Andy, Dottie
and I left our hometown airport at sunrise on
November 15, 2000 and flew United Airlines into Denver, then San
Francisco, into Tokyo, and landed in Shanghai, China exactly 24
hours later. We returned on December 3. Even with all of
our planning, we could not have imagined everything that would
happen to us in that span of time.
The main characters in this small odyssey are Gail, Andy and Dottie, VvJohn, and Eric. The web author is Gail. I am married and we have two married daughters and three grandsons, Russ, Ryan, and Logan.
Andy and Dottie are our longtime friends who live in our small hometown.
They are semi-retired teachers. Andy taught high school history, civics and economics, and now teaches part time at the Community College. Dottie taught art and still has classes in her backyard art studio. They have traveled all over the world all of their adult lives, and wanted to make the China trip with me. Andy has also ridden his bicycle from the Atlantic Ocean in Florida to the Pacific ocean in California. It was great to have experienced travelers like Andy and Dottie with me on this trip. They are cheerful and energetic, and fun to be with.VvJohn is my internet friend who lives in Shanghai. He is about the age of my daughter. He is a computer genius and helped me very much through the years with my computer. He builds websites using Flash and Cold Fusion and has worked in one of Shanghai's modern internet cafes as the on-site technician. His girlfriend, Lili, is one of the most beautiful young women I have ever seen. Vv has not traveled much and readily accepted our offer to accompany us on the trip. We could never have done and seen all that we did without his help.
Eric is our very good friend who visited in our home several times while he was in the U.S. in 1999. He once told us that it was his dream to show us the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, but when he left the U.S. to return home to the other side of the world, he thought he would never see us again. He has other dreams and aspirations in life, and part of this trip was to prove to him that dreams can come true. At the home of Eric's parents in northern China one cold November evening, his son, Li Mu, expressed a dream of his. Dottie remarked, "Well, first you must dream the dream, then work to make it come true."We traveled between cities by train, and had beautiful compartments for our long, interesting train rides.