Just back from China also. First two days in Shanghai, then we flew to JJN and spent two days in Qiuanzhou, four in Xiamen, and a week in Beijung.

We loved Xiamen. Shanghai is an exercise in contrasts; lots of very new things, some of which go from wondeful to tacky white elephants, including the new airport (quite long immigration lines) and the maglev thing. Together with the dirt poor old city.

We too were picked up at the airport so no chance to ride the thing.

Xiamen on the other hand was clean and pleasant about everywhere. True that most roads and many buildings have been rebuilt in recent years, but by and large in a reasonable way. Perhaps because, although also one of these special economic zones, it's a smaller city, and because investment came from a different type of source (overseas Chinese originally from Fujian rather than large corporations). And of course, Gulangyu is paradise. There still must be some air pollution, but at least you mostly don't see it.

Now if they would clean the water and make it drinkable, and get traffic to be more organized, they would more or less be done.

Qianzhou was interesting. Undergoing the same process as Xiamen but with a five/ten years dealy. Huge construction zone. By the way one wonder, OK granite is cheap to them, but can't they find a better use for it than as a local construction material?

Lots of good stuff to visit, from old Muslim stuff to bridges, the two pagodas and the big Taoist statue. This is a city that was bigger a thousand years ago than it is today. Place where Marco Polo was supposed to have sailed back bringing a Mongol princess to marry some prince in the Arabian peninsula.

As to Beijing, it's huge and crowded, but the killer is how bad the air pollution is. We lived in places such as Sao Paulo which is already *bad.* But we had never seen anything like Beijing. You can even see a white haze between yourself and the building across the street. I wonder how they can be planning to have olympics in that kind of an environment. And I'll avoid comments on plumbing design and bathroom smells.

As to visiting the main attractions, they are so crowded in summer time that's it a pointless exercise. We'll have to be back at a better time of the year.