The next morning we were up at seven and, after a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and coffee, set off for two of the more interesting sites on our tour.
At the height of the Cold War, the Chinese government constructed a covert underground bomb shelter between 1969 and 1979. They built a subterranean city for three million people, with hospitals, theatres, food storage, recreational facilities and schools for every level of education.
Far below the city's surface we walked through tunnels so cold our breath was visible. A row of white lights hung above us. A second row of warning lights used to hang parallel to them. If the tunnel flashed red, the Soviets had arrived.
I couldn't get my head around the idea that this was going on while I was busy deciding which Bee Gees album to buy.
Tragically, China has wiped out most of its historical landmarks. Much of this destruction happened during the Cultural Revolution under Mao Tse-tung. To counter the loss, they decided to preserve in the city's center a housing area dating back two hundred years.
We visited an apartment in a gray stone building. The woman of the household was of the fifth generation to live there. She shared it with her husband and daughter.
The living space inexplicably placed the kitchen outdoors (it snows in Beijing, just like New York City). The main room contained a double bed, a small couch, a wood table and an armoire. A hot-water metal pipe ran along the wall to provide heat. Because summer temperatures could reach well over a hundred degrees, an air conditioning unit hung from the ceiling.
Our group crammed inside the tiny apartment to hear the family's history. As a welcoming gesture the woman had piled peanuts on a sheet of newspaper for us to shell and munch on. The family would be paid a small stipend for allowing us to invade their privacy and I was touched by their hospitality. These people were considered relatively well-off in a country where the average income is a thousand dollars a year.
We drove through Beijing's neighborhoods and saw serious, filthy poverty. I was confused. Poverty in our capitalist society made sense to me; it's one of our greatest negatives. But a Communist society was supposed to eliminate such hardships, or so I thought.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong, on this May Day holiday, was packed with mainland Chinese, some laying down as much as five thousand dollars a pop in jewelry stores. Throngs of people leave the mainland for shopping sprees in Hong Kong because they believe the quality of goods is higher.
As my friend Leonard pointed out, That should show you the gap.
From the bus window, I watched brand new Volkswagen sedans maneuver through heavy traffic. Those visions of streets packed with Chinese citizens dressed in standard gray Sun Yat-sen suits and pedaling bicycles were little more than a memory. Chinese banks gained 52 percent profit in 2004. Construction was prevalent and "going great guns," as they like to say.
