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EUROPE, RUSSIA, AND CHINA 3 of 5

MONDAY, JULY 27. Wake and piss about 9:45, then George wakes me at 2:30 to dress for breakfast at 3, lots of patches of fog over rolling countryside with an almost continuous suburb of villages. Breakfast is cheese and bread and butter and rice gruel and tea and lemon wafers, not the greatest. Talk more bored than ever, radio blaring in hallway, Litvai's litter hallway with their suitcases, oblivious to the fact that no one ELSE puts them out. Everyone seems to be at their limits of tolerance of "togetherness." Write this at 4:10 and will be glad to change to "real" time in Irkutsk. MANY more paved roads around Irkutsk, while trains are shorter, 40 cars. LOTS of trucks and cars waiting at crossings. Even foggier at 4:30/9:30. Take pictures of stewardesses, chat, and pull into first Irkutsk station at 5:35. Fog gone, clear blue sky. Into RIGHT station at 6:02, change to 11:02 at last. Tania as guide. To Lake Baikal and HYDROFOIL back to Irkutsk! Bus leaves 11:07. 2.5 million new flats in Russia every year. Fairly featureless up-and-down road surrounded by pines and birches and views of Angara River. Stop for Buryat Shaman/ Angara view at 12-12:15. Road VERY like one in sunny Maine. Arrive at GREAT positioned "under construction" Intourist Hotel at 12:20, wander periphery enjoying flowers and views of lake, and at 1 THEY say lunch at 1:20. I climb hill and photograph. Watch butterfly-net woman reject most of her (dead?) captives. Lunch 1:20-2, bony salt fish, steak and potatoes and peas, get room 208, tour at 4. Wash face and hands and teeth till 2:25 and climb down to Lake Baikal itself. Lovely stones that I select 4 dry and 1 for hypnotism when it's wet. On way back, see wasp straddling a worm, then digging a hoe, then putting worm in and burying it! Back to hotel at 4, Millers lost their suitcase, and Zula take us down to Museum from 4:10 to 4:20. We stand outside till 4:25, then go quickly through the depth and ice and fish and fowl of the Limnologic Institute till 4:48. So far, though, the preparations are more than the VIEW. Try to get back in and it's locked. We sit and wait for the bus to the village. People talk of trips and foods and previous experiences and I get bored, bored, bored! Then to Village, to Pechanaya from Listvianka, walk up back street, feeling very SHY. Take one tiny picture of window frames. Back to bus at 5:45 and sit in BUMPY back seat, and feel SORRY for myself. Hear that dinner is at 7:30, and I feel EXHAUSTED, so I strip down to shorts and crawl into BED, not sleeping but feeling MUCH better, and up at 7:20 and down to eat with Blums. Who are NOT having champagne again. Siberian fish dumplings for dinner, tasty coating but bony, and salads and apple juice. Ask Paul how the climb was and he says he's GOING. Start up at 8:30 for "one and one-half hour climb" and go up path with steps and strain, but get to top at 8:50, before chatty Paul and Chris arrive with Werner, who'd started first and finished last. LOVELY view, FLOODS of moths around trees, white in sunlight, dark against blue sky. Very pretty place. Take pictures, chat, watch, stroll to next, higher, peak with trees obscuring view, and then down about 9:50, chatting, and then say, "I think I'll hang back a bit," to Cliff and Rene and have a bit of bliss: flowers, quiet, flies, first star, a cyclist who shuts off his motor to coast past me, tranquility. To disco to see Nadya boogeying with Bob. At 10:25:PM the grounds lights come on at Baikal. Two VERY bright lights shine across Baikal from northwest peaks. Village below, point across Angara, and village across BAIKAL black in night along with Venus, first star. LOVELY walk down hill. Up at 10:30 to GRAND shower and cleaning, and to bed at 11:30. George back at 12 and we both sleep instantly.

TUESDAY, JULY 28. Wake at 6:30 to memory of GREAT dreams: "Mon Sieur Universale, when I tell you to move, I want you to MOVE." These were the words of Superman in my incredible dream that I transcribe as quickly as I can at 7:05AM July 28. It probably started last night, walking on "the mountain," when I heard a rustle in the bush and went out to it in love, saying "I'm curious about you and you're curious about me. Here is love; with it, I can trust you and you can trust me and we can show ourselves to each other and not be afraid of ill-will or ignorance --- or any other "small i" opposed to Love." Nothing happened at THAT moment, but before it or after it (does it matter?) I felt that I would be perfectly willing to be "used" by whatever energy would want to earthe peace and good-will and wisdom and love here and now. I went on to feel last night "a bit of bliss," recalling other times (on "the mountain" of Macchu Picchu in the morning, possible "on mountain" at Hemlock Hall, other times in travel or even in New York at Columbia or on Hicks Street). And this morning's sleep ended with this dream: I walked in a large city, and entered a place of religion in which I was accepted as a teacher, through a mistake, in a kind of Elizabeth Clare Prophet charismatic institution. I left when I found it didn't have any grounding to it. On the street outside I encountered a touring bus at an intersection, rather like yesterday, when I found a tour bus driving toward me while the driver was making a U-turn on the road I was walking on. Then I was in a large quadrangle, like Columbia's, if all the stairs and walks between Butler and Low Libraries had been made into a grassy plaza for a Kumba Mela or Diwali Mela. Crowds of people gathered, for the most part wanting good, but some groups, dressed like Moonies, began to get out of hand, singing and whirling, a bit too fast, bumping into other groups and beginning to affect the quiet and directions of the others on the plaza. Then they were surrounded by a mist that resolved itself into two or three whirling smoke rings, like those hoops that spin on top of each other with apparent magic. This isolated them effectively, which everyone thought was nice (didn't recall til NOW those hoops isolating the three villains in "Superman II"), but then there was a gentle, high-pitched whooshing sound and, over the astounded heads of all the onlookers, Superman flew over the crowds, trailing smoke like a jet-trail, the obvious generator of the smoke that had isolated the malignant growth in the group. I felt a surge of gladness and fulfillment: hadn't he said in one of his pictures (the future third, or more; the second I'd seen the day before the trip, or even the first?) that, if we really needed and wanted him, he'd appear? I remember feeling, in the movie or in the dream-movie, that this was too outrageously good to be true, yet admired the audacity of the movie makers to play so heavily and BENEFICENTLY on the archetypal yearnings of all viewers for a Savior, a Liberator, a Strong Father who would conquer evil, protect the good and weak and do "what should be done" without paperwork, fear of reprisal, politics, red tape, bureaucracy, or ineffectuality. I felt, in the dream, my heart swell and my eyes fill, a rush of happiness and joy fulfilled: he HAD come, there WAS a Super Man who could save us from our dark sides, protect our weak good from our strong evil. And again he swooped over the crowd, as I hoped to be SOMEWHERE near where he landed, and in fact the blue-clad figure DID land near me, feet apart in a determined stance, and raised an aluminum self-powered megaphone to his mouth and said the exact words I had to transcribe at the start so as not to forget: "Monsieur (and as I wondered about the FRENCHNESS of it, I felt a goodness in that the men would RECOGNIZE Monsieur as MALE, including THEM, while women would hear Mon Soeur, and know he was talking to WOMEN) Universale (and I knew from the WAY he said it there was an e on the end of it --- plural? Italian? other significance? Numerological or linguistic?), when I tell You (the capitalizing here is strictly MY idea) to move, I want You to MOVE." And I thought of Dennis's record of the pianist saying suggestively "And when I tell you to boogie, I want you to --- shake that thang!) I wake, thrilled, wanting to write it INSTANTLY before I forget. But in the minutes before actually getting up, I thought that, as Actualism said, with LOVE there is no possibility of inversion of Wisdom or Will. Only WITH love --- total love --- could one BE a Savior, Messiah, Maitreya, Superman. Non-judging, not WARRANTED, just endless love for ALL, as I remember "feeling with" (and what need be added to THAT to perfèct love?) the "rock souls that I took from Baikal yesterday (add Alta as a bit of bliss), separating them in fact from their brothers for 22 million years, yet moving them with love to another configuration (next to rocks from Newfoundland, trees from Argentina, Taj Mahal from India, art from Japan, colorful bits from the U.S. West and Canada), reminding me and them at once that change and death must come to ALL, separation of components forming subunits so that the units of the WHOLE can be at last re-realized. Then I thought that IN FACT Super Man can be produced by actualizing love in men, and that love COULD make one fly, since gravity IN FACT was love --- the attraction between two objects that increased with increased intimacy and diminished with distance, and was totally oblivious to the OBJECT, but "worked" on EVERYTHING --- burned with the heat of nearness and solidified, frozen, with the ice of removal. GOD IS LOVE IS GRAVITY IS ENERGY IS THOUGHT. So I got up and dressed and snotted my nose and went out to the hall to write, also showing love to George, who seemed to wake and rub himself rhythmically against the bed. Give him time and space to do what he wants (yet if HE wanted intimate NEARNESS, I imposed cold distance). Remembered ANOTHER dream from this morning: Dennis and I going (in a dream) to an orgy place where WE ended in lovely sex, and I tried to drag him to the place (in reality in the dream), but he twisted out of it, saying HE UNDERSTOOD what I wanted, but he didn't want that. There were other luscious fragments, forgotten now, but I recall the dream I wanted to transcribe from the morning BEFORE (27th AM): I'm on a bus tour of NYC and the guide points out the triplex of Warren Spencer, or some name like that, a former Supreme Court Judge or like governmental high person who now had the largest and most elegant apartment in NYC, the whole top three floors of an elegant building rather like the bank on 73rd and Broadway. Seamlessly, I knew Rolf was staying there while the owner was on vacation. When I went to visit, the caretakers in the lobby were stiff and chilly when they thought I didn't know anyone, but they condescended to let me use the private phone to the triplex, since I knew the right number, and when they heard the dweller (Rolf) say, "Sure, Bob, come right up," they thawed and fawned and ushered me up. When I got INSIDE, however, it was damp and old and ill-designed, so that I told Rolf he should tell his friend to invest some money in interior decorating: any expenditures would increase the worth of the property tenfold. After I woke from THAT dream I mused on the significance: Rolf's body is hollow desire for me? Rolf's money didn't buy him happiness? Rolf should move to a new apartment in my building? Rolf and I should become closer or more distant? Most riches are hollow --- like rich tourists on this trip? so at last, now at 8AM, I got it all down, sitting in the newly-mopped second floor lobby being greeted by Midge and Mr. Miller and Paddy from the tour, written out of dreams, pleased to see the lake is NOT misty so we CAN use the hydrofoil, ready to pack before breakfast at 8:30. Back to room at 8 to pack, let George leave, and catalog the faults of the hotel: the sad details of Russian poor construction: shower handle cracked from contact with tub, badly scratched, a panel loose and oversized from side of tub, veneer piece moving at bottom, allowing trough to be filled with crud; no shower curtain; "elegant" hot rack for towels