"Baoding, a Chance to See the Old China" Baoding by gaolei

In March 1988 I went to China for the first time. My project was to startup a production line I designed to make rubber hose. The line was installed in a small factory in Baoding.

Two of us flew into Beijing not knowing what to expect, since few westerners had been to China and none that I knew. On the way into China from Tokyo, we could not see any city lights, only fires burning in the fields. Outside the airport there were few cars, few people and a large blue truck. The streets to the Beijing hotel were deserted and we didn't know what to make of it.

We spent the night in the Old Beijing Hotel next to Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden city. At 8 AM a driver and a helper from the factory arrived at the hotel and took us to Baoding.

After wandering through the bicycle infested roads of Beijing, we ht the highway south to Baoding. The highway was a 2 lane road with an additional lane on each side for bicycles, tractors, pedestrians, push-carts, and other forms of transport. At the edge of the road were lines of trees with their lower meter painted white, probably an insecticide.

Our driver used the entire 4 lanes. He was constantly passing cars and trucks on the right and left side. During one pass, he found himself in the left lane with no way to pass the truck, and with more trucks approaching in the left lane. It looked like the end, but he just mover into the far left lane with the bicycles going in the opposite direction. The trucks passed and he crossed the road back into the southbound lane on the right. At this point, the engineer with me said, I can't watch anymore, and closed his eyes.

The Cultural Revolution left cities like Baoding looking like they were still in the 1930's. Baoding had no real hotels, just a few simple guest houses. We stayed in one. There was one phone in the office. We had to place an order for a call home, and the office girls would call an operator, while we waited for the connection to be made. This took from 2 hours to 2 days to accomplish.

The streets in Baoding had no lights, and the cars drove without lights. Every minute or so, the driver would turn on his lights for a few seconds, We were surprised to see we were surrounded by bicycles. I don't know how we avoided hitting people.

Over the weekends we had a chance to get small glimpses of Baoding. We went to a college dance at the Power University one Saturday, the Zoo and to a lotus pond park with famous calligraphy on display some of the calligraphy tablets were missing, destroyed by the Red Guards a few years before. In a Buddhist temple, that was being restored, the Red Guard ahad taken a knife to the wall paintings.