China’s tax windfalls simply to sit around all day and wolf down dumplings.

Steven

Former China premier Chairman Mao once said that it was the “responsibility” of the Chinese people to “Love the Great Wall.” To him, the 4,000-mile-long Great Wall symbolized not only the tremendous potential of collective Chinese spirit and thought but also the grandeur of a national history unmatched in length and riches and achievements. To Mao, the Wall was a highly visible example of what China was capable of when it took command of its millions of individual talents and didn’t allow outside powers to divide its peoples.

Now to as to whether Mao actually is responsible for the Chinese people’s infatuation with the Great Wall, there can be a lot of debate. But what can’t be argued is that China’s 1.5 billion inhabitants DO love their Great Wall. In the current celebratory week that goes along with what’s known as the Moon Cake Festival, the numbers of Chinese picnicking and strolling on the Wall have numbered in the tens of millions. But then I have yet to see a single one of those millions of bobbing heads that the state-run television newscasts have been fond of showing each evening. For, you see, out here in the remote wilds where I’ve been exploring, the terrain is much too rugged–and extremely difficult most days to reach–to allow any recreational picnicking or strolling. Out here most days, you have to be somewhat insane to even be following the Wall’s deteriorated pathway.

Here in the extremely poor and almost entirely mountainous regions between Beijing and the Yellow Sea, life is the complete opposite of that in the cities with their new skyscrapers, and condo towers and malls. While the parks in those cities shame most in the USA, and the people in those metropolitan wonders are being whisked from one place to another on 350-kilometer an hour bullet trains, out here the Great Wall does most of its meandering through a scenes of poverty and backwardness that China’s image-makers would probably like to keep hidden. For here is the world of the peasants.

Entrance to a peasant home

For me, there are five things I need the most at the end of a day of struggling over many miles of the Wall: a shower, a meal, a toilet, electricity to recharge my iPhone camera, and a bed. If I am lucky, I end up with something that vaguely resembles each of those five things.

Shower shed, beside entrance gate

It should also be pointed out the shower shed is inevitably located within smelling distance (or, as some might say, within arm’s length) of the pig sty and the other vile scent pit known as the “toilet.” Now, I don’t want to go into details, but as I should provide some sort of description for the more perverse readers, I will reveal that I have never found the likes of such an outhouse in anyone’s yard in Brown County. And had I, I’d have most likely immediately telephoned the national Center for Disease Control. Whose staff would no doubt have listened patiently then dismissed me as being delusional, for surely such a toxic structure couldn’t possibly exist in these modern times.

The overflow of human waste just outside a peasant home's outhouse. This will be used to fertilize the gardens.

The shocks to the nose while in the peasant homes and villages are more likely to be stronger than any shock that comes from the electrical outlets. Come along a dark cloud, flashing lightening or rumbling thunder, and the electricity to the home goes into hiding faster than my stomach whenever I find an eyeball squeezed between the ends of my chopsticks. There is nothing like a thunderstorm in rural China to make the electric power to a home vanish. An Amish barn has more glow to it at night than many country villages here.

Bed in peasant home, on which five of us men folk slept at the same time

Breakfast of leftover rooster guts from night before

The cooking wok also doubles as the sink in a peasant's cooking room

The bucket in which my cup and plate were rinsed BEFORE the food was served

When the morning glow finally ambles down from the mountains at the end of each night, I am amazed that nostrils still function and my stomach didn’t elope with my kidneys. Hard as it is to believe, I am actually looking forward to slipping into my boots and tackling another long day of working out on the Wall my night kinks.

Each new morning, as I huff and groan upward to the jagged skyline, I may stink, and my trousers and shirt may be stiff with body salt and delinquent dust, and I may be wondering how many species of tapeworms I’m hosting, but I am also aware that hospitality is hospitality–no matter how it’s pronounced or proffered. And, just as during my worldwalk thirty years ago, I’ll take in any form at any time. All of it is as important to my spirit as it is to my body.

Steven

Surely the guide must be mistaken, I had thought. How could it take seven hours to climb back down the mountain?

