A view of the entrance to the courtyard that leads to The Forbidden City.

My 2 weeks in China have come to a close…I was having a conversation with a coworker yesterday about my observations while in country…mostly surrounding the seemingly inescapable notion of interrelatedness…In only a decade, the Chinese people seem to have absorbed a whole lotta Western style, technology and pathos (mostly the consumerism)…or at least that’s true in the city…

The country life is much different…compartmentalized…but somehow patiently waiting for the delivery of a promise…people in the rural areas seem content to wait for the physical world to catch up to them…the delivery of infrastructure, the helpful hand of an NGO, the news…while IMHO most Americans would be struck at how little a village has or how dilapidated a town might be…these folks all understand which technologies are helpful to them…cell phones are ubiquitous….even more so than in the US…

The head of a rural Chinese village working it on his cell...

So while the head of a village of 88 people that has maybe 2 vehicles, basic plumbing, electric and some chickens may be sitting in his very cool tree-fort like house…he’s on his cell phone pretty regular-like…brokering, hagling, managing,…I was struck by how consistent the pace and mood of each village we visited appeared…I could see unwinding in such a space…free of the keeping up w/the Joneses imprimateur of American lifestyle in particular.

Anyway, there is a lot to think about coming off of this leg…certainly the realization that China is no joke…not some far away land where they make the goods for Wal-Mart’s supply chain…but a place that is leveling the playing field w/the West pretty methodically…oh and btw, they’re pretty nice people too.

More when I land in Tokyo…