Beijing's Biggest Fake

Ms. Wang has a good point. Why find things to criticize instead of things to marvel at.

During my extended tour of China I was impressed by much more than the buildings or the street merchants, I was wowed by the people of China. They were helpful long before their big show, and what I saw were people who loved their families, all courteous and polite.

China is a wonder to see, and in Beijing their are so many sites and activities I am amazed that you and many others are reporting on the negatives that they root out.

Report on how prostitution is legal, how drugs are not, how the laws in Beijing differ from the U.S.

I am curious, are they still spitting on the streets in Beijing. I was told that they spit out evil spirits. Weird. I saw so much cigarette smoking I knew that the U.S. Tobacco companies are going to make it even with all of the law suits and diminishing U.S. market - they love to puff in China.

The building thing was weird though, you'd think if they had enough time to build a fake facade they could have thrown up at at least the front for real.

China is in a building boom -- had I seen a building under construction it would have spoken to the strength of the economy, not an eye-sore. Shanghai was amazing how a city of skyscrapers popped up overnight. So I don't get that.

But as for the fakes and imitations it is a bit much. My James Bond Omega broke the first week, but my Porsche Design is still ticking. I think the fakes are a good lesson -- real or fake it is all really just so much junk. Watches are passe now that cellphones come so equipped who wants that cumbersome metal junk on your wrist now?

I thought the cellphone phenomenon was weird -- woman and men walking and talking on the their cellphones, yelling to be heard over the person next to them. And I like how when they saw me - white man - aka foreign devil, the locals would stop in their tracks to see what I was doing, wearing, sometimes I thought they knew what I was thinking. Every eye was studying me. It was like being a rock star.

But all in all, I agree with Ms. Wang, find the interesting stuff -- and the stuff that we all have in common as human beings and the unusual. Which reminds me of the hole-in-the-ground toilets and pits. Do they have ceramic commodes this year? My friend and I wore our Harvard Club of Hong Kong polo shirts, with the crests written in Chinese characters, and people would come up to us and pat us on the back while nodding and saying Harvard. We'd say , rah-rah Havvvard! And we were greeted with smiles bigger than ours. I thought China was the experience of a lifetime -- I'd recommend it be on everyone's to-do list. Trust me, you get tired of fakes and a few weird buildings won't bother you at all but the memories you will gain will last a lifetime providing you interesting cocktail conversation. What I thought is weirder then your find, was how they had bamboo Scaffolding on the buildings -- sometimes to build them, or many times, to wash and clean the building -- even large new skyscrapers, had the ubiquitous bamboo. I enjoyed the differences. It was like going to Mars. Everything was different and interesting. I'd love to do it all again.