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The streets are amazingly clean. A mother, holding up a baby boy for a bowel movement on the sidewalk, swiftly bundles up the deposit, which will find its way to a paddy field. Nothing reclaimable or recyclable is left for the garbage dump. There are no garbage dumps to be seen in China. Bands of women polish the streets with straw brooms. In Canton, the trash receptacles are big blue porcelain urns that would grace any American front porch. There are no dogs in Chinese cities.
By 5:30 a.m., in every town and village, the streets fill up with traffic. The narrow roads are as cram-jammed as a Los Angeles freeway — but not with cars. Olive-drab trucks and gray buses honk furiously through an almost impermeable mass of freight-laden pedestrians, carts hauled by horses, water buffaloes, tractors and bent-over peasants, and seas of bicycles and tricycles, many also laden with cargo. Fortunately for the traveler, most cargo is dispatched through the efficient railway system; other long-distance shipments go by boat, sailed, put-putted, poled and paddled along China's endless rivers, canals and coastline.
There are no private cars in China.
In fact, there is only 1 automobile per 10,000 people, which works out to fewer than 100,000 cars in the whole country. Any non-taxi is reserved for high party or military officials, who are cozily protected from the vulgar gaze by frilly curtains. Workers-mostly transport themselves by bicycle ("self-moving vehicle"), a sturdy unisex model that does not have gears, pump or lights, although it is equipped with a bell, in constant use. To buy a new jingling bike, a citizen must produce around $90 and a form from his place of work certifying that he needs one for the good of society. Nonetheless, there are 2 million bicycles in Peking alone, perhaps twice as many in Shanghai. On city streets they form the Great Wheel of China. Non-bicyclists travel by shanks' mare, jampacked buses or a three-wheeled, one-cylinder contraption that can take six passengers. Rickshas have been abolished since the Revolution, but there are still a few pedicabs, tricycles built for three in which the driver pedals and two passengers ride in self-conscious glory.
By and large and mostly small, the Chinese are quite homogeneous in appearance: black-haired, dark-eyed, flat-nosed, small-boned, flat-breasted (the slim, trim women, that is) and fresh-complexioned.
There are no blonds to be seen in China. Thus it should come as no surprise —though it does—that a bevy of American tourists attracts wondering, chuckling crowds. Foreign Friends soon realize that they are both funny (peculiar) and funny (haha) to the Chinese: redheads and blonds and curly longhairs of all colors and sizes and shapes, adipose executives, buxom wives and bewigged widows, all big-nosed, round-eyed, redolent of alien fragrances and, by Chinese standards, outsize, oddly dressed and—face it —ugly. "Are all Americans old?" a shore-bound group from the M.S. Lindblad Explorer is asked. "Are most Americans fat?" The inquiring interpreter is most respectful: old age and adiposity (viz., Chairman Mao) are venerated in China. No, it is explained to him, anyone who can afford a first-class cruise-ship ticket is not likely to be either very young or too lean.