CHINA 1983 revisited after 40 years

After the USA in 1982, the following year I decided to visit China always in the company of Rossella, my ex who unfortunately passed away ten years ago. This time it was a group trip with about ten people and with a group leader from Bergamo, Italy at his first experience. Back then China was a very poor country and very different from today's great power with futuristic infrastructure. The Chinese were all dressed alike in blue or green tunics and all rode around on bicycles, living in small houses blackened by coal. We arrived from Italy in Hong Kong which at the time was still a British colony with huge skyscrapers, a bay that looked like a lake and the island of Kowloon full of shops and reachable by ferry or underground subway. The second cityvisited was already in China in the famous Canton, now Guanzhou one of the richest city in the country, I only remember a large market where they sold all kinds of animals, insects and dogs included to cook and eat. The crowd was so large that we held hands for fear of getting lost. The third city visited was the romantic Guilin along the Pearl River and surrounded by spectacular hills all single and not joined by chains, a city that inspired many Chinese artists. Then it was the turn of Hanzhou, a former capital with the West Lake, a romantic place with weeping willows, where we were accommodated in a citadel enclosed by high walls and we each received a suite with antique furniture at a cost of ten dollars a night. The next stop was Suzhou, the Chinese Venice with some canals that have little to do with the beauty of the Itaian city of art and wonder. Then Xian with the impressive terracotta army and a beautiful city tower Then the metropolis of Shanghai of which I remember a temple with a jade Buddha and then the Bund, the coastal road with European embassy buildings. Finally the majestic Beijing where the group stopped only a few days before returning while Rossella and I extended by about ten days and thank goodness because Beijing is worth all of China put together! First of all, the Forbidden City in front of the huge Tian An Men square with many palaces and courtyards that we visited almost every day always discovering new things,then the beautiful and colorful Temple of Heaven and the temple of the Dalai Lama, a beautiful lake where once stood the Summer Palace which was worth more than all the European palaces put together but that was destroyed by the Europeans to punish the Chinese because they did not submit as demanded. Outside Beijing we went to see the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. We went to lunch every day at the Peking Hotel on Tian an Men Square and ate all the tasty Chinese specialties spending about 2.50 euros, and in the last few days we went shopping for three fur coats bought for only 300 euro and we inaugurated a department store on Van Fun Jin Street the shopping street next to the large square as a television crew was waiting for some foreign tourists to film the inauguration and happened upon us. As one American I met said: China interesting but not exciting.