But he was not mistaken. In fact, it would be more than eight hours before we reached the village we would spend the night at.<And on the trek down the mountain, I and my translator and the four guides would venture ever downward through a variety of terrain that ranged from a field of shoulder-high grasses to a sharply vertical slope sloppy with sharp scree to a dark forest rich with wild fruits to, finally, a white-water river that had us hopping tenuously from one massive boulder to another for at least three hours. How I had an ounce of energy left as night fell was beyond comprehension. But I did. And just as well, too, for the adventuring was still not finished for that day.

Still to come were a cold shower in a doorless shed by a pig sty, a visit to an outhouse where the odors choked all living things that came within ten feet of it, a dinner of rooster entrails and boiled carp, and then a short night of sleeping on a concrete slab in blankets that had probably not been washed in months, if not years. But by then how could I care? By then I was too tired to even think about the dingy blankets and the snoring guides also occupying the concrete slab bed.

If comfort and the ordinary were what I wanted, then I would never have lasted more than a day or to on my hike along the Great Wall. The fact that I have lasted almost two weeks is surely a testament to how tough I can still be at the age of 58, as well as perhaps to the inspirational nature of the Wall itself. Believe me when I say I have wanted so badly to beg for an end to this walk, especially during the morning accents up the mountains to the Wall’s looming ruins. But then we always finally reach the Wall’s bricks and stones, and the spell of the world’s greatest structure ever built takes over and, again, I have to see where it will take me. Unfailingly I am soaked in perspiration, even though the sun is barely above the other peaks, but my imagination is as refreshed as a tundra wildflower peeking from beneath the snow at the rays of a spring sun. And I’m not alone in my excitement and determination.

Three sets of guides—each time in a team of four—have led and protected me thus far in the trek along the ruins of the original Great Wall between the Yellow Sea and Beijing. Each had had more than enough challenges to become sour and bitter—back-breaking loads, energy-sapping humidity, merciless sun glare, miles of unstable footing up endless climbs in gale-force winds and sharp-thorned vegetation—and yet they remain as enthusiastic as Boy Scouts to reach the next crumbling guard tower and marvel as much as I do at the sights to be viewed from its overgrown roofs and through its arched windows. And what sights indeed!

Do you remember the scenes in the Lord Of the Rings movies where the huge bonfires were lit atop the massive signal towers nestled on mountain peaks? The fires were lit, if memory serves me well, to warn the human king’s army and citizenry of the advancing Orcs, a race of half-humans half-beasts. Now imagine, you are actually in–or standing on top of—a real-life signal tower of like, and stretching seemingly forever around and below you are mountains and valleys that once swarmed too with hordes of advancing mongols intent on hacking through you with all the savagery of those Orcs. It is so easy to do in those parts of the Great Wall we find ourselves. For we have the entire setting to ourselves: no distractions of machines or tourists or the vendors on the restored sections of the Wall near the population centers. Here where my toughened guides and I have tread these past weeks, one’s imagination is so often teased and nurtured that even the thorns ripping at one’s arms and legs, even the wind trying to topple one’s body into the precipices, are a welcomed trapping of the adventure. My guides, I suspect, know as well as I do that we are one of the lucky few.

Where we go no tourists venture and but a handful of the locals. This stretch of the Great Wall (some of it built before Christ, some as recent as 700 years ago) follows faithfully the ridges of the mountains and is too high and difficult to reach for anyone but the most determined and healthy. But those who do manage to trek up the narrow threads of brick and mortar and stone that remain are blessed with sights and a sense of accomplishment that are almost indescribable. Never have I seen in my many travels over the world such a mixing of historical remnants and arresting scenery. At times the thread of the Wall has led us to the highlands of Scotland. Other times it has directed our boots and minds to what I would swear is the cousin to Tuscany. One sunny and sweltry afternoon I even found myself in the jungly lowlands of Central America. As if the Wall is not enough to conjure spectacular imagery in the imaginations of its explorers, the setting makes sure those who visit this part of the world will never forget their time here.

