Getting to Guangzhou… barely

  There is a greater genetic difference between a dolphin and a porpoise than between a human being and a chimpanzee. This might help explain the apelike behavior of the buffoons at the Tianjin airport, seemingly determined to ensure we missed our flight to Guangzhou. My whirlwind business trip through four Chinese cities this week included what was to have been a quick 24-hour stopover in Tianjin, China’s fourth-largest city and a leading business hub. (More than half of the Fortune 500 Global companies have branch offices here.) Though a heavily industrial city, we hoped we could steal a couple of spare hours to roam around as tourists. We ... [Read More]

This Is as Texas as it Gets

How the bareback bronco and bull riders made it upstairs in the Allen (Texas) Event Center to meet visitors in the private suites is beyond me. After their bone-rattling rides on animals that clearly resented the invasion of personal space the riders represented, these guys should have been in a hospital being tended to by a team of orthopedic surgeons and neurologists. But they made it, and they couldn't have been nicer, which was in keeping with the spirit of the Texas Stampede weekend in Allen, northeast of Dallas, where I brought my 15-year-old son, Matt, as guests of the Allen Economic Development team in ... [Read More]

Careful what you eat in the land of the Nine Dragons

  You might think your biggest culinary concern in China would be your hosts serving you a still-alive animal or foul-smelling fungus. Not so much. Perhaps you think that by avoiding street vendors in favor of established restaurants you’re more likely to find foods that won’t make you sick. Uh-uh. Though China works hard to suppress news damaging to its image, do a little research and you’ll learn that the biggest health threat in Chinese eateries is “gutter oil,” which, believe it or not, is even fouler than it sounds. Cooking oil is like gold in China, where virtually every recipe requires a wok full of it, and goes for a ... [Read More]

Atlantis Lost No More

According to legend, the fabled “Lost City of Atlantis” sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune.” Some 12,000 years later, Atlantis Paradise Island shows evidence of enough real fortune to make one wonder whether the mythical city ever disappeared. The resort, a development of South African hotel magnate Sol Kerzner, rises out of the Caribbean Sea like a sparkling city that has just been discovered. And while the origins of the mythical Atlantis remain open for debate, there can be no doubting the appeal of its modern-day namesake. For three days this month, my wife Mary and I had the pleasure of exploring ... [Read More]

Dawn’s Early Light

  The aircraft is chased west by daybreak, while below us a city by a river or a mountain range awakes, over and over again, lives breaking free from the sleepy clouds on which they lay their heads. There’s another big river, its conversation with the land changing the course of each. Like a shark we keep moving, gobbling up the miles but not the hours, which always catch up, reigning over every food chain, humbling any speed you can muster. Another dawn catches us headed to where the oilsands weep oil in the boreal forest. The day comes on like a Rothko painting, suffused with the deep ... [Read More]

Shark fins and chicken testicles

Many Asian cultures place great importance on visitor’s willingness to eat any local food presented to them. Knowing this, and always wanting to make a good impression, I’ve never refused anything offered, which is why on past trips I’ve downed without hesitation live bugs, snake pancreas (cut from the still-alive scaled beast at my table) and steaming yellow crab brains, among other things. Today, I broke my cardinal rule, refusing, I believe for the first time, to eat the proffered local delicacy. My refusal wasn’t based on any assumed revulsion for the taste or texture of the food in question. Quite the opposite – by all accounts the ... [Read More]

Holes You Can Drive a Truck Through

The first cultural signal from a trip to Alberta’s energy region is the approximately 16-to-1 ratio of men to women on the 50-seat flight to Edmonton from Denver. The veined and snowy landscape stretches away in whites and browns and blacks, the cultured marble countertop of North America … or perhaps its vanity. At the Edmonton airport, signs alert arriving workers where to stand to wait for their shuttles to the Kearl and CRNL projects. The geography and even time itself are measured by these projects: Housing developments in Ft. McMurray, where modest dwellings go for $700,000-plus, are referred to as “early Suncor” or “middle Albian.” ... [Read More]

Demonstrations, Dragon Hill and dinner in a tent.

  Soo and I strolled out of our hotel last night and into the middle of what looked for all the world to be a war zone. We were surrounded by thousands of police, fully armored in their riot gear and ready for battle. We hadn’t the slightest clue what was going on. Soo, a sensible woman, was in favor of getting ourselves elsewhere – any elsewhere would do – but that seemed like so much less fun then wading into the troops deployed right in front of us. I mean, how often does somebody deposit an army on your doorstep? We wound our way around and through ... [Read More]

Occupy Pyongyang!

You think income inequality in America is bad? Come visit North Korea. Yes, we have some significant issues with the concentration of wealth in America. But the North Korean 99% would kill to have our problems. America’s poor get excited over things like McDonald’s adding the McRibb back to the menu and the iPod coming in sparkly new colors. In North Korea 33% of the population is undernourished, and few have ever seen an iPod. In America citizens can come together in massive protests, demanding change and equality, generally unmolested by the police. Those few protesters who, from time to time, are arrested, are generally released within 24 hours In ... [Read More]

Bourbon, Bats and Bluegrass

  Google "Kentucky stereotypes" and you'll get lots of responses, few of them flattering. Those topping the list include hillbillies, moonshiners and family trees without limbs. As a native Kentuckian I object! What's wrong with moonshine? In truth, Kentucky is a rather remarkle state, home to high-brow events like the Kentucky Derby, and a place where lots of things deeply rooted in the fabric of America are made. After all, where would our national pastime be without Louisville Slugger? What you don't know about Kentucky may surprise you. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth (the others being Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Originally a part of Virginia, in ... [Read More]