pulling out from the wall on loose screws on one side, leading to badly cracked plaster on another side; door ill-fitted, not closing, and badly sanded and painted from attempts to FIT it; wall tiles cracked and grommeting unpleasantly black; toilet paper like sandpaper; floor tiles stained, cracked, dirty, paint-spattered, and an ugly dark yellow to start with; ventilator not working, no windows; ceiling paint falling from no waterproofing ABOVE; pink plastic wastebasket the ultimate in tack. Hot water that didn't come on till 8; "220V" sign water-smeared on wall; one loose (stealable) sink stopper fits tub, no sink; boards missing in hall closets, doors don't close properly; doors to hall make TERRIBLE noise (squeaks, ill-fitting things) opening and closing; wall and door frames chipped down to concrete base; gray rug BADLY stained from water and other liquids, fairly dirty; curtains and drapes coming off hooks, not wide enough, not sun-opaque, not sliding easily; paint smears on windows, no doorstops ANYWHERE so knobs bang against walls, doors, each other; balcony cruddy, chipped, wood railing unvarnished, will crumble; phone doesn't work so woman has to come around and knock on doors --- in Russian; knob falling off radio which doesn't work; sheets torn and patched and holey and stained; THIS is two-year-old (STILL unfinished) first-class hotel in a prime resort area! No clocks on walls work, half of planters filled with garden grass, no one seems to know QUITE how to handle guests; pane of glass in hall missing (shortcut); front columns on porch roped off. WHEW! To breakfast at 8:25 and join Olga for tongue, tea, bread and butter and sugary honey, and a square of omelet till 9:05. Brush teeth and finish packing and get bag out at 9:15 and to bus at 9:25, sitting in front again. Catch up on notes and arrive at hydrofoil slip at 9:50. Three buses of tourists waiting as hydrofoil chugs in at 9:55. It's the PAKETA. Board at 10, first, and get all window seats, to disgust of following groups. Windows steamy anyway, and I'll probably be outside. Room for 60, some must stand. Revs up and shakes all over. BACKS out effortlessly at 10:03, at 10:10 can't go OUT --- hotel from boat WINDOW. Outside is FREEZING cold and damp and windy, so in INSTANTLY. Hug south bank of river, featureless. Buck a bit in wake of passing hydrofoil, and cut across to Irkutsk past smooth river and quiet forests. Not the most fun-filled trip. Land at 11:05. Onto bus for hotel at 11:10. Nadya announced lunch at 12, tour at 1, museum at 2:30, dinner at 7:30, second floor restaurant. Get to hotel 11:00, NO tour; I buy mint stamps for about 8 rubles, the Blums say they have stamps and cards to sell, Chris annoys me by handing BOTH cards with room number to George! He searches for list and finds I'm in 92?, so it's a good thing that George is AT elevator on 9 when I get off! In to room, photo view for last shot, change film, hide stamps, and dash down to 1 at 1:05. No one. UP to 2, into restaurant, find we're on 1. In at 1:15 for fish and cold cuts, REAL borscht, beef stroganoff and rice and cold peas, with some champagne from the Blums, and currant ice cream for dessert and cooling coffee. Out at 12:50 for bus 152 for tour. The bus RODE from Baikal TO the hydrofoil station in Irkutsk BEFORE us. Leave 1:08. 1:15 into Ostroy site for changing of honor guard --- does EVERY country insist on asinine goosestepping? Jot name of museum: Otel Istoriya, open to 6, five minutes from the hotel. Jot name of touring company: Gastroli, non-pictured drama called "Doctor, I shoot first." Decide not to see it. BUMPY streets and COVERLESS manholes! Church of the Sign, Mary icon, grave of Princess Troubetskaya of Decembrists. All NAMES given by tour guide inside. Feeling depressed again. All being redone and closed for now. Why is it that guides and drivers all seem to NEGOTIATE the route? Irkutsk capital of EASTERN Siberia, Vladivostok (and Kharbarovsk) of FAR East Siberia, Novosibirsk of WESTERN Siberia. "The Red Army held out 9 days in the White House against the White Army in the Red House" and obelisk. Awful. Stop for "Wood-carved house" pictures at 2:30. Shoppers leave for Torgovey Komplex at 2:40. Arrange to pick them up at 4. Everyone leaves Minerals Museum tour but me, and Tania and I have nice chat about her intelligence, my indexing and her ten years of English and two of Intourist work to museum at 3:10. Woman guide is fast-talking and charming and for forty minutes there's a WHIZ of chrysophrase and agate and magnetite and hematite and sulfides and elements of pyrites and quartz and silicates and lapis and gold and silver and platinum and chalcedony and diffusion and inclusions and graduate gifts and the open book of mineralogy and valence and mutual compliments and fast translations by Tania. I'm March, my stone is aquamarine, that's why I like to travel and learn new things; she's May, Tania's emerald; artificial stones, mica, Baikal, prehistoric nephrite, and a gift piece of lapis for my "strength in going against group." Out at 3:45, head awhirl, and back in rain to pick up crew in ANOTHER bus at 4. NO performance this evening! We pass Folklore Museum at 4, so I get off in rain, pay 30k, and pass stone flints, a yurt, an eskimo conical tent, history of railroad and penal system and 1879 fire and Irkutsk and Alaska, and up to second floor for factories and hydroplants and farms and gold dredges and politics and students and education and maps and documents. Out at 5, rain stopped, and walk chilly ten minutes to hotel. Buy 7 ruble stamps and 3 rubles of cards and stamps (cards FREE essentially!) and cards and stamps (and wire for falling-off CHINA TOUR tag) from Blums, and shower and put ON 20 stamps by 7:30. Down to restaurant for champagne that I squirt ALL over me and Cliff's notebook, and FREE vodka and communal cinnamoned apple juice and BIG salmon caviar and ham salad and cabbage and awful chicken and peas and potatoes and ice cream and coffee. Up at 9 to write and mail 20 cards, bed at 10:30. George in at 12; I'd packed and finished before.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 29. Wake at 6:15, put on shorts, and get out of bed to check bags in hall JUST when phone rings. Bags out 6:35, we're out 6:45, I having JUST time for this. FOGGY out and I take three C-tablets for sorish throat and dribbly nose. STILL feels like I have CRABS, too! Down stairs to COLD lobby and told it's 7:45 and where's my breakfast? George says he GAVE it to me, so I conclude that the bag on the desk is MINE. Upstairs and find it THERE, so I read some and write some and eat some and get down to group at 7:45. Only two duplicate coins and find two sets of stamps I don't have, so AGAIN I end with UNIQUE set of coins and NO rubles. On bus at 7:55 and get told train is twenty minutes late and someone's phoning for LATEST schedule. People actually ASK Bob to sing. Incredible! At 8 I do this and then read. Carriage 3, Cabin 5 announced for train. 8:10 at station. Off bus 8:15, shlep luggage of OTHERS in and have to RETRIEVE my own from a LEAVING cart. Pull on cabin 5 door and it's stuck. Pull harder and it's two sleeping MEN. "Chris, what if our cabins are occupied?" "After start, they'll be moved." News that the Blums are locked into their cabins. I suggest it's Nadya's plot. Train cold. I move into cabin 8 as train starts at 8:45. LOTS of private boats in harbor. Fog still dense. Lunch announced for 1, dinner for 7, Nauski at 9:30 OR 11:30, Ulan Bator at 9 or 10AM. Into Shyradgoska at 11, on time, according to wall schedule on Moscow time. Leave 11:20, ten minutes late. AWFUL pollution from large factory before Vydrino at 12. AWFUL Russian loud rapid "music." Bob recommends Bahia de los Angeles on Sea of Cortez halfway up Baja California. A decent road along railway. Lunch at 1, TOUGH smoked fish and cucumbers, tiny bit of chicken and GOOD potatoes and parsley/chives salad, apple juice, and Bob got caviar while he told me of his drive (with a girl friend) to Baja California, recommending ONLY Bahia de los Angeles and Cabo San Lucas and NOT the trip. Back at 2:15, putting sweater BACK on, still chilly, and about 2:30 we start inland, from Baikal. The river delta perfectly flat and the trees are somewhat scrubbier. Bright fluffy clouds in beautiful blue sky. Lots of shirtless workmen that we pass MUCH too fast. OTHER group was at dinner last night and I was chagrined to (no, actually, PLEASED to) find that OUR group has ALL the "better" men. But some TOURISTS last night were sure eye-catching! George, glasses still on, dozes off at 2:45. JUST as I think "How nice the radio's not on," she puts the damn RADIO on! Car JUST like Trans-Siberian, but no towels, soap, or toilet paper, but a SMELL in the johns. Into Ulan-Ude at 4:25, I dash out with ten of Werner's half-price rubles and get 10.2R in stamps. Dash back and get 9.15 MORE. $26 stamps for $10! Photo bear and Mischenka and train pulls out to smiling tirade (?) by stewardess at 4:45. Still passing Ulan-Ude 25 minutes later. Quickly, the trees grow more sparse, scattered ones dying (pollution? dryness?) and hills are covered only in grass. Cantilevered poles mark about 40-foot wells. Irrigation sprays appear. Fenced houses from the FRONT open their gardens and yards and sheds and barns and wells and crops to the train snooping along the BACK. Forest turns to grassland, too short for grazing, broken glass glinting in the eye not ONLY near the train but OUT in the fields. I drink wine with Paul 6:30-7, taking of Sahara and ??, then dinner 7-8:15, sweet yogurt-milk, beef stroganoff and potatoes and peas, coffee, chicken noodle soup. THEY buy TWO bottles of wine: party tonight --- getting rid of rubles. Chris says: declare 18 rolls of film, camera and flash, watch and binoculars for Mongolia, as WELL as money. Take sunset pictures and Chris says AGAIN that they're touchy at the border with CAMERAS, best to have no film in it, so I start taking pictures of the people in my car, then NEXT car, and the car itself and the john. Return to finish the reel, feeling GOOD, and we stop at first border at 9:40. Passport and visa from Russians at 9:45, then Russian EXIT money on GERMAN form from 9:45-9:55, pocketing my zlotys. One of the best chests so far walks past in a cream-yellow form-fitting shirt, first seen so far, with lovely red suspenders falling free from well-formed pectorals. I run to window and pant at his back. Jolt as engines change (?) and lights go out JUST as we have to fill FORMS. Out and wander, into station and pick up brochures, take mosquito-bite pills at 10:45. Ruble forms COLLECTED by short rufous sweetie at 10:55. Read brochures and get bored by 11:35. Read. Out of station at 12:35. Into Mongolian border town 12:45. TOTALLY lightless, featureless border zone. COMPLETELY black. Then in six or seven minutes the train moves slowly over INTENSE spotlights UNDER the car, throwing its shadows onto fairly far hills. Then a bit farther in the dark, to a brightly lit area where guards come on board. Some chat, some snore. Now 1AM and I'm getting tired of reading, smelling of mosquito-bite repellant, ignoring an incredibly antsy George. Move 1:10-1:25, still featureless, but there ARE stars, so it's clear. Stop at red light just outside some sort of station, and then at 1:35 move for two minutes into the station itself: Suche Bator, westerners sitting on benches outside, pairs of guards for each car. At 1:40 a saluting Mongol takes our passports and visas. Mongolian form: "Memebrs of your family accopanying you," and "memorable avticles," and "Srgnatures." from 1:45-1:55. Chris announces there's NO time change, breakfast in hotel after arrival at 9AM, and we have yet to get our passports back. Already 2:03. Rather intelligent, placid faces, these soldiers. Olga remarks they were SMILING, more than RUSSIANS were. Passports returned at 2:20, time set back to 1:20. Girls giggle outside at 1:25 and George suggests rape, insisting one must relax. Start moving at 1:43. So the whole process took 5 hours and 3 minutes! Wash face and bed feels VERY good at 2.

