When I first visited Xiamen, China in 1990, it was not a biz trip, which came a year later.
I accompanied my late mother who revisited her parents' ancestral home in their primitive land. It took us 5 difficult hours to arrive from Xiamen by a minivan to Nan An. (Today, the same trip will be less than 2 hours by any vehicle on their super highway.)
I called the relatives to build a make-make bathroom and toilet before we arrived. They used different method to do the same thing, as I realized. It was surreally fun.
Where I slept, their wandering pigs came as close as my face, almost ready to offer a needless kiss. I was asked to stay at a hotel but I chose to be otherwise, to be close to my elderly mother and to tell a story with pride.
But I enjoyed all the niceties of being hosted at their best, by close relatives. They came from all corners of the same village. They related their personal stories, one after another, unrelentlessly.
We had hardly time to sleep. But when we had, we always woke up refreshed, anticipating a new eventful day. The 17-day trip was personally my intellectual realization of moments of truth, lessons for me for life.
When I revisited my relatives in Shenzhen, away from their then primitive village, I saw an astronomical contrast of how much they have transformed themselves positively. They owned factories. Lived in modern homes, not just houses. They drove imported cars, no longer the roughened vans.
I witnessed how they have come out of their crucible of living, to breathe and live more normally. It was a lesson in humanity in modern times.
I always enjoy telling this story, unprecedented in today's history.
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