1. Air quality is terrible in most places. Our guide kept assuring us that it was just fog and haze. Meanwhile I had to put on my surgical mask that has a charcoal filter so I could breathe. My throat actually burned before I put on the mask. There are few if any air pollution laws. It's especially bad when you sit in traffic surrounded by diesel trucks. Smoke pouring from stacks was dark gray to black. Between the cigarette smoking and the air pollution they probably have a high incidence of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
2. Water quality is iffy. In Beijing we were told that by 2008 the water will be okay for Americans to drink. Right now it works for the Chinese whose bodies can handle (supposedly) whatever is in the water. We drank bottled water or beer to stay healthy.
3. The taller Chinese live in the south of China. That's where Yao Ming comes from. He's a hero to the Chinese people. His picture is everywhere on billboards. Speaking of billboards, they have some of the biggest I've ever seen. Some stretch for nearly a block.
4. Our guide in Beijing, Ann, said that the Cultural Revolution was a bad thing and that the government was wrong to do what it did in Tianeman Square. She was a teacher at the time. One of her students was shot while standing on the sidelines watching the slaughter. She was a government guide so what she told us must be the government line.
4. The Chinese apparently like very hard beds. The first hotel, which was very modern and nice, had beds that felt like plywood with a thin layer of cottom over them. Not very comfortable but we were so tired it really didn't matter.
5. Our Beijing hotel, King Wing, was listed on the internet as a five-star hotel, which it seemed to be with one exception. The bar was a disappointment. My friend Susan and I said we should set up a consulting business to teach the Chinese how to set up a bar so they will make more money during the Olympics. After a couple days of beer, I decided to order a real drink at the King Wing. The menu listed all the liquors and a bunch of mixes. I asked for Bacardi rum and diet coke with no ice. The young woman waiting on me said, "moment please" and disappeared. She came out of the back room with a young man. They looked at the menu, conferred for a minute and then both disappeared. About ten minutes later my drink arrived with ice and regular coke, but it did have rum. Another couple ordered margaritas, which were on the menu. They came in martini glasses. After that night we went back to beer. The bars were better in the hotels in Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai, but the slow service in all of them certainly cut into their revenue from alcohol.
6. Chinese wine and beer were the only alcohol served on the China Air flights we were on. The vineyard is Great Wall, and it's a consortium of a Chinese company and a French vintner. Let's hope it gets better over time. I could have removed nail polish with the stuff I tasted.
More musings later....
These puffy white balls are silkworm cocoons. Inside are a male and female silkworm who have been spinning this cocoon for about 10 days. Now we come to the mind-boggling part. Each cocoon contains about 3,000 feet of silk thread. In the silk factory we visited in Suzhou (southern China) workers boil the cocoons to loosen a single thread. They gather together single threads from 8 cocoons and spin them together to make an 8-strand silk thread. You need 3,000 cocoons to make a pound of silk. Silkworms are considered domesticated because they can no longer fly. Only a few silkworms are allowed to grow to be moths so that reproduction can occur and the cycle can start all over again. More pictures to follow. 
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