A Half-Baedeker For China Tourists

Journeys by presidential assistants and reporters notwithstanding, it will still be some time before sweating, camera-clutching hordes of American tourists start shuttling across the Hong Kong border to begin the already standard Canton-Shanghai-Peking run. But the prospects for future tours are mind-bending: "Swim the Yangtze in Chairman Mao's wake," for example; or perhaps "Join the Harvest at the Sino-Albanian Friendship Commune." For the present, however, the few Americans allowed into China in the sneakered steps of the U.S. table tennis team have accumulated sufficient experiences to allow construction of a half-Baedeker.

Imperialist Relic. Hotels in China's Big Three tourist cities are something less than Hiltonish. Peking's Hsin Chiao (New Sojourn) Hotel has scantily furnished but adequately comfortable rooms, most with bath, for the equivalent of $5 a day. while Shanghai's Hoping (Peace) Hotel charges roughly the same. Its rooms and general ambience are much pleasanter. to some Westerners at least, perhaps because the Hoping is a relic of imperialist days. A.P. Tokyo Correspondent John Roderick, who knew the Hoping as the Palace in 1948, found during his visit last April that it was "aging beautifully."

Canton's Tung Fang (East Wind) Hotel, however, stands in unhappy contrast. Wall Street Journal Reporter Robert Keatley found it "dark and dingy . . . perhaps China's worst," and Timesman Tillman Durdin recalls "the foul, surly service we got in Canton, perhaps because the hotel was overtaxed then by trade-fair visitors."

Chinese hotels are not air conditioned, despite sweltering summers, and the Americans found that room service was undependable. The crude domestic soap and toilet paper was best avoided. Room telephones in the Tung Fang, Roderick discovered, could be made to work once the dialing code was divined (dial 666 for the front desk)--but he had to go downstairs to learn the instructions.

All But the Quack. Restaurants were good, and food prices downright cheap, even in the best ones. Western dishes were scarce. "We ate Western food only at breakfast," reports Newsday Publisher William Attwood. "It was pretty bad." Roderick found his Chinese meals equaling or surpassing the best of Tokyo's fine Chinese restaurants. "Everything was just delicious," he recalls, "particularly a Peking duck dinner of six or seven courses at only $2.50 per person." Henry Kissinger also enjoyed a Peking duck banquet during his visit last month. "We ate everything but the quack," reported a Kissinger aide. So good was the food that Kissinger reportedly gained five pounds during his two-day stay.

Once meals are completed, the average evening on the town tends to turn into an early snooze. Chinese opera and ballet are available, but themes are heavily propagandized. Atop the Tung Fang is a club boasting a small orchestra. The tunes run to Peking hit-parade items or swingy outdated Western numbers. The wall decor consists mostly of choice quotations from the Chairman--in Chinese, of course. Bar girls and prostitutes, once a feature of nightclubs in China, are no longer in evidence.

At the Hsin Chiao bar, habitues advise visitors to stick to the excellent domestic beer. Chinese champagne ($2 a bottle) is cloyingly sweet, and the fiery mao-tai, a vodka-like spirit distilled from millet that is a favorite formal banquet tipple, reams out the unwary Western esophagus like a Roto-Rooter.

Wherever the tourist wanders in China, one of the China Travel Services' ubiquitous guides will be at his side. For most Westerners, help from the guides is essential: few Chinese speak English. The guides so far encountered by Statesiders have proved amiable and helpful, and their English is workable. In general, guides stick with a traveler in only one area. Once launched on the flight from Canton to Peking ($39 one way), or the 25 1/2-hr. Canton-Shanghai express, the traveler is on his own until scooped up at his destination by another guide.

Inscrutable Joys. Both trains and planes are kept wondrously neat, onboard food is excellent, the supply of hot tea is endless, and ticket prices are reasonable. Loudspeakers, however, relentlessly blare selections from the Mao-glorifying "The East Is Red" or the equally ear-splitting "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman." (Three guesses as to who the helmsman happens to be.)

Aside from the one-upmanship values of a trip to China, the joys of China travel are largely inscrutable. There are few of the usual tourist attractions that draw the average American globetrotter. Museums, closed in the confusion of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in many cases have yet to reopen, though Imperial Peking's excellent Palace Museum can be visited if special permission is obtained.

Indomitable travelers will find positive virtues, however. Tipping, for instance, is strictly forbidden. Shopping may on occasion be rewarding: a few authentic antiques can be turned up and some handicraft items are excellent. Personal honesty is impressively high: travelers find it almost impossible to throw even an exhausted toothbrush away without having a dutiful chambermaid pursue them to return it. Some personal relations, in fact, offer genuine pleasures. "Courtesy and politeness," says Roderick, "will get you treated well almost everywhere in China today."

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