Flying to Xi'an

Beijing has a population of about 22 million spread among about 6,490 square miles, so needless to say, we easily experienced it all in three nights and two days, and we were ready to move to our next destination: Xi'an.

My morning American-style breakfast and double espresso cappuccinos were delicious each morning at the Mercure.  Fortunately, our schedule only allowed time for two cups, or I might have never slept in Beijing.

That would have been a shame, because our beautiful room had been very comfortable during our stay, though I'm not sure why the room design called for an opaque glass wall on the bathroom.  It looks stylish, but functionally means that you can't get up to check your email in the bathroom without disturbing your roommate with substantial light, which can be a problem when you're dealing with jet lag and a 15-hour time difference while trying to work remotely.  (The photo is actually of our Xi'an hotel room, but Beijing's was nice too).

Yuan told us there had been some problem with seating arrangements for our flights.  I'm not sure how the seats could possibly have ended up quite as scrambled as they were if there had not been some grand plan for us to mix it up, because most of us sat next to someone else on the tour, just not our travel partners from home.

I can't say the overall experience of flying to Xi'an-Xianyang was painful, but it did blow the best part of the day and paled in comparison to cruising between destination ports while you're basically chillin' out on a floating resort.  Still, I completed five cross-word puzzles in the 99 cent magazine I brought from home --- I'd say about a nickel's worth --- so I did accomplish something.

A bullet-train instead of a generic flight with the usual airport check-in rigmarole would have been more intriguing, but considering how little we paid for this packaged tour, I actually have no idea how they could afford to include everything they did on this remarkable trip.

More so than a bullet train, I wish we would have had an extra couple of days in Xi'an to ride bikes on the ancient city wall, stroll around the cool downtown area that our bus drove through on the way to our hotel, and visit the countryside, which in the following robotically-narrated video looks to be gorgeous.



Xi'an feels like a more human-oriented city than Beijing, but even here, construction continues unabated.

It seems like the same builder must erect six to twelve identical 30-story buildings covering a full city block almost simultaneously, and similar developments by that same builder or others go up on another ten or more identical plots within the same area.  Perhaps they are all built by the government, which after all does own all the land in China.

Because these skyscrapers are being constructed in a city which has undergone rapid organic growth since farmers discovered the "Terra Cotta Warriors" in 1974, which became one of the Wonders of the World and made Xi'an a tourist mecca boom town, it isn't as immediately demand-disassociated as the famous "ghost cities," which initially are totally bereft of people.



Yuan said Xi'an has been targeted for tremendous growth by the central government, and so they have ramped up construction to prepare for the city to expand from a population of 9 million to 12 million in the next two years.

Even then, it still won't be what they consider to be a big city in China.

This centrally-planned but seemingly unbridled --- talk about your Yin and Yang --- construction expansion is a major part of China's impressive Gross Domestic Product growth.

It might be inferred that China's booming economy, not unlike desert communities in the USA that experience periodic booms which become self-perpetuating when more construction workers require housing to continue building more homes, could hit a major bust should inevitable building industry layoffs occur when construction slows, especially if the underlying source of jobs in other sectors like manufacturing does not materialize as planned.




As noted previously, the unique Chinese Crony-Capitalist/Communist economy--- once again, quite a Yin-Yang --- is nourished by its symbiotic relationship with the capitalist west, and especially the United States, where China undercuts our pricing, even if they have to do so at a short-term loss, in order to continue growing their industrial economy to create jobs.

Perhaps because he is a builder rather than a politician, Donald Trump seems to be the first American President to fully grasp that this gives us a strong negotiating position with China regarding trade, where our markets are free and open to their products while they protect their own markets with tariffs and red-tape.

It will be interesting to see how history will interpret what 90% of media stories currently call misguided and bumbling foreign trade policies by a man they openly mock as being unfit to be President, ironically accusing him of being a fascist, when a true fascist would kill anyone daring to express such opinions in private, much less broadcast them throughout the world.