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Experiencing China Again for the First Time
Part I --Dramatic changes in the last 25 years Your immediate reaction is that my title is a contradiction in terms. "One does not experience somethig again for the first time," you are saying. The title, however, has been carefully and deliberately chosen. Let me explain. I first went to China in 1977. At that time, tourists were not allowed. Some official status was required. I was then a member of the North Carolina Senate and went as one of a 20-member delegation from the Southern Legislative Conference. The delegation arrived in Peking (now Beijing) on flight from Tokyo around 9 p.m. on Friday. As we walked from the plane toward the terminal, I took a moment to turn in every direction to see what I could see. I only saw one thing because that one thing struck me so forcefully that I failed to notice anything else. The one thing was that ours was the only plane there. This was the capital city of the world's most populous country. It then had a population of around eight million people. Yet the only planne in the city's only airport at 9 p.m. on a Friday night was there only because 20 foreign dignitaries had arrived. The culture shock was compounded on the trip from the airport into the city. As we were leaving the airport in a fleet of old, green, government-owned Mercedes, I looked over my shoulder and saw that the lights in the airport were going off. It was clear that no other planes were expected that night. A s the ride into town continued, it became a p p a r e n t that not only had ours been the only plane at the airport but that ours were also the only automobiles on the highways. We saw an occasional bus or truck, lots of bicycles, an occasional cart pulled by a pony or a goat, and lots of people walking. The only motorized conveyance that the average citizen possessed was a small, soap-box-derby-size vehicle with the rough equivalent of a small lawn mower engine. The ensuing days brought other culture shock experiences. We observed road-building operations in which workers laid one rock at a time by hand, with no equipment whatsoever. We saw stooped-over old women whose thin shoulders bore sticks with baskets attached containing varieties of produce. If we paused to glance into a store window, we were immediately surrounded by large numbers of Chinese, who had rarely, if ever seen people like us. In short in many ways we were cast back a thousand years. By 1983 when I returned to China with a group of lawyers and judges under the auspices of the North Carolina Bar Association, much had changed. This time we arrived at a quite modern, new airport with lots of activity. Cars were numberous. A tremendous amount of construction was underway, and modern equipment was in regular usage. The Chinese people were altogether nonchalant about the presence of Americans. Observing the changes that had occurred between 1977 and 1983 did not prepare me for the even more dramatic change that had taken place between 1983 and 2006, however. Today the major cities of China, and even the smaller ones, experience New York/Los Angeles-style traffic jams. Chinese citizens drive a great variety of automobiles, large and small. The transportation arteries are modern. Many buildings are modern in design, structure, and ornamentation beyond anything I have seen in the United States or elsewhere. In many respects the economy is thriving. The legal system, which, like the economic, had been largely destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, has made a considerable comeback on the civil side. We would still consider their criminal law practices and procedures largely primitive and lacking in due process safeguards. Thus, while the October 2006 visit to China was my third one, so much had changed since the previous excursions that it was almost like experiencing the country for the first time. I had guessed that this would be the case. Indeed, I probably would not have gone had I thought otherwise because there are lots of places whre I have not been, and both time and money for world travel are limited. A few years ago, I was granted membership in the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. Membership is highly honorific, being limited to a maximum of one-third of one percent of the lawyers in a given jurisdiction. The nature and caliber of the organization led me to accept the invitation to be a part of its Rule of Law delegation to China. I thought both the participants and the program would be of the highest quality, and I was right. Notwithstanding the fact that I had experienced China twice before, the trip was worthwhile, so much so that it was in many ways indeed a new experience. Leona (my wife) and I flew from Raleigh-Durham to Los Angeles on Saturday evening, October 7, 2006. We spent a leisurely Sunday in L.A., mostly reading and walking as we began the adjustment to the time change and rested for the long flights to Beijing. In the late afternoon we took a taxi to Manhattan Beach, walked on the pier, and had dinner at a nice restaurant named The Kettle. On the return trip our cab driver was stopped and charged with an unsafe lane change. He gave the officer a hard time, and we wondered for a time if were were going to get back to the hotel area (near the airport) in time to secure our bags and make a timely arrival. We did, but the driver talked about the incident non-stop the rest of the way. Our C athey Pacific Airlines flight departed from L.A. a little after midnight. Nine hours later we crossed the international date line, and suddenly it was Tuesday. We arrived in Hong Kong shortly before 6 a.m. after about 14 1/2 hours on the plane. The computers there were down, which made the transfer to Air China for our flight to Beijing hectic. In due course, however, we made the a p p r o x i m a t e l y three-hour flight from Hong Kong to Beijing, were we were housed at the luxurious Marriott Beijing West. Our national guides, who will be with us throughout our stay in China, are Helen and Wendy. On our first afternoon Helen referred to lawyers as "a new profession in China." She said the Chinese are not comfortable when talking about the Cultural Revolution (1964-1976), which essentially destroyed their legal system. Textbooks today give it only a paragraph or so. Lawyers were not valued then, but now are. She advised us that she would be translating for many members of the profession with whom we would be meeting. Helen told us about an uncle of hers who had been the only scholar in his village. He was tortured during the Cultural Revolution, but, she says, has no anger about it. He says you do not criticize your parents for beating you. People like him realize they were mistreated, but believe it was mistaken rather than intentional conduct. China, she said, has a population of 1.3 billion according to official statistics, which she questions. In an attempt at population control ("family planning" being politically correct termin ology), there is a one-child policy for most families. Twins are allowed; and farmers can have two childfren, as can members of minority groups that are in danger of becoming extinct. Helen called Shanghai "the city of the future." She compared it to New York City in the U.S.: "the financial center of China." Finally, she warned us that while much had changed in China,, we could feel free to discuss anything among ourselves but not with people we did not know. Tibet, Taiwan, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were forbidden subjects outside our group.
(Next week, Part II--China cooperates with its neighbors.)
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