THURSDAY, JULY 30. Wake at stop at Dzun-Hara at 5:45. Dress and wash with found soap and take a dawn-rain picture and greet earlier-risen Bob and later-risen Cliff. George is up at 7:15 and I write this. There's culture shock in the hills; yurts with Russian-style wooden houses, yurts looking dwarfed in Russian-fenced, wood-framed enclosures, tracks next to purple communist TENT-shaped tents, yurts around a Swiss chalet. Mongol woman in a neat bun, violet dress and white Cuban-heeled shoes chasing a cow. Families gathered around their fires or communal open tents wave back at me. Clouds and herds come and go. I start day with VERY snotty nose and lots of sneezes and eye itches. Can't tell if it's a cold or an allergy. Green expanses upon wide, soft rolling hills, more like southern Ohio than anyone's fantasy of craggy sandy Mongolia. Yurts look very NEAT in green fields: white pillboxes with coolie hats fitting perfectly, all in clean white. Almost sad how much MAGIC is removed from some places (Siberia, Mongolia, Sahara for Paul, NOT Bali for me) by mere ENCOUNTER with them, so that the TERRITORY can now be flown over to get to the CULTURAL CITIES. Russian-style WOOD houses and WOOD fences very out of place where there are no TREES. Mongolians insist on (or are compelled to) strewing white rocks on hillsides to spell out "We're for peace" with the names of their towns, and coat fronts of station with Russian graphics on five-year plans, progress, and Mongols on horseback. Pack stuff up at 8:15, as "attendant" (he had to be COAXED to open second JOHN last night!) motions for me to wrap up my bedding. The hell I will! Almost TOTAL single-track line; Cliff suggests we CAN'T go any faster because the TRACK is in such bad shape it'd fall APART if we went faster! Spatters of rain at various times on the cruddy windows. I sulk about my involuntary porter duties: the WEAKEST have the HEAVIEST bags! I don't tour to help OTHERS; that's the job of the TOUR organizers that I'm PAYING. Into industrial Ulan Bator at 8:45. Huge open-air WAREHOUSES alternate with JUNKYARDS. Arrive JUST at 9AM in CROWD-filled station --- I'm too shy to take pictures of glorious upturned Mongol faces. It seems that fewer and fewer help with the other's bags, mainly the "good guys" like Paul and Bob. Others sit. Conductors talks Russian with cohorts. Poor Chris tries to enlist three local teenagers to help, but they either don't understand, want to watch, or want too much, since he has to find another means. 9:10 and sun gets warmer. Male English-speaking Mongol shows up at 9:15. Blums take seats for bags when there are 23 seats for PEOPLE. Bus off at 9:18. Lunch announced for 2, city tour at 3. To Hotel by 9:25, breakfast 9:40-10:10. 3.32 Tugriks to the dollars, so a tugrik = 30. Room 802. Breakfast was sugared yogurt, tea, one fried egg atop Polish-like sausage, almost as much as you like. Room 802 turns out to be a single, so we switch with Olga in 904. Great view. All money must be changed through Chris. I seem to have gotten all crotch lice but pick ONE from left armpit and ruin a few other areas scratching at them. Now 10:55, three hours for a stroll around town. Go to main square, sit and watch people. Go to movie? No money. Black market? Risky? One chesty person on sidewalk and one nice bodybuilder in cream T-shirt bring horny fantasies. Tight well-worn jeans more common here than in Moscow. Also lots of flies and mites and larger buzzing things as I sit and sniffle near park. My avenue notable for slender young men, but of course no one can say anything. Twelve-year-old sits next to me, clears throat, sits like I do, then moves off after five minutes. As I write at 12:15, a mid-twenties comes and sits next. Yes? I put notes away. We look across each other. I wipe eyes, he wipes nose. Ten minutes in all, we sit. Does he want what I want? Sex? Companionship? Just waiting for a friend? A handout? A robbery? Change? Information? Curiosity? Sharing? He leaves. I write. Cliff passes in distance, focusing and framing. Men look more directly than women. I'm a tourist, not a cruiser. Really? About one in a hundred passes in native costume: solid tunic with edge of decorative contrast, featureless sash, boots. Others well-dressed and intelligent-seeming. A very few tourists, possibly Russian. Clouds grow thicker! Rain; no visible eclipse in "the country" tomorrow? Few military stroll by, a group of 20-25 in formation, a few officers. Tune in to silence, waiting? Not dark, not happy, not oppressed. More freedom here than many OTHER places. Guy who left had tattered bits of suit-threads hanging from brown suit, too-long legs wrinkled and dusty about the ankles --- over the maroon-suede-top and light-green-corduroy-side shoes! Newly washed but "ring around the cuff" white shirt. Short, clean fingernails. Big strong hands. Not SO flat face. Scraggled short hair --- done at home? No hope. "You don't speak English." "djhch6mchwn-chrahykh?" Laughter! Women in high-strapped shoes and anklets just as wide above top. Sweaters and skirts, jeans, dresses for women; suits or jeans, shirts, some briefcases for men. I'm sorry not to have a map, money, the language, the time, or the energy. Other than that, I'm fine. 12:35PM. BROWN tunic and ORANGE sash usual. Man in too-long sleeves has chest covered with tinkling medals. A rectangle of (the same group?) 20 soldiers walks BACK across square. NO idea of dress or cover. Women in uniform walk AWFUL. Duty-free shop: $5 for USED stamps, about face value, $212 for full leather coat, $137 for cashmere sweaters (no red), $91 for short leather jacket, no zippers. Rest is junk and booze. Some military caps have circular pool tables of green felt on top. Cliff passes at a distance, another kid debates sitting next to me. At 1:45 I check movie hall and get back at 1:55 and wait LONG for elevator to 9, to 8 for key, to 9 for sweater, to main lunch of bologna salad, roast beef, rice and GOOD sweet jelly-shape roll and lemon drink. Out at 2:40 to select 32.90 of stamps, about $10, (END OF BOOK 2, start of book 3 at page 151) and out at 3 for City tour. First to National Museum --- too fast though too little, till 4:15 (regardless Chris says it closes at 4). Announce 8AM for breakfast tomorrow, 8:45 to Lamasary. Then to main square and various buildings, including Lenin-Tomb-like Ulan Sackbe tomb. Embassies, new apartments, cinemas, opera houses, and finally the Mongolia-Japanese War memorial, great up close and inside. Back to hotel at DOT of 6, Chris is on 8 with 32.90 in stamps, and I mention NOT eating at 7:30 but NOW in order to get to cinema. Copy Russian-script names for guide to translate 30/7 movie into "One Unit of Soldiers" and 31/7 movie into "Beautiful Life" with Giancarlo Giannini, and 1/8 Hatan Bator, two epics. We go downstairs for dinner and he talks to 3-4 people (no one EVER seems to be in charge) and he suggests we share bottle of wine after Galaa says it's 42 Tugriks for 500g wine! About $14. Chris says it was $5/bottle only a month ago. Dollars are different, and there's a cute interchange between huge-eyed pointed-chin Mongol waitress and Galaa, at end of which HE will give HER the Tugriks which she will give to accounting, and I will give HIM $5 which he will get exchanged on black market for his 50 or more Tugriks! Chris asks me how I enjoyed the tour. "OK" I say cautiously. He blurts that he thinks it's THE most boring city in the world! "They CAN charge for the country tour because there's not ANYTHING else to DO, so we HAVE to do it." Wine is not bad, but weak. Beef stroganoff is awful, 2/3 the meat just gristle. I'm not hungry anyway with my cold. Have some peas and rice and wine and cold-sausage appetizers and one of two apple fritters for dessert, and out to the kino (not KEENO) (ARCHERY a big deal here: court near bridge; group through with leather bow cases and arrows protruding). Small line, pay 3T, get three slips of paper! Hand to doorwoman and she tears all three. Few people inside, and up to theater for 700 that has maybe 100 in it. Cute Russian cartoon, then flashes of paratroopers and tanks. Previews? Then various love affairs, karate, father and son, other relatives, women making the rounds of men, who turn out to be para-drop three-man tank crew in practice maneuvers. Audience talks and snaps gum and moves around and LEAVES before it ENDS to get OUT on time. Movie: like Italian TV, I decide, and can't tell if it's dubbed or not. Out at 9:40 to pleasant evening and back to hotel to get to bed at 10:30. George in quickly and to sleep immediately.