Even the villages in the valley bottoms that we retreat to each evening are a mixture of constant physical and psychological challenges. Many of the villages were once military camps for storing supplies and for providing rest for the Wall’s hundreds of thousands of defenders. They too have a storied past, but, unlike the Wall high above their rooftops, they have remained busy and occupied and have been altered to the point of being hopelessly domesticated. They are no longer part of the raw wilds that encircle the Wall on the peaks, but they do allow us the rest and sustenance our sunburnt bodies need to continue along the Wall’s next segment—even if that rest and sustenance is, as you shall see in my next letter, completely unlike anything I know back in Ohio.

Steven

On the fifth day of my trek along the ruins of the original Great Wall located between the coastal city of Qinhuangdoa and China’s capital, Beijing, I was greeted by a fresh team of climbing guides. Each was loaded down with an ungainly backpack half the length of me. I greeted the ruddy-faced gents and invited them politely into the courtyard of the simple village home I’d spent the night at. Knowing that their job was to protect me as much as to make sure I didn’t get lost in the wild mountain ranges around us, I wondered what sorts of weapons they had in their packs. They, however, seemed to be wondering if I would ever get around to sharing the enormous breakfast the three-room home’s owners had set out for me on the porch. I gladly invited the guides to assist me in digging through the bowls of rooster heads, stewed squash, fried peanuts, and wild tree fungi.

The day before had been one of the most magical of my life as I and my omnipresent female translator, Liang, had trekked for miles along a section of the serpentine wall that is rarely seen by outsiders. The team of guides and porters that had been with us the first three days had returned to their homes late the day before. Thus, Liang and I had had the Wall and the jumbles of mountain peaks entirely to ourselves for the entire day. The scenery was spectacular, and I was sure I had never before in my 58 years been privy to such a melding of man’s and nature’s grandeur. Something told that most humans never witnessed up close as dramatic a mixing of man and God as what we were seeing.

Later that afternoon, thousands of feet above the valleys, as Liang and I rested in the mouth of what had once been a tiger’s lair, we counted twenty-five guard towers dotting the distant, hazy, sharp-edged ridges. The shallow cave, the dizzying height, and Liang’s beauty and mysterious nature only added to the enchantment. We spent a good hour gazing in awe at the rows upon rows of mountain ranges pimpled with the square stone towers. In the warm silence, even our thoughts could be felt, for when I shared with her that I was fighting a nearly irresistible urge to fling myself from the cave and see if I could fly, side said she had been thinking the same. Both of us agreed that to be an eagle and weave, unencumbered and weightlessly, through the sighs of those innumerable peaks would be the most amazing experience ever.

As if jealous of our wishes to be as eagles, a pheasant had barked somewhere in the completely humanless wilderness blanketing the millions of acres of mountain slopes far below our hiking shoes. Both Liang and I had smiled like children at the echoing of the bird’s bark.

Not surprisingly, the end of the day had found us strolling contentedly down a dirt lane into a farming village that lay thousands of feet below the Wall. Every day up to that point in the journey had been filled with many new adventures–some difficult, some delightful. The same Great Wall, but not always with the same character. Until that day alone with Liang, the Wall had seemed to put so many obstacles in our paths. On none of the other days had the yin and the yang forces of China flowed about me with such effortlessness. Instead, each wonderment had demanded to be earned with my enduring such pains and challenges as high humidity, thirst, and tall cliffs.

On the journey’s third day, the initial group of protectors and guides–three men and a woman–had led Liang and me twenty kilometers along precariously narrow ridges where the Wall was mostly hidden in dark forests of iron wood and thick eight-foot-high grasses that tigers had once hidden in. A pair of poachers were the only two-legged creatures we came upon that entire day. So high and far did we venture from anywhere that it took seven hours to come down from the mountain tops to the floor of the valley. On that late afternoon decent I drank cold spring water where it poured directly from the rocks and picked wild kiwis, wild grapes, wild pears, walnuts, and jujube berries. I also stripped to my underwear at one point and dove into the churning water of a mountain lagoon as clear as expensive crystal. As was the usual daily summary when darkness fell, I had survived. And with yet more magical stories to tell.

But now, according to the new team, surviving was going to be something harder to keep doing: according to the men I wold be entering the “Wilds.” Ahead lay a Great Wall that had been swallowed at times by trees and brush to such a degree that we would need to travel on hands and knees for long sections. And the mountains were higher and steeper, and civilization further away. There were reasons the provincial government had sent such muscled veterans as apt at mountain climbing as at trekking tens of miles on loose rocks and in thin air.

