Avoiding Strike 3

The missing Langford luggage was retrieved - hooray! Matt's mom, dad, Matt and Dean traveled about an hour by bus yesterday to Kowloon (downtown Hong Kong), ate a late lunch of dim sum, and did a little shopping before heading to the HKG airport to pick up the bags.

I'm traveling in northern China right now, in a car on the way to a factory outside of Nanjing, which was once the capital of China. There's a very large old brick wall that runs around the city, and we can see glimpses of it every now and then. It's amazing to see tall elegant archways where once the wall was solid, but now cars pass through freely underneath. Everyone else in the car - there are 6 of us total - is really quiet right now. I'm not sure if they are tired or just not in the mood to talk, but I've taken to typing this blog to fill the transportation time in the car.

I think I just accidentally offended the owner of the factory, Mr. Chan. I asked Simon, who is Chinese and VP of our office, if he could share any history with us about the area where we were traveling. He deferred to Mr. Chan, who speaks very good English.

Mr. Chan explained that Nanjing used to be the capital of China and is the only city in the country with an ancient city wall still intact around the perimeter of the city. In response, I said "oh yeah, like the Great Wall!"

Strike one.

Clearly, a city wall is NOT like the great wall, as it protects 1 city instead of an entire country. Duh!

I then asked how long it had been since Nanjing was the capital of China.

Strike two.

Mr. Chan quickly put me in my place when he exclaimed "I don't understand how an American can not know this. Beijing became the capital in 1949. China is a world power and people should know this important information..."

In my defense, I knew that Beijing became the capital 61 years ago. I learned it very recently because that is the reason National Day is celebrated on October 1st. What I didn't know was that Nanjing was the capital up until that time. China has such a long history, I figured they had time to bounce the capital around to several different cities.

I'm now remaining silent, hoping to avoid strike 3.