FRIDAY, JULY 31. Wake at 6, odd dream fragments of touring on bus and train in Russia, changing rubles, and not understanding. George showers and leaves, I put things together and get to breakfast at 8 with Chris and Werner and Galaa, sweet yogurt, rolls and butter and jam, and finally fried sausage in a SLIGHT coating of egg. Werner had operation on legs for smoking, can only walk 200 meters, smoked for 43 years and stopped for seven years and now can't stand smoke at all. To bus in front seat (Cliff's saved it for me, saying he hopes I'll do the same in future for him) and we take short drive to 9:05 to lamasery, and there're gold-crested hats and a ceremony, then into temple for prayers, INTENSE feeling of usedness and reverence; murmur of non-synchronous praying, devotees passing around clockwise putting coins on shrines, altars with containers of oil, yogurt, milk, water, and butter, loads of old Buddhas in clothes of silk and gold, lots of books on separate boards (Galaa doesn't know if they're printed or written) wrapped in silks in cabinets. Notice reclining pads, take photos of trumpeters, and sad not to be able to take pictures indoors. To bus at 9:35 and take off to country. Have to get off (announce we leave at 8:30 tomorrow) bus to evade earth-mover, and THEN (at 11AM), someone remarks of dimness of ECLIPSE. I put three sunglasses together for eye-shield and we can SEE the lune of the sun. Watch for about twenty minutes and forced back on bus. Get there about 12 and look at yurts strictly for tourists and take photos of us in Mongol clothing and in for soup and $1 beer and beef stroganoff and kumiss, fermented mare's milk, which is NOT very pleasant, like slightly off gin and milk. Out at 1:55 and get told bus leaves at 3. I climb up hill and enjoy LOVELY views after I catch my breath, having admired low flowers, locusts, birds, butterflies, moths, and cicadas. Start down at 2:30 and get to bus at 3:03, TIRED. Stop once to wait for a crane to move for our "road" (of 30 possible!) and we get in about 4:30. Up to take clothes off and crawl into BED. Wake at 6:15 and shower, coolish, and down to dinner at 7, asking to join Rene and Paul, but Rene moves away and the BLUMS join us! They complain about getting no tours in Paris or Warsaw and no circus in Moscow and none HERE, so why should they pay for $12.80 tour that WAS on the brochure? I get pissed at this, but leave at 7:40 to theater. A mob scene! People PUSHING in to line at box office. I stand in line for a bit, aghast, then in fury push MYSELF ahead. Mongols startled and let me, except for the LAST fellow, hand stuck in window. He jabbers at me. I jabber back, saying I see how it works! My hand is next and I get Row 27 seat 20. If they give seats in order, this must be about LAST, which explains the Friday night push. Seat woman looks at stub, looks at me, shakes head, and seats me in 15, 13, point of square, CENTER of theater. House seats? No, two girls come and ONE has MY seat. She asks. I say "Dvotchka" and point to the seater. She accepts it and squeezes next to me between the two seats. Movie starts and it's with the SAME cartoon, but this time with audience REACTIONS. People STANDING and sitting on the floor. JAMMED and hot. Then "Russian" titles and it's Giancarlo Giannini! He's a dupe of terrorists, then joins in for love of Ornella Muti. He's not bad, tortured by cops, but flight-escape is LUDICROUS! Out in JAM at 10, pushing people BACK, and to hotel to get to bed at 11:30, but fuss over payments of $12.50 and CHORES of Mongolia keep me awake till 12, when I drink LAST of water and fall off to sleep at last.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 1. Wake at 6 and again at 7 and up at 7:15, George leaves, and NO one in restaurant at 8. Did I MISS them? Henin in lobby says that breakfast is at 8:30. Oh! Write in lobby and then in for eggs and same sausage and rolls with Carpenters and Werner, who says I missed a FINE party at Paul's last night and then missed the WOMEN (and a German pimp), one of whom, English teacher from Taiga, Paul offends by saying "How do you go to bed in Taiga?" And Bob gets caught between the tits of a Russian amazon. I say that's not my style. Back up to look for laundry and there's ONE shirt and jeans (clean, despite Millers' DIRTY clothes) and she says other shirt is in "Ulan Bator" and will be here in five minutes. I leave for 9:30 tour, having bought GREAT prints for $3.50, silk mask for $6.00 --- they now announce that suitcases should be at the door at 7AM, 7:30 breakfast, 8 departure --- a cup for 50 for an even $10. My laundry is still "five minutes away." Onto bus last and Werner Horning sputters that I was last yesterday too! Off to the High Lama's Palace, and the temples are filled with MARVELOUS "applications" (appliqués). Exhibit open 10-2, 3-7. Palace tour; guards of four continents: white, yellow, green, red faces. FABULOUS appliqués of 17th and 18th centuries. INCREDIBLE tankas MONGOLIAN made! Unbelievable full-mink-lined golden embroidered royal cape! Incredible SCENES: pissing/ shitting/ vomiting/ fucking/ one incredible cock CONSTRICTED with a shell tied halfway up its length, HUGE head as big as HIS head, with two men taking something out of his EAR --- Galaa says they're HOLDING his ears to keep his head STILL to pump in the fermented mare's milk as a punishment. OTHER penis-tortures include sticking a twig into the meatus, shoving a pole up the ass, and various methods of TYING. The BEST place in the city has NO memorabilia on sale. Palace itself also a treasure of costumes and thrones and furniture and bibelots (many of which I was to see again in the film TONIGHT!). Out reluctantly at 11 and back to hotel, where Cliff and I go across the street to the 60th Anniversary exhibit, a typical array of photographs, production charts, produce samples, clothing, models of factories, and propaganda with documents and "famous" and "productive" people. Out at 11:45 to weedy park, past ill-patronized amusement park (Ferris wheel of wires, jet planes on which kids scream, chair merry-go-rounds, and self-swingers that people propel to shouts of terrified glee. Past seats on which kids can pose on "animals," but can't find the zoo; the "lake" is empty and the "castles" under construction and the amphitheater has seated observers but nothing to be observed. Back to shop for beer, to lunch of steak on rice with GOOD beer, and Chris meets me to say I'm the ONLY one who hasn't paid for the trip. We chat. Off on 2:30 tour of Museum of Mongolian Fine Arts. If there's no tour, I'm miserable. There's a tour to the "Fine Art Museum of Mongolia" and I'm entranced by a few 18th Century tankas but wander the downstairs floor quickly past "Soviet Realism" and "Heroic Impressionism" and "Art Touristique," and then feel SAD that there's nothing to keep me THERE, as if it's a slap at Galaa for not living in a country that produces no art to INTEREST ME! Others sit and look at fingers and ask to be dropped at department store. I'm fatigued and yet want to SEE something and yet want to be left alone to ABSORB the city, rather than being PUSHED INTO it. I get left off at 3:40 on square. Movie schedule is for 1, 4, and 7! I get on line, orderly this time, as sign goes up, saying, I guess "No more tickets for 1600." I thrust in 3T, they sign for 6, I say "One," they say 6, so it IS 6. I get 25, 5, not the worst. Woman (who ends up sitting next to me, solving THAT mystery) waiting in line with me to enter theater (previous show still on) looks at my ticket and changes my seat from 25, 5, to 15, 15! Movie is HISTORY of Mongolia from 1909-1922, through Katun Bator, USING Lama's palace and ROBES of mink top and WIFE'S headdress for HIS wife. GREAT! Time goes quick, but it's HOT. Film stops as it has done EVERY time so far. Out with crowd at 7:10 and to hotel with VERY pleasant Litvais, who wrote card to Mrs. Johnson in Hungarian for me. Up at 8 to shower and dress for "party" at 9, but pack and sit on balcony drinking beer, mourning that THIS Ulan Bator that I see has the men, hustlers, glitz, "polish," "go-getting qualities" of ALL cities, and MONGOLIA is quite lost. To bed at 10:15. Sleep after a bit.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 2. Wake at 5:15, again at 6:30 as George LEAVES. Wash, pack, put bag out at 6:45, do bit of Huxley RE-reading, write this to 7:30, and down to breakfast, walking down rather than waiting for IMPOSSIBLE elevators (they had no MEMORY, would only go where the NEXT person in them pushed button, forgetting even the PREVIOUS push from an elevator-full!). Amusing to see people ALL down the way to the bottom, optimistically waiting for the elevators. And the people who don't yet know that major tesserrae in the hallway floor are missing. Remember to note that Zhuulchin (???) is Mongolian Intourist. INCREDIBLE load of luggage for the two groups. Out to lobby at 8 and into bus at 8:25, VERY cloudy outside and QUITE cold, even with a sweater. To station at 8:35 and watch women guide off-load luggage truck. Feel momentarily guilty: I should help. Then the obverse hits me: I paid for a FIRST-class tour, and if the ORGANIZATION can't spend enough money to HIRE porters to do the work, why should I WORRY. Bob starts to recite "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." I feel tranquil riding to the station: Mongolia WAS an experience, not to be REPEATED, and now I'm at liberty to FLY from wanted city (or area) to the next --- necessary as I get older, as I find talking to 82-year-old Ben, who says it's HARD to take a trip like this when you're old. Pity they don't have PLANES that LAND in Antarctica; I'm sure the BOAT ride will have times when I WANT NOT to be there. Bob and Pat help with bags as Litvai smokes and watches. News that train is delayed till 9:15, at 9AM. Chat with Midge and Polly on bus. Off the bus at 9:15. With Bob Beeton, Paul, and Werner Horning in cabin #1, Car #9, which arrives at 9:30. We're aboard 9:45, luggage in hall, beds made for not sleeping? Leave 9:48. BEAUTIFUL soft rolling cloud-shadowed countryside. Flocks of butterflies along train now are brown with bits of yellow. Lovely silver-dollar spheres of intense violet-blue flowers. Lunch is announced for 1:30, dinner at 6:30. Note quotes: "Oh, LA is head over heels ahead of New York." Speed of train is 100 km/2 hours: 30 mph! Note Chinese words: Hello: KNEE-HOW: beautiful: MAY-LEE; thank you; SEE-eh; milk: KNEE-OH-KNEE. Constant thick clouds soften the treeless landscape. 