China 2.0

Seat 1A on the plane, with lay flat seating for comfy wumfy sleeping from Hong Kong to Los Angeles.

Well that was China 2.0. For this trip I spent weeks and months intensely studying China. I read an entire book about its history, its origins, its many imperial dynasties, and the communist revolution that formed the modern People's Republic of China. China has the longest continuous civilization in the world, over 5000 years. China has been a unified country for 2200 years. I studied its climates and geography, from the high mountains of the Himalayas and Tibet, to the deserts and grasslands of the northwest & Mongolia, to the vast temperate forests of bamboo and trees that cover most of China, and the subtropical south and southeast. I studied it's 56 ethnic groups, their regional variations, their religions, philosophies & ideologies, their art, their architecture, their languages and writing. I read some famous Chinese literature. I even learned to speak some Mandarin, which is far more than any average traveler would do. I tried its many regional foods, as much as I could stomach. I walked 5 to 8 miles every day for weeks across many of its landscapes, my joints are sore. I read an entire book that compares China to the USA.

China isn't perfect. Like any country, China has its own unique set of problems.

We may look different, but China and the Western world are more similar than we are different. We need to become more like China, and China needs to become more like us. There is a place, and a way of thinking, somewhere, where we should meet in the middle, and be good friends