Observations

• All luxery cars are black or dark blue. There are no SUV's and all vans look like condensed versions of American styles.
• The traffic is wild to a newcomer in China. But once you've ridden in traffic with a competant driver for a few days you begin to recognize how in sinc everyone is with one another. The accidents are minimal and although cars come within inches of one another during a lane change it really is safe. The traffic seems to lean. If you want in another lane you begin to lean towards it and soon you are there. Sometimes our driver would just drive in two lanes until he knew which one suited him. We would stop in the middle of an intersection while he assessed where he was at and everyone around him would just wait. There was no road rage or anger. Everyone used their horn for a friendly acknowledgment that they might drive by you on the shoulder.
• Cars drive up behind a pedestrian and honk and blink thier lights and come within a foot of hitting them but the pedestrian doesn't even flinch.
• Little chinese women have no problems running in high heels.
• Women walk around arm and arm with their girlfriends. Even I got used to this with my chaparone. It is a refreshing sign of friendship. Although I was a little taken back the first time I saw two men with their arms around each other...and then two more and then two more. Eric laughed as he explained it was a cultural thing too. Nothing odd about it.
• You can have a friendly negotiation on a shopping outage but if you walk away without buying something, the merchants turn bi-polar. Eric was cussed at in Chinese a few times. I took lessons and decided to buy and avoid the heated confrontation caused by walking away.
• There are a lot of kind, good people in China. Most are lost. Every time I rode in a taxi or spoke to someone on the street I prayed for them. It was an experience I'll never forget.