My Chinese Is Worse

There are few experiences one faces which are life altering in positive or negative ways. My trip to China has changed me forever. Never have I met and seen such a wonderful glorious people who are in tune with self. My trip to Shanghai exposed me to a city and country our nation can well learn from right now. To see and hear the sneering, bickering, ranting, raving and anger from another continent sickened and disgusted me. For all of the opportunities America offers, we have become a nation of enablers and glad handlers.

I was taken out to dinner by two young gentleman and afterward we retired to my hotel room for more than two hours of discussion. Everything was on the table, politics, religion, beliefs and how we felt about each other. These two men did not see me as a black or African-American, they saw me as a human being and I saw them the same. The frank discussion we had could not have taken place in previous years, in fact, all of us would have been hauled off to jail, with me being thrown out of the country.

But this is a testament to the fact of how far China has come as a nation and a people. Yes, the nation is not entirely free and yes it still is a communist country, but the people have not let that deter them from living their lives. The people I met this week are far from the meek, weak or desperate for freedom souls our media portrays and others perpetuate for political gain. What these two gentlemen made me understand was that most Chinese don't want the kind of freedom we have in America. Self control is built into their DNA and having the kind of freedom we have here would scare them to death. That does not mean however that they want their government pushing them around. What they want from their government is to let them live their lives in peace, prosperity and harmony.

I saw no armed guards with tanks, hoses or dogs. I saw no protesters or dissents marching in the streets wanting anarchy. What I saw was a prosperous people living out their dreams, just like us. They care about friends and family, just like us and they are intrigued with us as much as we are intrigued with them. Police and security? Yes, they were around, but from what I saw, we're much more armed and hunkered down as a society as they are.

We Americans need to grow up. The China I saw now isn't the militant one of decades ago. The government has figured out a way to let the average Chinese citizen live their lives and will continue to let them do so. The China we need to worry about is the economic giant that has awaken, not the militaristic one portrayed by the media in America.

The China of today has come to terms with it's past and moved on. This version of China wants to become the economic power of the 21st century, like America became in the 20th century.

China, like America had an economic downturn around the same time and initiated a stimulus package to shore up it's economy. The stimulus worked and now the nation is implementing steps to control inflation through more conservative monetary policies. Economic for the nation last year was +5% GDP, which disappointed them. America also had a stimulus program, but bickering and back fighting has all but rendered the positive effects of our stimulus program moot.

The people of China backed the stimulus and did everything to make it work while we're still stuck on stupid. Maybe it's time we start listening to that communist, socialist nation.

And So It Begins...

I have posted this picture before, but had to do so again. Here I am in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee in the summer of 1969. Me, always the explorer, looking for adventure, the next new thing.

Tomorrow, I embark on a new journey, one that if someone told me last year I would be taking I would have looked at them like they were nuts. But here I am getting ready to head to Shanghai, China on the first of many more trips to the far east and beyond.

History has always been my first love, with Marco Polo being one of my favorite people to read about. His trip to China, Cathay as it was called then, changed the world at that time forever. One day I plan to go to Venice, a city, like Paris, that has always captured my soul.

But tomorrow it will be Shanghai, and with it a little kid from 43 Line Street in Charleston, SC will embark on a journey few or any in his former neighborhood has ever taken. I carry people like Mrs. Jackson. Aunt Bee, Mr. Charlie Moore, the Maxwells, Mrs. Duke, Ms. Eloise, the Venning family, Dr. Olasov. Dr. Fish, Ms. Cannon and Ms. Campbell and most of all, my parents. I carry them all with me tomorrow because this journey is really about them, not me. I am but a messenger, they are the message that even though they did not make it, someone from Line Street did.

Too much can't be made about this trip tomorrow because a culmination, of work, luck, perseverance, determination and fate made this so. I have no say in this, God, Allah....whoever is up there guiding me has the say. Many people have made the trip to China, so many haven't. The country is still a mystery and for most in this nation it always will be.

Tomorrow is the end, but yet the beginning of a new period in my life. What that is I have no earthly idea, but I now understand the preparation a power, much higher than myself put me through. This is the moment of truth for a young boy who always wanted to know what was out....there.

Still A Mystery

In late February 1972 Richard Nixon made history as the first POTUS to visit the Peoples Republic of China(PRC). Within three years of the visit he would leave office in disgrace, but his momuentmental trip was one that has left a lasting legacy on both nations. Before his historic trip, both the US and China exhibited frosty relations, the result of more that a quarter century of distrust between the two nations. However, both had a common enemy, the USSR, whom both distrusted equally, so this was a "shotgun" marriage from the start. But both nations saw the need to thaw relations because for political and economic purposes.

On this trip Nixon visited Beijing, Hangzhou, The Great Wall and Shanghai. In meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Chou Enlai, political and economic accords were signed. While the "One China" policy, stipulating the reaffirmation of PRC as the de facto nation for it's citizens, including Taiwan, it's the economic accords that has left an everlasting impact on both nations.

The China today is much different than the one Nixon visited forty years ago. The country is seen as a economic and political power, one which our nation must do business with to survive. Beijing, while still the seat of Chinese political will has been usurped by Shanghai which is the economic driver for the nation.

The China I'm visiting next week is a forward thinking nation, much like America was at the beginning of the 20th century. Myself and other Americans are still intrigued by this nation, it culture and people. While there are stresses in the relationship, as the latest trip by President Obama attested to, we are both in the "getting to know" one another stage. Nixon's '72 trip was that catalyst for change.

On my first trip in the new decade I'm headed to a nation I know little about. Time to begin my education.

Music producer charged with murder | ajc.com

Music producer charged with murder  | ajc.com

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