Beijing

And on Friday morning we begin our homeward journey, reluctantly leaving Ringha, where a crunchy frost heralds another blue sky day. We are flying to Beijing, via Kunming, for our last weekend before returning to New York. My heart sinks when I see the haze of pollution from the window of the plane - a stark contrast with the clean mountain air we've just left. We've booked into the Cote Cour, a new boutique hotel in one of Beijing's hutongs - the ever-scarcer neighborhoods of narrow lanes and old courtyard houses. My heart sinks lower when one of the reception staff drops Mike's computer bag with a thunk - not a good first impression. The hotel has carried out a painstaking, chic renovation of an ancient courtyard house, which is quite an achievement in Beijing, but for us it never quite lives up to its promise - or its price tag of over US$330 a night for the best rooms. We're staying in one of the largest of the 14 rooms, a superior suite, but it's not exactly vast and, annoyingly, is missing basic amenities, such as a kettle to make tea or coffee, or information packs for guests. Our room faces the main courtyard, whose focal point is an attractive goldfish pond, and guests can sit out here (at least until it gets dark, because there's only the dimmest of lighting).

Fortunately, we're soon heading out to dinner. Taxis don't like driving along the hutong, either to pick up or drop off, so we walk for a few minutes down the lane to get to a main road. If you don't mind the inconvenience, you certainly get an insight into old Beijing life by staying in a hutong - all around, people are getting haircuts, having clothes and shoes repaired, and (in housing without modern sanitation) taking their chamber pots to communal restrooms at either end of the lane. This particular neighborhood isn't within walking distance of Beijing's main attractions, but we're on our way to another hutong district which is near the Drum Tower. There we meet up with an English friend, Lewis, to eat at Dali, a celebrated restaurant which is run by his girlfriend Vivian. This has a magical setting - another restored courtyard house - and we eat outdoors under strings of red lanterns. The food is Yunnanese, but beats most dishes we've eaten in Yunnan hands down. A dish of crispy greens lightly fried with shrimp is my favorite.

On Saturday morning, one of Mike's colleagues has nobly volunteered to help us buy a rug and she leads us to an obscure but wonderful warehouse which is a treasure trove of carpets from inner Mongolia and other distant provinces. We choose a dark blue and beige rug with an abstract but distinctly Chinese pattern, which we'll put in our dining room. Mike (also nobly) agrees to carry it home in his luggage, and later we negotiate at a local hardware store by means of theatrical gestures to buy a checkered plastic sheet and tape to wrap the rug - Mike will travel looking like a bag lady.

But first we dress up for an evening at The Legation organized by Simon Elegant, TIME's Beijing bureau chief. The Legation Quarter is a cluster of ultra-fashionable restaurants and bars in five stately stone mansions, originally built around 1903 to house the American Embassy. When American diplomats withdrew from China after the Communist victory in 1949, the complex languished. Recently, it was completely renovated - not for the diplomats, who long since returned to a new embassy, but as a uniquely grand social quarter. We begin with drinks at a rooftop bar, overlooking the elegant mansions and just a stone's throw from Tian'anmen Square. Then we go next door for dinner at Maison Boulud, opened this summer by Daniel Boulud - the first global celebrity chef to try his luck in China's capital. Simon has put together an amazing group of Chinese and Western Beijing friends - artists, politicians, publishers, academics. We dine at a long table in a high-ceilinged room with a polished tile floor - certainly a setting fit for an Ambassador. The free flow of conversation (not to mention delicious food and wine) is a small indicator of how far American/Chinese relations have come in the last thirty years, since diplomatic recognition of the PRC in 1979.

It is a wonderful finale to our month in China, but of course a far cry from the desolate villages of Guizhou or from the urban poor, living right next to our hutong hotel and throughout the country. I've delayed posting this until days after our return to daily life in New York, wanting time to reflect on all we've seen. It was all, to borrow my mother's words, 'absorbingly interesting', and yet how to make sense of a country as vast as China? I may come back to this in later posts, but just say now that it's impossible to exaggerate the huge disparities between rich and poor, urban and rural in today's China. Reading a New York Times article on October 23rd, I'm reminded that in this land of 1.33 billion people, 800 million are still classified as peasants and 500 million live on less than $2 a day. This year China has celebrated not only the Beijing Olympics but also the best thirty years in

 its modern history, in terms of peace, stability and economic growth. The soldiers are no longer dead and dying by the side of the road, as witnessed by Max and Audrey. The elderly villagers of Guizhou eke out a living on the land, while their children work as migrant laborers in the cities, but many of the grandchildren (who are being raised by those grandparents in the villages) will be going to college.