12:30, sand appears more and more between track-side grasses. Shouts for first camel, a WHITE one! Kain-Shand stop is 5:45-6:15, she said NOT for five minutes. They seem to be checking brakes. Almost completely featureless trip except for sparse water, cattle, grass, FEW villages, lovely clouds, and HEAT. Least desirable part of trip so far. Lunch 12:30-2, and dinner 6:30-7:30, were pretty awful, but Bob's champagne at lunch and a beer for a dollar and a tugrik for dinner make things better. Werner comes back and has cake and tea; Paul's flaked out in an upper bunk. Sun glowing behind clouds. Shoot all film on SUNSET. Brush teeth, put film in bags, crawl into bed at 8:45! Lovely stars. Nap and wake for PASSPORT stop at 10PM. Rousted again for the body-search of the compartment at 10:30. Inspectors pass back and forth. Chris says ten people lost their films. Paul spreads Cherry Marnier, I take some for my cough. Passports back at 11. Leave at 11:10. Pass under concrete yellow arch into China at 11:20. Stop again at 11:30 and at 11:32. Chinese come on for passports. They talk to Chris about nationalities of group. Get customs form at 11:35 and start moving again. Start and stop, declare watch, camera and flash, and binoculars. Kindly inspector says "Customs procedure is over, thank you for your cooperation." at 11:48. Luggage off OUR train at 12:15. Find restaurant car at 12:20, change money, have soup and almost WHOLE bottle of wine for 3.15, less than $2! Bed at 2. Drunk enough to sleep instantly.

MONDAY, AUGUST 3. Wake at 6 and JUST see sign for Jinang. Great earthen houses and LOTS of people WATCHING the trains. Try to find first glimpse of Great Wall into Fenchen but can't see it. No REAL sign of the wall. BEAUTIFUL countryside and habitations and people watching. Off train (with headache from engine fumes, pained with relaying luggage) at 8:30, fairly long walk to bus and LONG ride to Da Tong Hotel at 9 to stand in echoey bare lobby and wait for rooms. Breakfast is cakes and cookies and bread followed by AWFUL hard/soft eggs. FROGS in garden. They HUM in Peking Opera style! Sit on road for half and hour: pedestrians, bicycles, horse/burro/donkey carts, mostly LOADED, trucks, FEW cars and tractors. In to hotel in drizzle to watch ANOTHER group enter; then to bus at 11. Tour plans (presumably NOT Chris's doing) INCREASED the overnights from 3 to 4 on the train, and does NOT include acrobatic dancing in DaTong! Have to try to do something about that. And to the Nine Dragon screen and the monastery on my own? Lunch is an 8-course meal on rice, ending with anise/salt bass. Leave hotel 2:30 over LUDICROUSLY bumpy and being-repaired for new dam road-construction, getting there 3:25. GRAND scope at the caves, but the ROUGHNESS and NAIVETE of the sculptures leads me to agree with George's observation that it's like the Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong. Trip to high-number end by 4:10 and ask guide when we're leaving. 5. So I go through two gates to see caves 1-4 myself, shirtless workmen observing me. They unlock gate for me to return and find our group leaving shop. Buy two good sets of cards for 1.40 and get to bus LAST at 4:40. Ride back seems shorter, even with stop at 3-dragon screen. Back to hotel at 6, sit exhausted till dinner at 6:30. Dinner, like lunch, is 9-course (beans, bean curd, chicken, sweet and sour pork, fish balls, beef in brown sauce, bass, others) and gives as much BEER as you want, a real blessing. Tables are "smoking/nonsmoking" but since mine has the Blums and Bob and the Bob-Edith duo, I really want to change to SMOKING, as Cliff does next AM. Then Paul invites me for white wine and Rene and George and I complain about trip and how LYNN'S group gets best bus and best schedule, while we get AWFUL bus and night train rides. Not to mention they getting acrobatic dancing and we not --- which is changed after tour, when we ALL say we want to go. Back to room at 8 and Pat and George are drinking vodka and water. I decide not to. WE talk of tour and then down to wait 4 minutes after 8:30 for Blums, then leave. Huge traffic, and finally busses just STOP and leave us off at 9:05. Movie just out and the hall is full and VERY hot. I berate myself for not bringing binox, but the men look so old (except for the sexy unicyclist) and made-up and phony-enthusiastic, even from the 22nd row, that it's just as well. The shoulder-dislocating arm turns by the men look just impossible, including the "winding up on the biceps of the cords." The cat-cries of the black-robed hostess amuse the audience. Strange ways of sounding final r's in "cinemars" and "Buddars." Then a back-lying foot-juggler of paintings, cylinders, and umbrellas --- with an unbelievable one-footed side-cylinder end-over-end tumble --- tumblers; jokesters with punches and stiff arms and in-and-out-of-chairs, whistlers that Ben loves and others hate; tightrope walker that bounces on seat with legs on front and back of wire facing LEFT, then TWISTS in midair to face right, legs front and back. Magician takes silks, lamps, bowls of water, flags, dresses, flowers, vases, and fruit from two small cylinders with LONG flourishes and LOSING effect. He later returns with stuff from sleeves and clothes. Unicyclist's partner relays cups from HIS foot to HER foot (she's on his shoulders) to her HEAD. She's the only one with a safety wire. Young boys do head and hand-stands. Flag and ribbon wavers. Hand juggler with 4 plates and with ladle, pot, and lid. Comic bit with eating apple on William Tell's son's head. Foot juggler does IMPOSSIBLE one-foot spin of cylinder. We get to final number (of people appearing from card-form screens) when guides drag us out at 10:50. Most were sleeping. To Hotel 11:15. I'm exhausted, yet people are still staring as intently as ever. Pat and George want to talk, I join until 11:45, then go to bed. Cough. Take Hold. Cough. Build up bed to sleep almost sitting up. Coughs subside. Sleep about 1AM.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 4. Wake at 6, throat dry and still. Start coughing again at 6:30 and take Ampicillin. Read Pat's good Fodor's on Datong till 7:30, and breakfast till 8 with GOOD rich scrambled eggs. Copy schedule: today: lunch at 12, monastery tour at 2:30, dinner at 6:30, leave for train at 10. Miss Tien is National Guide. Bus at 8:15 late to 8:25. Follow funeral to arrive at office for "introduction" at 8:35. Locomotive factory lectures: 7000 workers, 2300 women, 450 technicians. Chinese translated into GERMAN, then into English that she stumbles over more often than not. Starts 8:40. From raw material to locomotives. German-only starts at 9. Q&A from 9:05. They work from 18-60, stopping at 55 for heavy work, five years less than that for women. Over at 9:15. Hardhats for tour. 17 of our group (and two guides) onto bus at 9:20. BIG factory at 9:25. Again 4 bays, about as big as GUM. 270 meters long, 300 meters wide. Out at 9:40. Into second and out at 9:55. NOT THAT MANY people WORKING. Engines till 10:10. "Butterfly" in Chinese: HOO-DYEH. Neither papirosa nor schemetterlinck. Kindergarten at 10:20. Sign in English "THERECIPEOFTHEWEEK." Earplugs in for FACTORY noise and for KID noises. Classes: 4+3=7 and 9-4=5; (?) in square for (?); singing' rhythm band. So FAST that it's not really ghastly. In for concert at 10:40, tea for intro AND for concert. Show ends 10:55. Back to hotel by 11:15. Read Fodor's; lunch 12-1:15, I take a walk for GREAT town-sections; board game, caged crickets, back at 2:30 JUST as bus leaves. To 9-Dragon screen 2:50-3. Hwayen Monastery 3:07-3:56, buy book for 9.50. Shanhua 4:02-4:28. BOTH monasteries have connected rooms of MUSEUMS. Rains slightly. Shop closed --- it's the SAME but different: 4 GREAT guard gods. Metal art factory 4:29-4:55. Intro to 4:36. Look at punching, cutting, pressing, polishing, inlaying stones, sizing rings. Somehow it's not QUITE making up for NO reminder of the Shanhua Temple because the shop's closed! Maybe they'll have it in a bookshop in Peking or Shanghai? Everyone sits on bus looking forward to Happy Hour. Starting to sun. Back fast and I take bath and phone Werner to invite him an Paul to champagne at 6:15. We finish it and down to find smokers table full (Chris, too), so I listen to 82-year-old Ben and 75-year-old Joe compare millions, Ben in compressed gasses. He loves his wife, has third pacemaker, good for 10 years, had two years, if it FAILS, he's DEAD. Upstairs to coffee with George and Pat, interesting, and pack and get bags out at 9. Time begins to drag. We talk. George is 38, Paddy 39, ME next, then Rene "let slip" to George that he's 47, while Paul was born in 1933 and is 48. I note not to forget the mouse in the Ulam Bator restaurant, the fly in the first lunch-dish in Datong, and the horn-blowing constantly on the streets of Datong. George tells me "fanny" in Australia is CUNT. Champagne is FLAT for 12.85. Werner passes around China Brandy, AWFUL. Bus leaves at 10:10 and to train station at 10:20. We wait for 10:50 train, grateful that the luggage is HANDLED through to the Peking Hotel! Off bus 10:25. Into thickly carpeted waiting area with easy chairs and sofas covered with towels and lace doilies. We leave at 10:45. Rush out to wait while our car is shunted back and forth. On about 11 to old RED-wood car with green velvet curtains and tea-thermos and cups and not much room. Werner goes to bed immediately; Bob conks out pretty quick, and Paul and I drink tea and chat about the luxury and QUAINT and QUIET of the padded car. Tired quickly and to bed at 11:30, but I cough and cough and cough, piling up pillows and finally the rolled-up mattress pad, finally falling asleep after 1, waking again to cough, feeling MISERABLE for me and the OTHERS I might be keeping awake.