China generally: 2

For the first time, in China I didn't feel like the king of the world.

Everywhere else, not just on this trip, but on my trips to Russia and in the countries I passed through to get there, being an American felt like being a Roman must have felt like 2000 years ago. Not that other people didn't feel proud of their countries, but we all knew who was The Big Cheese.

Not in China. In China we were a side show at best, the barbarians visiting the true center of the universe, where history is counted in millennia, not centuries, and citizens are counted by the hundreds of millions. Vendors saw us as rubes, giggly teen-aged girls took pictures of one another with us as if we were trained monkeys, and we became invisible among the crowds of Chinese people looking at what was, after all, their culture and history, not ours. Arthur, our guide, taught us the characters for "Middle Kingdom", what the Chinese write as the name of their country, and we pointed them out to one another on signs like illiterates proudly recognizing an 'A' or an 'M'.

As thrilling as it was to stand on the Great Wall; as beautiful as the Li River landscapes were; I suspect that the direct encounter with that alternative view of the universe may be the experience of China that lasts longest in my memory.