Most people live at a subsistence level but are content

By A.K. Dugan, Lebanon Express writer

Lebanon resident Joyce Weatherly is watching the Olympics in Beijing extra closely this year; she visited China in a "Life Experience" tour in June.

Weatherly and 14 other people ages 9 to 86 left Los Angeles about 1 a.m. on June 16 for Beijing. They landed at about 6 a.m. on June 17 to overcast skies. At least that's what Weatherly thought at the time. Now she thinks it was a combination of clouds and pollution.

Rain was predicted every day of the trip and they didn't see the sun at all. Weatherly didn't notice the pollution except once when a little rain fell. When she folded up her umbrella to put it away, she saw dirt on it.

The 15-hour flight on China Air was "amazing," she said, different than any she's experienced on an American airplane, though she's always had good service on planes. The Chinese-style food was served hot, the flight attendants were more attentive than most and the plane was the cleanest she's ever seen, even the bathrooms. Attendants wiped down the bathrooms after every use so they would be immaculate for the next person.

The group started and ended their tour, arranged by China Focus, a San Francisco business, in Beijing and also visited Xi'an, Guilin, Suzhou and Shanghai - all south of Beijing - as well as a seeing a few smaller towns along the way. The total cost was less than $3,000 per person for airfare, hotels and meals; plus $75 per person in gratuities for their main tour guide, other guides and bus drivers; and personal spending money.

The cities

The first several days were spent sight-seeing in Beijing.

On one tour they took an hour-and-a-half bus ride to a steep section of the 4,000-mile Great Wall of China and those who wished could climb a bit of it.

"You have to pay attention," Weatherly said. "The steps aren't even; some are just a few inches high and others are near a foot."

That area of the wall is set up for tourists, with lots of shops nearby.

While in Beijing, they saw two arenas - the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube - and the Olympic Village being constructed for the Olympics, which began last week.

They visited the Garden of Heaven, which has pagodas and beautiful architecture and the buildings are thousands of years old.

The area within three or four blocks of their hotel was "pretty modern," she said, but farther than that the city was more like old China. The group had time to walk into older areas where they saw little neighborhoods behind gates. The neighborhoods are filled with small homes and shops, Weatherly said, and it was not recommended to walk in them alone because few of the people speak English and it's easy to get lost.

Most of the time tour members walked in groups of two or three. Weatherly ventured out alone once - to a nearby Starbucks.

On the main streets she saw lots of motor vehicles, but in the neighborhoods people rode bicycles and small motor bikes.

The contrast between old and new was true in other cities too, Weatherly said. Some areas are modernized, but a few blocks away it's just like 20 or 100 years ago. Although many old buildings are being destroyed, China is setting some areas aside for preservation, she said, "but you can't save it all."

On their tours they saw lots of temples - the Chinese are very into Buddhism in many parts of the country - and they saw museums, including the former summer palace of an emperor in Beijing. It contained one section for the emperor and another for the empress. His section was very masculine - bold, stark and powerful-looking, Weatherly said. Her section was more peaceful, warm and welcoming, with smaller furniture.

Weatherly and her group visited the home of a retired archeologist in one city. About 15 people live in the house. Weatherly saw a living area, one bedroom and a kitchen. The kitchen consisted of a two-burner propane hot plate, a plastic basin for washing up, a small table with pots and pans stored beneath, a pitcher for water and a shelf holding bowls and teacups. They cook and eat with chop sticks. In cooking, they use one pan and add all the food to it.

"It comes out very tasty and they have one pan to clean up. Sometimes I think simpler could be a lot nicer," she said.

Terracotta warriors

Near Xi'an, they saw the Terracotta warriors.

In about 200 B.C., the emperor Qing built a tomb to house his body after death with the same comforts he had while alive. He had the tomb surrounded with thousands of life-size painted warriors made of terracotta, some with horses, to protect him from evil forever. He died before the warriors - no two alike - were completed.

