August 31, 2008

Sitting in the van coming back from a cruise down the Li River with our guide Macy. The road is lined with rice fields. Very reminiscent of Vietnam. The bus station where we waited had pictures of Clinton, Carter and Bush 41 who had also taken the same trip down the river. Spoke with an Englishman named David on the boat who is a businessman back in England on holiday with his American wife. He said he would be a Republican in the US because they are more pro business. I pointed out to him that the American economy normally does better under the Democrats as seen with how the economy performed under Clinton versus Bush 43. Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation dealt with China’s relationship to the US. China’s economy may eventually suffer from the downturn in the American economy because the American consumer is consuming less. In fact, the only good part of the American economy right now is its exports. Perhaps China can turn to its internal market which is expanding or to the Indian market to make up the difference. The road is not particularly good (it is bumpy) and the van has seen better days, all of which makes it difficult to type. The drivers here are insane. They do not know the meaning of “courtesy of the road”. The bus in front of us just left a young girl off in the middle of the road blocking our van and then just pulled off, all of this on the main road through a fairly large city. Nevertheless, I have seen very few accident scenes during he entire trip. The scenery during the trip down the Li was breathtaking, with hills rising out of the river, and one gorgeous gorge after another. Small craft would approach the boat we were on. The first time this happened I felt I was on the USS Cole, until I realized one person held onto the boat and the other person was trying to sell us something. I gave our tour guide Macy the book by John Kenneth Fairbanks to read so she could get some perspective on her own country. I’ll ask her about what she read later. A grey Porsche Carrerra just drove by. There were also some very expensive looking single homes in Guilin. Macy is our tour guide and she is about 26 years old. She said her parents had arranged a marriage for her. The boy came from a good family and had a good job. She did not marry him however because he was not handsome like me. She also is not a member of the Communist Party because she is too “independent”. We are now flying to Shanghai. The airport was a joke. There was a continuous uproar coming from the Chinese waiting for the plane. It was similar to the enormous amount of noise at the Chinese restaurant last night where my wife ordered chicken’s feet. Not realizing what she had ordered until it arrived, she proceeded to share my dinner.