IntroductionGreat Pandas in high-tech birthing centers, people selling lettuce from
wooden wheelbarrows, 100-story buildings that look like glass sculptures:
China as we glimpsed it in 2007 was a land of contrasts.
This was my second trip to China in less than a year. Some of the roads which
were impassable in 2006 were no longer under construction this trip. But China remains a mix of old and new.
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Five star hotels sit one block from a
neighborhood where people share an outdoor faucet to wash in the morning.
One red light holds back hundreds of bicyclers while another green light eases a traffic jam of modern automobiles.
Tall cranes lift material for very tall office buildings, while farmers work with water buffalo.
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China is huge by any standard: 1.3 billion people (as of January '05), 98 million square kilometers,
the world's tallest building, the third longest river, the greatest wall,
5,400 islands, seven mountains over 21,000 feet, the most bicycles, etc.
On this trip beginning in Shanghai, continuing to Haungshan (the entry city for the Yellow Mountains),
continuing to Chengdu (home of the Giant Panda) and ending in Guilin and Yangshou (key cities on the Li River)
we covered more than 2,500 miles by the time we returned to Shanghai.
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