10 minutes before the plane from San Francisco arrived with all the other tour members. We met and went to the Hilton. Spent a couple days in Hong Kong sightseeing shopping (bought several watches for $10 American which are still running very nicely 2 years later).

Finally the big day came and we took the train for Guan- gzhou (Canton) which is very crowded city on the Pearl River which itself carries all kinds of boat traffic 24 hours a day. We got our first intro- duction to native Chinese res- taurants and food and had lunch in a place where several marriage receptions were being held (the restaurant was about 4 stories high and had many sep- arate rooms). Suddenly all hell seemed to break loose with

deafening explosions, which after we recovered from the surprise turned out to be strings of fire crackers-about 30 feet long actually hung from the 2nd floor balcony down over the entrance way and lit. You really had to hold your ears, but it was just a Chinese way of celebrating the weddings.

Next we flew to Xian and saw the place from which the Chinese communists kidnapped Chiang Kai Chek to force him to stop fighting the communists and unify with them to fight the Japanese. He heard them coming and took off over the hills in his pajamas but they got hem anyway. Xian is also the city whre the thousands of ceramic staues were unearthed. There were part of an afterlife army set inplace by the emporer Chin (Quin) from whom the country gets its name. The city dates from the second century BC and was once the worlds largest city being on the Silk Road and the starting point for all caravans to central Asia and Europe. It was a fantastic sight (and site). The excavations cover an area about the size of a foot- ball field and the Chinese have

built a building over the whole thing. Picture the size of it and with no central supporting pil- lars.

A rather fantastic accompli- shment.

Next we took off for Urumchi a city about 3270 miles due west of Beijing (Pek- ing). It is only about 200 miles east of the Soviet border and is mostly populated with peoples of the same tribes as inhabit the adjoing areas in the Soviet Union such as the Usbeks, Tadjiks, Uighurs, and Kazakhs. Although the whole area is very dry and desertous we took a couple of trips into the moun- tains and found snow all over the place in one canyon and a beautiful mountain lake with barren dry mountains. mountains at one end and tall, forested and snow covered mountains at the other end and the lake itself couldn't have been more than 1-1 1/2 miles long. Quite an unusual

contrast.

to the

went down famous Turpan depression which if 470 feet below sea level. Turpan town is literally an oasis and brings in water by means of underground ditches called qua'ants exactly like I saw in Iran and Afghanistan when I visited there in 1975. This identical engineering solution to the water problem is not surprising because Turpan too was on the Silk Road and lots of trade relations with India and Persia (Modern Iran). They raise the juiciest and best melons and seedless grapes there that I have ever tasted even though I come from California.

One amusing event occurred here. We were driving along a country road when suddenly we passed a kind of side road with hundreds of people in it. The guide said it was a w wedding so we all got out and mingled. I heard some music in the depths of the crowd so instead of working my way through the mass of people I went into the field beyond

a row of trees that bordered the driveway until I came to the "band" which consisted of one man with some sort of horn and 3 others with various per- cussion instruments. They were banging and tooting away when I cut back in from the field to the row of trees right beside them and across from the crowd about 15 feet away. The music and rhythm were catchy so I started tapping time and swaying with it. I must have been an apparition to the natives with my red hair and wearing a bright green pant- suit much more vivid than their clothes. But they saw me sort of dancing by myself behind the "band" and motioned for me to come over into the drive- way which I did. Since they seemed to get a kick out of my dancing I began to do everything I could think of from the Charleston, the Twist and current disco movements. They moved backs to make room and I. ham that I am, enter- tained them for just about 15 minutes. Finally a man stepped out from the crowd and started to do some sort of a dance and I stood in front of him and attempted to do just as he was doing. The crowd went wild with this and clapped and cheered. After a bit I was really pooped out and seeing one of the other women of our group in the audience I hauled her out and told her it was her tun to entertain which she did.

Later, back in the bus I was telling some of the others who had not gotten up to the area of the band about my dancing and about this man. I said it might be that the Chinese had dances that only the men danced and to see an American woman dancing a mans dance was the cause of all the laughter and enthusiasm. One of the men in our group not knowing how truly he spoke said, "It was sort of a trans- vestite dance you might say." I thought to myself, "yes, you