During a civil war sometime after the emperor's death, the structure originally built around and over the warriors and the tomb was attacked and collapsed, to be buried under the soil.

The tomb remained buried for hundreds of years until about 1988, when a farmer digging in a field came out with an artifact that he took to authorities. Archeologists have been working to unearth the warriors, along with the tomb, ever since, but have not completed the project.

A large museum has been built over the area of the tomb and warriors and visitors can stand on an interior balcony looking down into the pits where archeologists are working.

The artistry of the Chinese people is spectacular, she said. Many buildings are very ornate, painted with intricate patterns. "It just about blew my mind," to think about how much work was involved, she said. Painting and other skills have been handed down, generation to generation.

"That to me is probably the saddest thing," she said. "We don't hand that kind of thing down any more. We depend on automation."

Red is a favored color that is seen everywhere because to the Chinese it means prosperity, health and longevity.

On the river

In Guilin, they took a three-hour trip on the Li River. Two weeks earlier they wouldn't have been able to because of flooding, she said.

While going down the river, Weatherly looked up and saw debris 25 to 30 feet up in trees. She asked what that was about and was told that's how high the floodwaters got. They saw few other effects of floods; it was pretty well cleaned up.

"They're a very industrious people," she said.

"Going down the river, the scenery was...out of this world," she said. "The vegetation was very green."

She saw a lot of terrace farming because it is a mountainous area, and farming with water buffalo.

"We'd say the people were subsisting," she said.

The food

The group ate in restaurants, some in the hotels they stayed in and some at specialty restaurants, eating food that was authentically Chinese, including a number of things Weatherly hadn't tasted before. She had determined before she left that she would at least try a bite of everything. Some things she ate only one bite of.

Their guide suggested they not eat food from neighborhood markets because western stomachs aren't used to the delicacies, which included scorpions, other bugs and snake wine.

One of her favorite dishes was lotus root in a sauce with congealed rice, which was almost like jelly.

At one restaurant in Xi'an, she especially liked its specialty, dumplings.

Fruit, especially watermelon, was a part of every meal. She enjoyed winter melon, which has a taste and texture which is like a cross between a casaba and a honeydew melon, and is "very tasty."

Dessert is not served with meals. The closest thing to dessert was fruit, she said.

The sweetest thing she ate was a sticky rice in a dumpling with a date or other fruit chopped into the rice.

At most meals, the choice of beverages was beer, bottled water or soda. They were cautioned not to drink tap water.

People buy food daily because they have no refrigeration.

The lifestyle

The American travelers found few western toilets. Instead, toilets are a porcelain trough in the floor to squat over.

"You have to figure it out," Weatherly said. "It was easy to get used to."

Weatherly said she saw two, maybe three, overweight Chinese during the trip.

"Most of them ride bikes or walk, and they eat different," she said.

The people are smaller than here. At 5-feet 5.5-inches tall, Weatherly felt very tall most of the time.

The government owns all the land in China and individuals or families lease it. Some leases have been held by families for generations.

At gardens in Beijing, government-sponsored musical and exercise educational programs are held all day long, mostly for seniors it appeared from the people she saw participating. Similar programs are held in other cities.

"They're really into physical health," she said. "They stay nimble into old age."

People were friendly and open and treated the visitors well. In the little neighborhoods off the beaten path, there was a lot of curiosity, but that went two ways.

"People aren't that different; government and politics are different," she said. "They want to make life better just like we do. I think governments do a great disservice to humanity because they paint the wrong picture.

"The thing that still touches me the most was when you got out of the city. They have so little and yet they're so content, more than most of us here who have so much," she said.

Joyce Weatherly is a lifelong resident of Lebanon. She retired a few years ago from the family business, Economy Supply. She and her husband, Bob, have two grown daughters.

Others in the tour group included Bob and Marilyn Dedrick of Silverton, whose son married Weatherly's oldest daughter. Many of the others were friends of the Dedricks from the Los Angeles area.