The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

‘FYravelon . By Jonathan van Bilsen ae | ty View of the canal at the rear of the Forbidden City in Beijing The Olympics in Beijing have certainly given everyone a visual perspective of the new China. When | watched the images of this magnifi- cent city, my mind raced back to my first visit nearly 25 years ago. The Beijing of the eighties was totally different than that of today. The tallest building was no more than three stories high and individuals were not allowed to own cars. It was a city of unadvertised adventure and | fell right into the middle of it. Itwas my last day in the capital city, en route to Singapore. | had con- tacted the airport to confirm my flight, only to be told that | was overbooked and would not be able to leave on schedule. | have never been one to take direction well and was certainly not about to accept this change in events. Instead of a scheduled visit to the Forbidden City, | decided to go to the travel office and straighten out this misunderstanding and then meet my contact at the famous tourist site later in the day. | asked the hotel manager to write the name of the Forbidden City in Chinese characters on a piece of paper for me in the event | needed help in finding it. 62 FOCUS - MAY 2011 MAY.FOCUS.64//indd 62 There was only one travel office and it was near the hotel. Like any- thing else in China at that time, it was government controlled and appeared to be slightly chaotic. A circular desk in the center of a large hall protected agents from hundreds of tourists. | picked a queue and waited patiently. When my turn finally came, | smiled and realized that the agent only spoke Chinese. Fortunately for me the fellow behind me in line spoke Dutch and Chinese and, as | was born in the Netherlands, we managed to translate our way through several languages. Well, it was simple: there were no seats to be had on my flight and that was that. Not willing to accept the answer | asked my Dutch friend to try once more. He suggested we try a different approach. | looked at him and he told me to hand him a ten dollar US bill. He passed it to the attendant as | smiled, realizing how naive | was in the way of worldly matters. | was stunned at the reaction. The agent stood up and started shouting and before | knew it two men in uni- form were whisking me off to a private office. Of course, my Dutch friend had disappeared. During my interrogation it be- came obvious that | was not a foreign agent or a threat to national security, but they explained how six foreigners were executed in China recently for bribing government officials. Surely they did not mean ten dollars; how- ever, nothing seemed to calm the fear running through me. Finally | was released, eager to make my way to the Forbidden City and share my adventure with my wife. | decided to hail a cab and get away from the travel centre as fast as | could. After ten minutes of unsuccess- fully waving at cabs, | was told by an Australian they do not stop along the street, but only at the taxi compound just up the road. | looked where he pointed and thanked him. Now you may think crossing the street was easy, but the Beijing of 1987 had only one main street and it was used by everyone. Fortunately there were no private cars; however 13 million people meant thousands of bicycles travelling in all directions, without any rules. It took me thirty minutes to cross the road and | was nearly run down by a man on a bike carrying a sofa on his back. | walked inside the taxi station only to find it empty. A young girl came 423/11 10:01:33 AM