Robert Hargrove

Letter about my China trip to my nephew Will Hargrove who is serving as a Midshipman on board ship at the Maine Maritime Academy and is currently on a large vessel, somewhere off the Canary Islands.

Hello Will, great to hear from you. I very much enjoy your ship board blogs and thus let me return the favor. I am in China now. Last week there was a huge earthquake in China. The Chinese President, Hu Jintao, unlike Bush went to the earthquake area right away and sat on the bare ground in his suit and talked to the people like he was having a real dialogue.

 You could see his compassion in the way he put his arms around people and listened. Then he got up and started personally directing the relief effort—“searching for survivors" being the number one priority. There was a telethon the next day to pull the Chinese people together and raise money. We watched it on TV and it was nothing short of a spectacular Chinese Opera, except of course a very serious tragedy.

The Chinese really know how to bring all the notables in the country together to speak in a passionate way about something that matters. The short speeches were interlaced with inspiring background music and documentary scenes that elicited heart-throbbing emotion and drama. Children who were earthquake survivors, but who lost parents, spoke with heart wrenching vulnerability and three star generals stood with their arms around them in tears. Present count 60,000 dead.

I also visited the city of Jiataix, an old city that looked like a Venice in China with canals surrounded by classical buildings, the roofs with eaves sloping upwards. We stopped along the way and had a country lunch of 14 dishes for 6 people—spicy fish Szechuan style, lobster, frogs legs, crab, vegetables, and of course watermelon. Very good. They served a heavy local wine, and glasses were raised every few minutes. Gambai, bottoms up!

I was so inspired by the trip that the next day I went to Souchow in search of more back roads. Souchow is where some Taipings (nobles) lived during the Ching Dynasty (last one) and who built some truly beautiful gardens with tea houses, ponds, and rock sculptures that almost instantly create a serene state of mind. China's Middle Kingdom, though hotly political, was a place where worldly adventure was less important than inner tranquility.

The train trip there was great, but the trip back, starting at the rail station, was a horrible nightmare. I was chased by a one-arm taxi driver, one legged beggars, shouting tour guides all looking to eke out a fast RMB (Chinese dollars). They were so desperate and aggressive that it was scary. I escaped the station like I was running away from swarming bees and took a taxi back to Shanghai.

China is a strange brew of wealth rising quickly, like the huge skyscrapers in the city, and earth bound poverty like I saw in Souchow, evidenced not only by the street people, but by the presence of rubble and debris in front of many house lots and roadsides.

I am staying in a suburb, maybe 30 minutes from the Shanghai downtown area, where I am experiencing four star luxury for about $80. I noticed how the people here in the outskirts of the city are so friendly, actually going out of there way to stop me on the street, smile and say hello.

In contrast to the warmth and outgoing nature of the people in the outskirts of Shanghai, people in the upscale areas of the main part of the city, such as Nanjing Road are much more face down and self absorbed. There are many big BMWs and VW Passats on the streets. The Chinese, who are highly patriotic, still prefer German to Japanese cars due to lingering resentment caused by the brutal Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1939.

One of the tough parts of the trip is that I was not able to find a cup of hot latte coffee for breakfast to relieve my jet lag. Yes, in the Nanking Road area there are lots of Starbucks, but beyond it, people drink green tea for the most part. I searched in a taxi one morning for 45 minutes for a Barista and no luck. Addiction be gone.

I settled for some street food in a home made noodle shop, where some Moslem Chinese knead dough, then stretch it until it miraculously differentiates itself into perfectly shaped round noodles that, because they are fresh, take only minutes to cook. They add about 27 different meat and vegetable toppings. An absolutely delicious meal. Price $2.

This is what must have got Marco Polo to bring spaghetti back to Italy. More on China to come.

Keep up your writing. You have a talent for it. You never know what skills you will need in the future