The Best Way to Travel

I find myself contemplating a business venture where I would run a travel agency pairing up folks who want to see the world with a team of the folks I love traveling with most: young adults in their late teens/early twenties. You can’t beat ‘em for openness to new experiences, energy and flexibility. I can’t say enough about what fine travelers this team is. I have yet to hear a complaint, a whine, even a snippet of conflict and they have innate capabilities to find the cheapest way to have the richest experience possible. Best of all, I get to be reminded through their eyes every day how exciting new adventures are. From a first air plane ride to first time operating a Chinese washing machine (with no instructions in English, of course) it’s all a treat. And what will be the impact of this trip in their lives? Watching that unfold will be the most interesting part of all.

Our alum Jim Arnold in Shanghai, reminisced with us how the Fellows program had been his ticket as well to new adventures and a life path of greater depth and diversity than he had ever imagined for himself. As a freshman at NC State in 1970 from rural Virginia, it was the Fellows program that took Jim on his first airplane ride to Washington, DC. “I don’t think I’d be living here in Shanghai, having the experiences I’ve had, except for the Fellows program.” In an email after our week in Shanghai, Jim wrote: “I was curious to meet the group, perhaps subconsciously to compare them to my old Fellows Group, of whom I had the highest regard. After meeting your group, I am reminded in some ways of mine. I can see that the Fellows Program is still a vibrant and creative program with a lot of special people. That makes me feel very good to see the program doing so well.

CHINA TIME

I missed this little detail before arriving in China, so was fascinated to discover that in terms of area, I am in the largest country in the world with only one time zone. This single time zone is China Standard Time, or Beijing Time, which is Greenwich Mean Time, plus 8 hours (GMT+8). (We are twelve hours ahead of North Carolina time.) Once upon a time, back in 1912 under the Republic of China, the country was divided into five time zones. These were done away with in 1949 with the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the Communist People’s Republic of China (PRC).

This explains why sunrise here in the eastern part of China happens around 5:00 am and sunset comes about 7:30 pm. In western China, the sun may not rise until 10:00 am, and it sets much later than normal as well. The uniformity of time allows for a single unified national news announcement, programmed simultaneously all over the country, which serves to eliminate confusion or conflicting elements in hearing the daily news. Aside from the craziness of adjusting time of day to sunlight, I find myself imagining the appeal of one time zone for the US. It would be a win for those of us who detest resetting digital watches when we travel, who wonder what would be the impact on that tricky timing of ‘closing of the polls/reporting the voting outcome’ thing when we have a national election, and who miss seeing David Letterman because we are already asleep...

The China Fellows