If what they told me at breakfast was even half true, there would be little chance for the kind of daydreaming I’d enjoyed yesterday: the real adventure was only just starting.

Steven

Today after a speech at a college, I experienced something I’ve never faced at an American college–a mad crush for my autograph by more than half the audience. It was an absolute zoo. More than half the 500+ students jostling and pushing and shouting at me to sign their papers, their textbooks, their clothes, even their arms and hands. I thought the craziness would never end. And it might not have, if after about twenty minutes several professors hadn’t scolded the students. When I stepped out of the cauldron of testosterone and pimples, my shirt was soaked.

So many adult-sized bodies thrusting arms and objects at my face with unrelenting urgency was more than a little frightening. But, at the same time, there was something so refreshing at seeing overflow enthusiasm for learning and for meeting a visiting “scholar.” When was the last time you heard of American college students mobbing someone who wasn’t a rock star, or a Hollywood celebrity, or a presidential candidate?

What went wrong with so many of America’s college students when it comes to role models and heroes? Why are many young Americans cynical of learning and of those who would show them what they need to grow into their potential? How is that so many students put their trust and interest in narcissistic entertainers who are more interested in the students’ money rather than their brains and dreams?

This afternoon I didn’t have to swing a guitar wildly through the air or scream profanities at others to keep these Chinese students riveted to everything I said. Heck, there wasn’t any music. Instead, I talked about discovering their own special talents and then using that talent to make each life an incredible adventure that benefits others. I didn’t hit any home runs or throw any touchdowns to get their attention; I simply told them to refuse to let fear kill their ambitions, to nurture curiosity, to be passionate about life and making friends, to always show respect, and, most importantly, to always take one more step. And, too, I talked about how important it is that we learn to cooperate with others in taking care of this planet’s environment.

Many in the USA think the Chinese are intent on taking over the world, and yet China’s next leaders seem more interested in increasing cooperation with the international community and in repairing their ravaged environment. There is no one advocating in the colleges a need to go to war with the USA. Rather, there is heated debate on how to reduce the huge numbers of cars on China’s roads, on how to clean up the toxic dumps that their parents have left everywhere, on promoting healthier lifestyles.

Many of the questions from the college students I’ve met in these past several weeks have let do doubts that they being well prepared to go out and cast their ambitions far and wide in this ever-shrinking world. How spectacular it is that students here are hungry to learn all they can from a man who doesn’t even speak their language and whose ideas are mostly simple. How inspiring to see that large numbers of them genuinely think of teachers and scholars as heroes.

How shameful that there are college students in the USA who can’t find Mexico on a world map, who can’t speak two words of another language, who know of Donald Trump but not of Thomas Jefferson. And, saddest of all, who don’t feel a shred of shame at being so ignorant.

More than ever, knowledge is power. Every great empire and nation from the beginning of history has known that. It is to those with the greatest hungers for learning that the future belongs. Can anyone be so naive as to think that China has gone in just one generation from no space program to planning manned flights to the moon solely as a result of stealing others’ technology? Better wake up, America: China has been producing several times more engineers and artists and scientists year after year after year.

At the daily feast tonight I was asked more than once by the college’s deans to please return next year and teach at the college. I even think they tried putting enough wine in me to get me to accept. I graciously declined. But I can’t say I wasn’t tempted; what a joy it would be to have such eager, curious faces and rapt attention during my lectures.

Steven

I never thought I could feel sorry for a scorpion, but last night I came across dozens that I couldn’t help but do so. They were at an outdoor food kiosk in an open-air market in the center of Beijing, skewered by the threes on foot-long wooden sticks the width of toothpicks. A part of my heart actually did constrict, and I even gasped at the sight of their little claw-tipped legs flailing about so helplessly and confusedly. How utterly cruel, I had thought–for three seconds. After which I held up my right index finger to the impatient Chinese vendor.

“One stick,” I said.