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5. Wake about 6, feeling fairly OK, and dress before others and out to people staring at train, some doing Tai Chi. Looks chilly, but most in short sleeves. Miss Tien scurries around at 6:45 saying we should get ready, and at 7 we're tumbling out of train into enormous people-filled Peking rail station. Streams of people battle toward the few ticket-collecting exits, but when we arrive, THAT exit is ours alone. Out into morning bustle, into bus where our local hostess tells us the schedule: YU FEN is the guide; Mr. Youn the driver. We're going to Ching Chow hotel for breakfast, then an AM tour and lunch at the Summer Palace; then in the PM to the Temple of Heaven; evening free. Thursday 8/6 7:45 breakfast, AM to Forbidden City, lunch at Hotel (wings built in 1917, 1954, 1974), PM shopping in Friendship store (the biggest one), and evening to Songs and Dance in the theater; 8/7 Friday to Great Wall by bus, box lunch, Ming tombs in PM, evening the Peking Duck in traditional restaurant; 8/8 Saturday leave Peking at 9AM. Chinese capitals: Xian, Luoyang, Nanking, Peking from the 12th Century. Bus drives a long while through a busy bicycling city to a big hotel at about 7:30, and we're whisked up to the 6th floor to ONE table for 24, air conditioned, and served three fried eggs, toast, milk, coffee, and tea QUICKLY, and everything's so wonderful no one complains for MINUTES, except Miss Tien, who keeps rushing about, irritating Chris, who tells her to "Relax!" out of the side of his mouth. Great breakfast, and we're down to bus 8:45. "Would you like to see pandas?" "Sure!" To zoo for 5 pandas from 9:09 to 9:25. Also saw binturong (BIG), wombats, baby kangaroos in glass cages, lots of EMPTY cages, lots of public areas, scoot over a small area looking. Baby panda (10 months old) sleeping on platform, one inside, two wandering outside and one SHIT yellow. But then the rain starts to POUR down (the cough medicine worked: I took it and started coughing RIGHT AWAY!) and guide makes a call. At 9:40 she announces we CAN go to the hotel. Get there about 10, up to LOVELY 9003, cash a $50 traveler's check after I get passport back, then down to get Fen to write me a note for a ticket for tonight for an opera or ballet, putting down the name of the theater we passed on the main drag. She calls me a cab and we get to that place, though taxi driver insists that THIS theater is BEHIND the hotel. Driver comes to help me, but nothing there. We then CROSS the road and he tries a SECOND place. There's nothing here TONIGHT, only TOMORROW night (I think it's what we SEE). But there's something tonight at a THIRD place. We begin to drive but there're so many busses and bicycles and pedestrians and jams that we don't get very far until I tell driver to RETURN to hotel, since we were told to be IN lobby at 11:50 for bus to lunch. Back at 11:47 and Miss Tien talks and talks to driver, I give her 6.50Y for past and 2Y for ticket for tonight, have to meet him at 7. OK. Onto bus and drive long way to Summer Palace, way out in country, and around back and out about 12:45, after getting schedule for tomorrow: lunch at noon; Temple of Heaven at 2; dinner at 6; 6:45 bus to theater. Through rain along paths, over arch-bridge, beside porticos, into Restaurant in (some pavilion), wandering corridors until I find a rest room and they find dining room 8. Towels nice, beer out, and food comes quickly, pretty good including huge fish. Leave about 1:45, saying to be back at bus at 4. I go upward, great panoramas of ascending villas, and find some near top are CLOSED, with people LIVING in them. Along top ridge, then back to entrance to walk long walks to Marble Boat, great water and boat and lake vistas in rain. Buy GREAT book marked 2.50 for only 1.20. Along Long Promenade to center, way up again, buying ticket for first of six interiors: staggering six halls of Summer Palace ticketing: 1) beds, 2) living, 3) throne, 4) clocks, 5) screens, 6) STUFF!! Huge trees are Nan trees, ENORMOUS and straight. I'm amazed at all the RICHES there, and get volunteer to hold umbrella over me to main temple. Kids playing cards on central platform. Raining harder as I climb even higher, workmen building NEW structures on old foundations, some old stupas encased in bamboo lattices. Stairs VERY slippery --- I skid 12" on heel a NUMBER of times. Back down to dry corridor and see MORE interiors, delighted to find ONE ticket for 10f sees ALL. Screens and cloissoné and pottery and coral trees and bowls and enamel birds and stone sculpture-paintings and some huge SCENES in semi-precious stones. Faster at end, VERY wet, and see guide at 3:50 who says everyone's on bus, so I can't see 17-arch bridge up close. Strip off sweater and dry out on way back by 4:30, ask to eat early, and LAY DOWN to rest for about an hour, then wash and down to eat flimsy appetizer dish, chicken skin and peanuts, wintermelon and awful-tasting shrimp, and pig's feet meat and lo mein noodles. Not the best. Good egg-drop soup and table dramas: Italian couple ordering through guide, gray-haired English faggot with my jacket over shoulder walking out in a huff when his Chinese 30ish lover and HIS Chinese-PR 20ish lover are challenged. And the red-jacketed lady from Colombia taking animatedly with the 20-year-old from Bonn, and the lovely Italian group with the boy with his sweater draped artfully over his shoulders avoiding my glances. Down at 6:50 to no cab. At 7:10 hail a passing taxi and get to theater for 1.80 at 7:20. To seat JUST as curtain rises on woman dressed as man. She plays ch'in. Hero comes in and plays ch'in. They fall in love. Generals and courtesans plot against them. They triumph till he's killed in the 1918 war. Reunited after death. Good voices but applause only for man as he holds loud notes. VERY stylized body and facial movements, even for Claude Rains businessmen. NEVER two voices together; skillful orchestra; audience attentive and translation-slides at sides of theater. Out at 10:10 to driver's waiting for me; 1.80 back to main gate of hotel. George out, take GREAT bath, shave, bed at 11. Sleep by 12, coughing only a bit using liquid picked up downstairs (azalea) for 1.10. George in later.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 6. Wake at 7, laundry out, for 7:45 breakfast, good omelet and lots of coffee and milk and jelly rolls, Polly and Midge cursing me for being late and allowing the Blums into THEIR table. More nice tourists to ogle (and YESTERDAY there was a DOLL I cruised at the "left-letter" board, but I didn't see him again). Out at 8:30 to Forbidden City, surprised when bus drives through THREE gates to Meridian Gate. Told to be back 11:15. Follow through first few throne rooms then (see map) to left for temporary exhibits of scrolls in rooms so dark they can't be seen: flashlights illuminating copyists' subjects. Back through GREAT objects, to Imperial Garden filled with wondrously-formed trees and rocks, then back against traffic through the central axis, marveling at the sheer QUANTITY of vases, jade, pottery, and household equipment loading the rooms. Then through open, past 9-Dragon screen, up to jewelry and gold and silver rooms. STAGGERING! HUGE jade gongs, filigree screens, solid gold pots and basins and ewers of extraordinary size, three-meter tusks and a CARPET of IVORY, a square meter of mountain with amethyst, agate, and jade cabuchons glued together to form bushes bordering lapis lazuli lakes and streams of solid silver. Nephrite men regarded ruby and emerald-eyed animals of onyx and sardonyx, while rocks were of crystal, beryl, lapis, and gold. A druggie's fantasy! Engraved silver bowls, towers of ivory with inch-high figures on each of 25 balconies, hair ornaments of precious stones, framed pictures of pearls and shells and butterfly wings, actual two-ton MOUNTAINS of jade, ivory boats laden with passengers and their pets in gold; caskets of copper ornaments, official seals, money, medallions, quarts of gold and silver and possible platinum. Swords and daggers with handles of mother-of-pearl radiant with diamonds and rubies and sapphires. Belts and broaches and buttons and buckles and combs and mirrors. Boxes and tassels and ear-pendants and costume ornaments. Trees and fish of multi-branched coral. Inlays and repoussés and cloisonnés and filigrees. Then I'm reminded that MUCH was taken by Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan! Search for "right center" area and see a huge temple being repaired, walking around exitless enclosure, and down wide passage and FIND the pottery and ceramics 6-area display. INCREDIBLE. Rush back to Garden, buy books and cards for 8Y; no reproductions of jewelry, and to bus at 11:15 to find guide has taken people "to see tree." Put raincoat aside and cross street and it begins to POUR. Up hill partway, down, around to tree, passing group, and dash up to top temple to take pictures of the multi-templed horizon. Down SOAKED and back to hotel to change, have lunch, buy $40 in stamps, cashing another check, and back to bus at 2 (in semi-dry clothes) for ride to Temple of Heaven. Rather surprised that it's ONE hollow interior, four enormous nan (from guide), nanmu phoebe (from map), sandalwood (from book) tree-trunks supporting a vivid (repainted in 1979) red-green-blue-white-gold dome. I understand her to say that we're going to ANOTHER temple compound, so I walk long featureless walk in rain to Vault, containing a brass cylinder in state, and Circular Mound, like Borobudur. Hurry back past hill that turns out to be an excavation hill from the subway, no evidence of the Hall of Contrition(?) marked on map. Back for quick run