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The well-prepared winter visitor brings long Johns and sweaters. In summer he comes with short-sleeved wash-and-dry shirts. There are no neckties in China. The climate in summer is a sauna bath; almost everything worth seeing requires climbing. A must in any season is Lomotil or another anti-diarrhetic, and throat lozenges, to combat the dust and coal smoke in the air. The F.F. must be prepared in advance for the virtual or entire absence of: air conditioning, ice water, ice cubes, ice cream, poached eggs, hamburgers, French fries, lamb chops, orange juice, cocktails, nightclubs, good grape wine, potable soft drinks (a prevalent banana concoction tastes like carbonated Brylcreem); cigars, low-tar cigarettes and Di-Gel; Kleenex, Band-Aids, shower curtains, shoeshines; and, with no sense of loss, lawns, pubs, sidewalk cafes, casinos, credit cards, commercials, news, Muzak, golf courses, public tennis courts, headwaiters, muggers and prostitutes.
Whatever else may be missing in the People's Republic, China and the Chinese more than compensate the open-minded visitor. The Foreign Friend leaves with indelible memories effaces and places, good manners and memorable food, candid conversation and cultural confrontation. A jumble of vignettes on a parchment scroll:
In front of The East Is Red department store in Wusih, Carl Schweinfurth, a 6-ft. 6-in. businessman from Mount Vernon, Ill., snaps a Polaroid picture of a young mother with babe in arms. Two minutes later, he hands her the color print. Within one minute after that, a crowd of perhaps 500 people has assembled to look and marvel at the picture.
After much fingering, it is courteously returned to Subject Ma. After this a quintet of F.F.s take a stroll through Wusih's back streets. They are immediately surrounded by laughing, chattering locals, many descending from homeward-bound bicycles. "Ni hao! Ni hao!" (How do you do?) Congeniality on such a scale can be slightly frightening, but it is authentic and spontaneous. Back in the hermetic bus on the way to the railroad station, Richard Lloyd Jones, president of the Tulsa (Okla.) Tribune, mops his brow and remarks: "This is how F.D.R. must have felt riding down Pennsylvania Avenue the day he repealed Prohibition."