She frowned at my frugalness, snatched one stick of the grasping critters, and waved it back and forth over a shallow pan filled with red-hot coals. The little creatures gasped and mouthed silent screams (or at least I assumed they gasped and screamed), while she dabbed oil over their browning backs and appendages.

I handed her a 10 RMB bill with Mao’s face smiling from it; she wordlessly shoved the exotic snack toward me. The three sets of stinger tails were curled like the curly fries at an Arby’s. I smiled broadly. At last! Grasped in my right hand was the fulfillment of a very special goal.

Within an hour of my arrival in China back on September 1, I was asked what I wanted to do more than anything while in this country. My reply had been quick and not at all what everyone was expecting: I wanted to eat scorpions on a stick.

If you’ll remember, my darling, several months ago we watched an episode of a British television series called “An Idiot Abroad,” where the central character was in Beijing and being prodded to eat some skewered scorpions. And, of course, those scorpions had been alive while they were being fried. Being a dolt, the idiot took a tentative bite of one of the scorpions then spent the next several minutes struggling to not regurgitate the arachnids. Both you and I had laughed and squirmed throughout the entire scene, even as I was saying I’d have to someday find out what such a treat tastes like. After all, what could be more natural for someone like myself who has eaten nearly everything else on this planet that crawls or slithers.

Well, I finally found out what fried scorpions taste like. And, while I was at it, also giant centipedes, baby snakes, week-old ducklings, song bird embryos, baby squids, five-inch-long caterpillars, larvae the size of my thumb, and something else that even my Chinese companions didn’t recognize. All fried and on sticks too.

The scorpions tickled my throat, literally and taste-wise. They had the flavor of the pieces of lamb I often purchase from the curbside kebob grills. I even shamelessly ordered two more sticks of scorpions. As for the snake, it tasted fishy and evil. I gladly gave the majority of it to Extra. The bird embryos were a little too crispy, and the knowledge that the ungainly lumps I was chewing had eyes and claws and organs and bones inside them didn’t help.

As for the rest, let’s just say they won’t be showing up at any of our cookouts on Worldwalker Hill in the next few decades.

Amazingly, I stumbled across all this hunger-gatherer cuisine in a blocks-long jumble of fry stalls, cafes, tourists, and souvenir vendors in the midst of one of the most ritzy shopping districts on earth—Beijing’s Wangfuzing Street. Just a few minutes’ walk from the Forbidden City of the ancient emperors and Tiananmen Suare with its giant poster of Mao Zedong’s face, Wangfuzing is China’s overly luxurious version of New York’s Times Square or Tokyo’s Ginza. Have $20,000 to spend on a watch or $500,000 for a baby-blue Bentley? Have a hankering to blow $1,500 on a pair of designer jeans? If so, then you’re in the right place.

It was a good thing I left my checkbook at home.

Not surprisingly, the street and its shops, even at night, were clogged with people of all nationalities and income levels. Fascinated and awed by such a glut of luxury goods, I stared like a pauper as mobs of shoppers laughed and chattered with all the energies and joys of mall patrons back home out on a Black Friday spending spree. As in nearly every city I’ve visited in China, I saw a populace happy and excited. I could have been in New York, or San Francisco, or Houston and not seen more zest for spending money. The city center scenes in China have borne almost no resemblance to the stoic and colorless settings of the communist nations I ventured through on my world walk in the 1980s. Indeed, if I did not know better, I would swear that I am in the most capitalistic, consumer-obsessed society ever.

Even the fifty-foot-high LeBron James gleaming that night above a Nike superstore had a grin a mile wide. And in the square in front of a spotlighted golden Catholic cathedral hundreds of couples danced to piped western music, all laughing and jiggling away as if at a giant outdoor ball.

Towards midnight, as my assistants strolled with me back to our hotel at the slightly more affordable end of the street, they seemed as happy as the rest in the sea of faces around us. We even stopped for a few minutes to pose playfully beside a life-sized sculpture of a rickshaw and its driver. There was no mistaking that in the smiles and laughter of my young assistants and of the thousands of others passing us on the street I was witnessing a people who were thrilled with where life had deposited them.