through souvenir shops, seeing nothing I like. To bus to tootle down to next two temples again! I was disappointed that the Temple of Heaven had to resort to "first-stone clapping echoed once, second-stone clapping echoes twice" --- which I NOW recognize as "multi-sound stones" on map --- and echo wall, same as Washington Capital, some Indian temples, and other places, seeming to replace intrinsic tourist interest. No wonder, as she says, "not very crowded." But it WAS, anyway, and Henin stupidly claps to put off serious investigations of the multi-sound phenomenon. BRAT! Center stone on Circular Mound not obvious amplifier to speaker talking OUT, nor to croucher, as suggested by Mr.Youn, but when I turn head DOWN the platform acts as a drumhead focusser that returns the sound with a VENGEANCE! Drive past old city gate that guide "doesn't know about," so it probably has some political significance (as we went DOWN Xidan Street but were not shown the "democracy wall" so many asked for). To largest Friendship shop at 3:45, told to be out at 4:45, and walk through looking at foods, meats, deer antler jelly, deer rump extract, loads of royal jelly and ginseng products (missing the whole-root prices of 2000Y), and buy cough pills with semen Armeniacia Amarae, to second floor to debate cashmere sweater for 39Y but decide not, finding that film and other prices seem high, 12Y for 12 slides and up to third floor for profusion of "art" jades and corals and pastes and crystals and sculptures. Look closer at CHEAP items and flabbergasted at HOW they'd carve "monkey orgy" at ALL for 6.50 Y, and the 6 pandas for 2.16, or 18 for 6.50-2Y, is GREAT for friends. Others buy booze and Werner is delighted and buys another orgy. As we play "show ant tell" in bus on way back they compliment me on being a good shopper. I'm amused I enjoyed it. Back to hotel at 5:15 and up to change and get laundry back and down for 6PM dinner, good but not great, and SUPPOSED to leave at 6:45, but Blums late and Tien GRABS me to get rest OUT. Bus leaves at 7 and arrives at 7:12 and in at 7:15 and variety show starts at 7:25. Woman singer not the best and she does about six songs, to little applause. First reed-trumpet player is good, funny doing trumpet, mouth-whistle, horn in quick succession. Male duet mediocre. Then a cute Dean Martin-type and ugly Jerry Lewis-type do a LONG comic session that of course we all burn at. Another female singer, a basso who's pretty bad, and ANOTHER comic duo in gray and light blue Mao suits go on so long they drive us OUT the door at 9:35. "We didn't" is grumbled responses from 4 or 5 of us when Tien too-brightly asks "How you like?" Bob suggests seats were too hard and there was no intermission. Back and Werner (who had birthday cake at dinner) asks us to 1521 for a party. I go at 10:45 and leave at 11:10 after we watch an overturned car at corner. Party awful with only halves of partners there: Mrs. Blum spread seductively on sofa. Werner disappointed that most people DIDN'T show up to his party, held in another room since he shares with Chris, who had business to attend to. Bed at 11:30, exhausted.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 7. Phone at 7, take bath, breakfast, this time with "gym-Junior" type fellow in mustache who looks longingly at me. To bus at 8:45 and Fen talks of English grammar with me as we drive through fields and villages of countryside. Then it CLEARS as road climbs and turns and twists, and castellations of pieces of Great Wall come into sight. Into parking lot at 10:45, shown blue roof to which we're to report for boxed lunch at 12:15, and I say I MAY delay till 12:30. In and start up "high to left" section, surprised when steps slope to 60Ε at some small places. Lovely clear views over soft hills and further wall, great pictures, hot hard climb. Off various side at top, then down to center at 11:40 and up other side to caught locust, urine smell, steep climb THERE, jets: 16 transports in 5 threes plus one, followed by 6 fours of fighter jets; and second crowded top. Cliff takes my picture. Run back down by 12:30 for SWEET yellow melon and two pieces of red melon and beer and sodas and wet towels from group, and leave at 12:45 WITH boxed lunch, getting pleas and a soft arm-touch from kids who want it. Investors or hungry? Cliff said he was about to condemn bald Werner for grabbing food for HIMSELF when he saw him give it to two KIDS. Bus off at 1 and we retrace spectacular read to entrance to Ming Tombs at 2. At the entrance: peddler lying with head on highway, white brain spread out at the foot of a double-tongued stream of blood. At the wall from 11 to 12:30, lunch to 1; Ming tombs from 2 to 2:15 for the statuary lane, out of the complex at 3:50. Paddy almost sick at the sight of the dead man. Off to photograph animals and tourists, back on bus to Ding Ling and awkward translation by guide. Down into echoing empty tombs, red wooden replicas of stolen riches in Taiwan. Some good remnants in two museum rooms. What COULD be under OTHER buried temples? Buy slides, 12 for 6Y, but find 1, 3, 3, 4... Give to ANOTHER seller and she EXCHANGES it. To see another tomb? She says we don't have TIME for Ching Ling, though we leave early at 3:50. Back to city at 5. I don't feel like loafing till 7, so I walk to People's Park and pay 3f for entry, THINKING that I might meet someone CRUISING after work before dinner. Placid empty park of beautiful gnarled trees, a news wall, and HUGE closed Ancestral Temple. Enormous area GRABBED from Forbidden City for QUICK use to people with enormous potential. Past lots of temples to trees along a moat on which people are boating. Lean against a rail ONE instant before I realize I'm being "stalked." Cute young fellow asks if he can use his English on me and we chat of my trip, his Chemistry, TRY to talk of indexing, his 62-year-old father's pension of 40Y/month after his job of 80Y/month, own siblings, and my being a "free man," as he would like to be, and SAYING he has friends of his 22 years and over who are NOT married. I give my card and tell him to write to "practice" and I'll write back. He's bright, cute; I take his photo, he pays my second park entry and "acts as guide" and we're back to bus to his limp handshake at 6:58. Onto bus and Tien assures me my walking costume is OK for dinner, and everyone's dressed, George even in dark jacket and TIE. To restaurants NEXT to Xichang Theater, where Tien finds 8/5 performance WAS Peking Opera in "Man's name and Woman's name," not "Man-woman" for man-mimicking woman, as I would have hoped. Ground floor rather smells, but third floor is plain and OK. Toni struggles place into uproar, which I solve magically by intoning, "She wants --- red --- pepper" to Tien. She GETS her chilis. Toni says she'll only talk through me. Peking Duck is NOT "top to bottom" with beak and feet, thank goodness, but sauce is not so INTENSE as American version, nor is skin as CRISP. Food comes and goes SO fast there's hardly time to fill up. Good cherry-red wine. Not THAT many courses. I take photos BEFORE of 5 ducks, AFTER of applauded chef. Back to bus and hotel, taking last good bath in Peking, and to bed about 10:30, George coming in later.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 8. Waked at 6:30 by phone to get bags out at 7 and down to breakfast and out to wait for bus. At 8AM I write the following: Envy: on steps of Peking Hotel (note that Dong Lai Shun was the restaurant for the Peking Duck last night) were an American family: distinguished husband and wife and three very tall, broad-shouldered, serene-faced, brown-blond haired, soft-spoken, BEAUTIFUL older-teenage sons. They got into private black limousine with driver and guide on jump-seat. OBVIOUSLY lots of money and VERY well-bred. How WONDERFUL! Ride through bicycles to huge station, crowds surging in, into cathedral-like main waiting room with shafts of sunlight irradiating dusty smoke into public areas. Up sweeping escalators into massive conduits to rail lines. Down to wait a bit and onto train at 8:30. Leave Peking 8:57, five people (Rene, Paddy, George, Chris, and Cliff) get HARD class: no air-conditioning, THREE high, HARD bench with THIN cushion and STRAW mat, and LOTS of Chinese. TERRIBLE! Watch progress on map. Catch glimpses of naked bathing boys at Xing Tai river; nuclear reactors about five minutes southwest of there! Flat farming land, and at 3:45 I note that I get a good window as Toni snoozes. String of mud-brick villages, some pretty cruddy. CONTINUOUS fields in flatlands, HUGE empty river basin crossed by 8 or 9-arch bridge for road and rail, and lots of shirtless workers so slender they don't have bumpy-ripplies, only flat-ripplies. LOTS of cooling towers that would lead one to think "nuclear reactor," but after seeing a DOZEN of them, they must be used in some OTHER industry. Stately rows of new trees along rail and parallel road; snores from cabins. Laboring air conditioner keeps temperature down to high 80's. Kid pisses in backyard as train passes. Cow squats and looses a waterfall. Walled communes with slogans on the outside and UNENDING fields of corn, ending (HA) at far-right misty hills. Clouds shade sun about 4, cooling things down. We cross a 29-pier long bridge. Anyang station stop 4:25-4:35, but I can see NOTHING of THAT city. Nothing visible from its ancient times. Lunch and dinner were stifling in fan-cooled dining room, but "hard-class" passengers said it was COOL. Toni napped and I took her forward-going window seat for most of the trip, having spent the morning part in the hall seat on a ruffled embroidered cushion. Pauli sleeps with a smile on his face; Toni ALWAYS grim. Paul sleeps away his on-coming cold and going hangover from six beers in the cattle car. Everyone reads after dinner, which is awful. No more beer or soda, but Tien passes pitcher of cold water. I had to ask HER to get SOAP into the three-basin washroom. Wash and get to bed at 8:45, comfortable under sheet-towel in long-enough top bunk. She MUST sleep down and he's too short to climb up. Indeed! Rumor has it that ALL of Lynn's group will go hard-class! Paul and I go back to visit Cliff. I have no nerve to photograph placid sweating Chinese sipping coffee on window seats, one climbing up to hottest third tier RATHER padded "hard bunk." No covers save for sewn blue cover on two-centimeter pad under rattan sleeping-surface. Cliff said the floor's been scrubbed twice and ledges constantly dusted. Sleep quickly.