I have had the good fortune to travel all over the world—for both business and pleasure, not that those are mutually exclusive. This blog is about my unique experiences around the globe. It is not intended as a paean to the wonders of the locales themselves, as there already exist volumes that more than do justice to the magnificence of virtually every corner of this earth. Here, I simply recount small, personal moments of surprise, embarrassment, stupidity, excitement, fear, heroics, and other stuff like that.
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Beijing, China…May 1998. Notwithstanding the beauty of Paris, the bustle of Tokyo, the nobility of London, or the sheer presence of New York, Beijing is perhaps my favorite city in the world. No other city has ever transported me, both literally and figuratively, to the heights of mental and sensory acuity that I experienced there.
To wander for hours through the centuries old Forbidden City and imagine what it was like to be the last Emperor or for that matter the first, who resided there some 500 years earlier, throngs of followers stretched out in homage before him, concubines and eunuchs attending to his every whim; it is a truly magical place.
Located in the center of Beijing, just around the corner from our hotel, I would jog each morning past the entrance to this city within a city, and consider life outside its walls for the common people who were forbidden to enter the Emperor’s world of secrecy and mystery. Then I look up at the enormous framed portrait of Chairman Mao overhanging the main gate, as workers clad in drab tunic style Mao suits sweep the pre-dawn streets—vivid reminders of China’s communist mindset, still fresh and dominating despite two decades of the country being open to westerners like me.
I continue my jog through Tiananmen Square and am immediately transported to that iconic moment, just nine years earlier, when a lone student stood before a column of 50-ton Chinese military tanks in a protest that would have been inconceivable to generations past, resulted in a massacre of student protestors, and moved China another painful step toward its future.
Later in the day, Sande and I will ride our bikes to the Temple of Confucious before stopping for lunch at McDonald’s, at which point a mild rumble is felt on the ground below our feet, as Confucious, Mao Tse-Tung and every Emperor in China’s thousands-years history undoubtedly turns over in his grave. »Read More