I glanced at a cast iron statue of an ancient emperor I was cradling in my hands. I’d haggled for him at the open-air hawkers’ market. He seemed to be awfully jolly about something too. Perhaps he had seen me eating the scorpions? Or, maybe, he was just thrilled that in a country once noted for its enormous poverty, there are so many now with money to throw away.

Steven

To be standing on a train station platform when a bullet train roars past at nearly 400 miles an hour is an unforgettable experience. It’s almost as if what you just experienced was all in your imagination; as if for a few seconds you were suddenly in a dream, and some long, shiny, white dragon swooped past in a mad rush to reach some place where warlocks and witches live. If you blink, you’ll miss the dragon entirely.

Nearly as unreal is the experience of riding inside one of those viper-nosed marvels. Which is exactly what I’m doing as I type out this latest blog from my China adventure. Indeed, this is the second time in as many days that I find myself zipping cross this enormous country inside the belly of one of these modern dragons. And, once again, here I am dumbfounded that we in the United States don’t have a network of such ultra
high-speed trains connecting our major cities.

I know we Americans love our cars and don’t go for trains like the rest of the world. But, come on, speeding past everything with the velocity of a bullet and with lots of leg and arm room and while sipping on fine wine and dining on lobster is unquestionably much nicer than being stuck in traffic jams on some highway or airport runway.

I’d be willing to bet a boiled grouper that the average American can’t tell me the last time he or she traveled overland uninterrupted and in total comfort at breakneck speed on what we call public transportation. Or a time when their seat on an American bus or train was so roomy they could tap away on their laptop without their elbows pressed against their rib cage. Or when the noise level was akin to that found in a church between services.

Here I am, in a nation where the population is four times that of the USA, where 24 million still claim a cave as their main dwelling, where just an hour ago I watched a middle-aged woman step onto an escalator for the first time ever, where the government only recently put a man into space, and yet I’m swooshing past cornfields and mountain ranges inside a sleek white tube that’s spotless, that runs entirely on electricity and magnets, that rides so smoothly I could set a long-stemmed glass of wine on the keyboard of my laptop and never worry about it spilling. And, yet, back in my own country–one with unimaginable wealth and technology
and home to the world’s premier institutes of engineering and science—I’d be lucky to find a passenger train that can get me from Cincinnati to Washington, DC, is less than twenty-four hours. No wonder so many of us in the USA would rather queue with the living dead at the airport.

And speaking of airports, virtually every one of the dozen or so airports I’ve flown to in China in the past three weeks has had the most architecturally spectacular and luxurious airport terminal possible. I’m talking transportation cathedrals of glass and steel and marble lined with exquisite side chapels to the Hermes and Rolexes and Chanels of the luxury goods world. Now I know someone in a little advertising company cubicle somewhere in Beijing figured out that people who go to the airport must have money to spend. But millions to spend? One airport I hiked through for seemingly hours had sixteen Porche sports car billboards between the deboarding gate and the conveyor belt with my luggage. At another airport the Pizza Hut had the decor of a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and servers better dressed than I was at my wedding.

Coming home to the Northern Kentucky International Airport with its General Electric billboards and souvenir Reds kiosks just ain’t gonna seem so big time anymore.

Steven

Thirty years ago, when I was walking around the world, I wrote that the friendliest people in the United States were those who lived in the southeast corner of Nebraska. Well I now know where the friendliest people in the WORLD may be living: in little Tai’an, about a two-hour bullet train ride southeast of Beijing. Rural and small by China standards, this city the size of Denver has a range of massive mountain peaks standing guard over it and the big-hearted Mr. Chang living in it.

A self-employed bus driver, Mr. Chang is a bear of a man with his thick arms and Buddha-like belly. His deep voice, gravelly from half a century of smoking and laughing, belies the fact that his heart as tender as they come. He is the director of a social help organization known as the “Tai’an Peoples Help Society.” Its primary goal is to provide basic school supplies and clothing to schoolchildren from poor or broken homes.

He was the chief reason I, Yoyo, Extra, and Tony came to such an off-the-beaten-path place a couple days ago. On his own, he’d written to the Aqua Two Shoe Company and told of an elementary school in the farm fields an hour out of Tai’an that had almost no desks and not a single chair for its hundreds of students. He also described the school building as crumbling into dust and not having been painted–inside or out–for over a quarter century. Could Aqua Two do anything to help?

