09-10 China 1985

It seemed we would celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary in China, and we travelled with Bob Morrow and his son Roger. It was a two-week adventure in advance of the International Small Business Congress in Taiwan.
We started in Hong Kong, with the first stop in the city of Guangzhou, and wow, talk about population explosion. There were few cars at that time and everyone travelled and shipped by bicycle. We stopped at a factory to see how elephant tusks, smuggled into China, were made into works of art by carvers using what looked like dentist drills.
The scenery of China was breathtaking, and at a bus stop, I got a beautiful shot of children working on their parent's farm.
During a visit to the beautiful city of Hangzhou we visited a tea plantation. It stretched for miles.
We made several stops at local schools and watched young girls at play. I asked our guide why we seemed to always stop to visit young girls at play. She said there is a shortage of girls as a result of the "one-child" policy and they want visitors to see lots of young girls.
I loved the photo in Tian’anmen Square with friends from the tour, the McClintons from Australia. She wrote a beautiful poem for Mary and I on our 30th wedding anniversary, which was August 26th. It is available at www.johnandmarybulloch.com.
In the background is the Forbidden Palace, which had been the home of 23 Chinese Emperors. We could line up to see the well-preserved body of Mao Zedong if we wanted to. We decided to pass. There were a series of public announcements, and when I asked our guide about them, she said they were asking Chinese people to not spit.
I brought a couple of hundred Canadian pins with me and gave them out to young people. "Ah Canada, Norman Bethune." They all remembered the Canadian doctor who went with Mao Zedong on his celebrated march and died of blood-poisoning.
No one goes near Beijing without visiting the Great Wall of China, and Mary is seen with some people from the bus, kidding about the steepness of the Wall. The guide told us that thousands of bodies of workers who died during construction were buried in the wall.
We flew to Xian, the old capital of China, and visited the Terracotta Warriors; platoons of clay soldiers that were buried with the first emperor. When we were walking around the site, a lady tapped us on the shoulder. She was disguised as a tourist but was a local trying to sell us a little clay model, and she had a dozen strapped to her legs under her dress. Loved the enterprising nature of the Chinese that was evidenced everywhere.
Our final city was Shanghai, and it was an industrial city with a massive population and its own dialect. There was a guide picked up for this portion of our tour, and I found our three guides talking English because it was the only language they had in common. Mary is seen talking to students who came up to us to practice their English. They spoke English without an accent. I had a sense for the first time how powerful this country was going to become.
We visited a rug factory and watched a lady making a rug of a particular colour. Her production was stacked up against the wall. It just wasn't selling. A day later there was a huge announcement that made headlines everywhere that factories henceforth would have to sell what they created. We bought a couple of these beautiful rugs and still enjoy them today.