China Memories

Travel is exhilarating. Get packed into a long silver tube for a bit and emerge in a place teeming with humanity speaking in strange accents - and that's just the first leg of the trip to Detroit Metro Airport. The Great Circle hop brings the real excitement: exotic Asia.

We led forty intrepid (mostly) Minnesotans to Beijing one late November. The weather was somewhat cold and foggy, but we had planned for it (Bud Grant was our teacher) and everyone had a wonderful time.

The ancient monuments and tourist sites vied closely with the shopping as the group's second-favorite pastimes. The odds-on winner for highlight of the trip was shopping for Beanie Babies (real or otherwise). As we would hit an area of kiosks, the shopkeepers would pull out the bags of little stuffed things for the hordes from the (very far) east to conquer. And we did.

The Forbidden City and the Great Wall were exciting, of course. For us, the fascinating discovery was the change in the tourist entrance to the Wall at BaDaLing. It was entirely different than it looked on our visits over the last 13 years; nothing was recognizable, even from last year, but it still looked very, very old.

We ate wonderful food, often with our guide at neighborhood (not tourist) restaurants. The gastronomic pinnacle was the Hot-Pot feast at a Muslim restaurant on TienAnMen Square. I think we will skip the sheep lung on our next visit, though.

We love to travel to Asia: the culture, the people, the food, the sites and the shopping. We have more journeys in the future to this different part of the world. Think about coming along with us ... we'd love to have you join us.
   Barbara & Gary Hanovich