Fortunately Chang’s letter reached Jack Cheung, the socially conscious co-founder of Aqua Two. Jack believes everyone on this planet is part of one community and should reach out often to help the less fortunate. Raised a Christian but now a Buddhist, the 39-year-old Jack had first met me a decade ago at a shoe show in Osaka, Japan. Since then he’d decided to have me as the face and designated founder of a new shoe line (Aqua Two). And so here I now am, in a dirt-poor setting in rural China, again representing Aqua Two in a humanitarian endeavor. But, as I’ve written of before, nothing in China is done simply or without hours of passionate fanfare, and so I first had to be honored in the city’s center before visiting the school.

For hours I stood outside in the heat and the blazing sun, while in the background droned nonstop patriotic music from giant loudspeakers. The came congratulatory speech after congratulatory speech after congratulatory speech, broken only by back-straining bowing and handshaking and singing. Giant posters emblazoned with my face and colors more bright than a Vegas marquee lent an eerie sense of hero-worship to the scene. And as if that wasn’t enough to make me feel like I was on the verge of being a national hero, more than four dozen uniformed teen workers from a nearby shopping mall stood at rigid attention, in perfect rows in front of the stage, saluting me every so often.

At the point I was starting to see mirages and my dried lips were chapping, I was asked to give MY speech. No doubt it was too short in their minds, but for me it was interminably long. The final hour was one of giddy posing for photos with every single politician and worker in the area, including the soundboard kid and each and every one of the media horde. At last we piled into cars and trucks and headed off in a cloud of dust toward the mountains.

Hours passed before our convoy arrived at the school. Firecrackers exploded everywhere. Each and every child at the Gui Lin Primary School was cute and photogenic and seemed thrilled to meet the giant with the golden hair and bushy mustache. They were a sea of endless smiles and seemed intimidated more by the small army of camera-toting reporters than by my clumsy attempts at communicating with them about the new desks and chairs they had received ahead of my visit.

When the school’s principal, an elfish angel named Mr. Fung, led me to the schoolyard and showed me what the students had been using prior to our donation I was shocked. The handful of desks they had had were as crude and rotted as something unearthed from a medieval ruin. No child in the United States, even in the deepest of Appalachia or the South, would ever have seen such ruinations inside their school. The benches were little better: wobbly, handmade, peeling, barely wide enough for a cat to sit on. I wondered if I had even been born when they were made. There could be no doubt that the new furnishings were a change for the better, that we had made the students’ learning much easier. The unselfishness of Jack and Mr. Chang had given the students a chance to actually be able to concentrate on their studies, rather than worrying if they would have a place to write on or sit on.

For many, many years the school had requested extra money from the government to improve the school’s decaying furnishings and structure, but then had had no choice but to go begging elsewhere. And as is increasingly the case, corporate China came to the rescue. The people of that otherwise forgotten hamlet couldn’t have been more grateful. Where the local leaders took me afterwards to feed me was crusted over in dust and grime and flies, but just as with everywhere I go in China, I was fed and beefed to where I could barely rise from my seat. The village’s rotund lady mayor continually challenged me to stay and be spoiled for the remainder of my life.

Appropriately enough, the Tai’an region was where the legendary philosopher Confucius had lived. The most beloved of all ancient Chinese thinkers, he had always stressed harmony and civility. Twenty-five centuries ago, he had taught that each person should put the welfare of the community above that of their own self
interest. How exciting it was for me to know that I had been given the chance to come to the homeland of such a man; one whose philosophies I had taught at Southern State Community College. Even more gratifying was the realization that I had been able to help his people. How small was not only the world but also time.

Back in Tai’an, in the mountain lodge I was staying in, I spied above the lobby door a quote from Confucius. Extra told me that it said that when a man comes from far away we must alway treat him as one of our family. Tai’an had definitely done such with me. That evening, on the bullet train to Beijing, I knew all those I had hugged at the school–and Mr. Chang too–were never going to be remembered by me as anything less than family.

Steven