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 9. Wake with urgent need to piss. Hope it's near 4, but turn on light to find it's 12:10. Wrap towel into sarong and don too-small furnished slippers and get out to knock Ann off the john. Attendant moves me to opposite, slit-trench one. Thank goodness I only have to piss. When I mention it to Midge, saying Ann leaves the door open so that "anyone who really wants to get in can get in," she laughs at my unintentional dirty crack --- about Ann's dirty crack! Back to sleep easily. Tien wakes us at 4 in the worst possible words: "I'm sorry to tell you that you must now get up." Paul and Pauli are out quick; I dress above Madame and sit in hall till we stop. Arrive Xian 4:50 AM, out at 5AM, into bus at 5:05 past FIRST crippled beggar, AWFUL outhouse smell in GROTTY station, and out in still-darkness past heaps of sleeping, coughing, and furtively moving bodies that local guide says are "waiting for train." Silent circle of Chinese watchers surrounds us while the bus blows too-cool air on me as I write. Huge enclosure dotted, massed, CLOTTED with bunches of men, women, and children. Off at 5:07. People sleeping in BEDS, on PALLETS, on BLANKETS and on SIDEWALKS, very POOR intro to city for TRAVELER at 5AM and for CITY at 5AM. First is to People's Hotel at 5:15; "Center of town." Gold-tipped iron gates swing open for bus, two doormen put on bright chandelier and open doors for us. At least a carpet on floor, shop in back, PO on side, and restaurant. Thank God Bob HASN'T taken Tien's repugnant suggestion to "be our sunshine" and sing! Lots of locals wander around trying to help in closed-down lobby. George says "hard-class" was COOLER in night than ours, but not COLD. I'm still glad there's just ONE train-ride left IF we get flight to Canton. I write as keys were handed out by Chris. People VERY silent, not quite up yet. Slowly recognize a slovenly STRANGE face at edge of crowd, but never see him again. Tien says breakfast at 7. "Seven o'clock SHARP." Into room 412 and tub by 5:30, tell Tien I DON'T want to shop, and leave for walk at 5:55. To right and hit exercise plaza! Slow, fast, concentrated, abstracted, using swords and poles and canes and spears and staffs with tassels, kicking high or barely stepping, flailing with arms or moving imperceptibly, accompanied by horns moving the joggers, sprinters, runners, steppers, strollers, and by VERY varied calls of birds from nearby trees, they self-absorbedly warm up for their day, a few actually muscle-built and showing off, most slender and merely marvelously maintained. A few women, many groups in slow unison, a grandfather-father-son in pass-on-the-movements unity and a few photographers like me. Loners join groups of 2 or 3, people split up, chat, obviously follow leaders, sometimes only out of corner of eye from distance. Hierarchies and randomness and SET patterns among disparate lookers. Clearly they start slow and build speed and agility. Some potty old men casually bend over and touch their elbows to the ground, then foreheads to their shins. Some are clearly trying for Olympics, some desire thorough STRETCHING, others go to LIMITS, some like SPEED, others emphasize GRACE; some DAZZLE, others are dazzling only to themselves. Some US-type calisthenics. Back to hotel at 7, eat till 7:30 (hard-boiled eggs and flaky lady-fingers and pineapple and coffee and AWFUL cheesy butter). Copy schedule: 8:30 for Shanxi Museum, Wild Goose Pagoda, Cloisonné factory; 11:30 lunch at restaurant; 2:30 to terracotta warriors and Hot Springs, 7PM dinner at restaurant. Train for Loyang at 8:27, leave hotel 7:45. Local guide Ho Xiao Choh. Drive outside walls, to local museum at 8:50. Bell from West Zhou (1100-700BC) with MEXICAN bird. Note "Renmin Hotel" in Chinese at top of page 200. Many ENGLISH labels! Horse stoppers in 208BC! Carvings graceful and at times OUTSIDE of frames! VERY modern. Great Buddha from 500-1000AD. Scholar's collection of HUNDREDS of steles and inscriptions and stone banners and capstones and commemorative tablets. Animals DRAPED over top as in Narmor tablet in Assyria! HUNDREDS in continuous text from 215-222! Lots of PHOTOS of objects in Taiwan? Fabulous tricolor pottery horse dated PRECISELY to 706AD; second year of Shunlong, Tang dynasty. Marco Polo brought spaghetti, firepower, and polo? Capital city (?) 618-902AD. Postcards at 10AM. 10:20-10:45 to Big Wild Goose Pagoda and to top. Foggy views and all-new insides. To cloisonné factory 10:50 to 11:10 for introduction; I look at postcards. To Exhibition Hall (no prices!) from 11:10-11:15, some of us wander to (tawdry) salesroom 11:15-11:20, then upstairs to production room (it's Sunday and empty) for five minutes to 11:20, then back to the salesroom. BIG pieces solder pattern, fill in base, put on colors all at once in one layer, dry a week, bake, and put on layers 2-7 the same way. I suspect my 2Y bead was about one layer (layers can be a millimeter thick!) Out at 11:55. Bell tower: People have no watches: drum to start day, bell to end of day. Arrive at restaurant at 12. Eat largely but not too well at third floor restaurant (Near East or East Asia?) till 1, at which time we are told we take a nap! Argue till 1:20, Ban Po 1:50-2:30. We get to FLOOD about 14" deep at 1:40, which driver says we can't cross. Cliff and I glance at each other in dismay. Return to hotel? Driver gets out, I think to test depth, but he says ENTRANCE is just 100 meter away! Great! Cliff's in shorts and sandals; I roll up flared-jean (thankfully) bottoms and slogged through, smiling to all sides, with shoes on. To 30F admission booth, simple exhibit area with BEAUTIFUL objects: fish hooks, dioramas of village, and then to PISS, past models of round and square and tent-roofed sunken mound huts, and up stairs to roofed (first in China in 1953) portions of excavations, nicely labeled in 16 stations in English, with dust-covered glass cases of some of the adult burials (73 CHILD-burial jars IN village) from outside village, including two men with hands over pelvis and four girls in close alignment. Quick dash through second display-room for more exhibits and re-wade water by 2:35, but THIS is road to Warriors, so we sit in cab 2:35 to 2:50, they left 15 minutes late for the Blums. On bus from 2:45 to 3:45. Out near HUGE hanger-like building at last. But when we enter "No Admittance" area and I see sofas and cups of tea I grunt "NO!" and stalk off to entrance, not CARING whether I'm pulled back or not. To my surprise, NO one says ANYTHING negative! ENORMITY of place is INSTANTLY impressive and steps to front balcony reveal SO many columns of gray warriors that I'm totally awe-struck. So intense is my feeling that this could be the burial of 6000 people, rather than one Emperor. Maybe MORE than 6000 died and left their SOULS in the statues during construction! Few people: I move around periphery, studying different faces, clothes, hand positions, horses, fragments, torsos emerging from rubble, heads leaning on neighbors. I'm astounded and staggered. Loud Chinese teenagers offend me. They leave and I'm alone with sound of rain pelting on enormous roof. Total captivation. Maybe "No photos" is a blessing: one can ONLY look. No workers on their chairs and benches on Sunday. I'm out to exhibit area, take lots of pictures, buy every souvenir they have short of 40Y models. Vastly impressed. HARD rain. Back to group in main building and get some details filled in, and read booklet. Plans ONLY to continue vast talk. But first PINS for 20f, 10 of them, borrowing 1.80 from Cliff. Slides for 27Y, photos for 55, cards for 75, even paper cuts for 6.50: just fabulous! Leave at 5, to Hot Springs 5:20 to 5:50. Rain harder than ever, second stone boat, trek up and down stairs for manhole source of 109Ε water that Werner almost DIVES in to get. Warm and "soft-water" in taste. Back to bus after one final picture of mist in mountains. Wish it'd stop raining, but Paddy's Fodors assures rain and humidity during monsoon months of July and August. Pity. Long nodding ride back that the guide tries to cheer up with awful jokes; "Sweet Potato: he's a common tater." Getting dark. Copy schedule: baggage and buffet at 7, leave 7:45, train 8:27. Dinner out 7:15, dinner in 7:30. To hotel 6:40, cash a check for $50, buy map book for 3.50 and Xian for 2.90, less than half price of US. Up to room to take off wet clothes and put on clean clothes and get down at 7:15. Werner, Bob, Litvais and Blums, who arrive late, of course, at 7 --- who decide NOT to go! Leave at 7:35. Arrive in rain and walk to candle-lit upstairs room. Phoenix-fan appetizer of hundred-year old (or soy) egg, beef, "egg yolk" like Muenster cheese, pork, cucumber, egg-white shreds, and flower tomato and cucumber and candied maraschino cherries. Egg separate, too. Three fish dishes including my first CHEWABLE abalone, "mousse fish," chicken in various ways and a Peking-like duck with fatter skin (juicier but NOT tastier or as crisp) and saltier and more peanut-butter-like sauce, not as good. Special "golden money" soup tasteless with good "cutlet" croutons with egg on outside, Shanxi vegetable in brown-black for "meat" and another in green for "bone." Millet wine "precious" and "Shanxi famous" is most delicious in lemon-honey flavor, Mao Tai and beer. Watermelon cask for sugar-water and mandarin orange dessert with four kinds of cakes. Good in all, and vaguely worth 10Y. Out at 9, back to hotel to repack, bed about 9:45, after chatting with George.