Highest, longest, fastest

Bargaining and deal-making is in the Chinese DNA. A Marwari businessman dealing with China acknowledges that India’s traditional trading communities, the Marwaris and the Gujaratis, are no match for the Chinese. Here the price depends not on the intrinsic worth of the commodity for sale but the amount the customer is willing to pay. Mark-ups can be over 100 per cent. In Beijing’s famed Hongqiao pearl market, Chinese sales girls even drag you physically into their booths to display an array of fake designer purses, shoes and watches. The only places where you cannot haggle are the state-run chain of Friendship Stores. I spotted Chairman Mao’s little red book in the Friendship Store near the Ming tombs priced at 180 yuan. A colleague beat down the price of the same book to 10 yuan in Tiananmen Square.

Their real comrades

While desi communists are edgy about burgeoning American influence, their Chinese comrades have no such qualms. As China’s ambassador to India Sun Yuxi points out, “We eat more food from McDonalds, we wear more blue jeans, our trade with the US is ten times more than India.” There is a Starbucks restaurant at the foot of the Great Wall and in the Forbidden City the signboards announce that restoration is courtesy American Express.

Classless society?

There may be no official first, second and third class in Chinese trains, but the difference in comfort levels is apparent. The most luxurious class has only four soft sleepers per compartment and western style loos. The next grade has six hard sleepers per compartment with mattresses and what we think of as Indian-style toilets. At the bottom are the chair cars. The first class equivalent is occupied by Western tourists and a few party officials. Hun Chinese dominate what amounts to the second class. The chair cars are filled with Tibetans.

A limousine drove right down the platform at Beijing station so that a party official could board the train. And there was a fleet of cars at the Lhasa platform waiting to receive him. China is spanking clean. The deserted platforms are in sharp contrast to ours, since except for bona fide passengers and attendants of VIPs, no one else is permitted on the platform.

No kidding

The effect of China’s forcible family planning campaign was apparent on the journey from Beijing to Lhasa by train. There were only two children in the half a dozen second class coaches and none in the first class compartments. On the other hand in the third class, as in India, one saw many wailing babies and fidgety children. While Huns are permitted to have only one child per couple, Tibetans, particularly herdsmen, have more latitude where family planning is concerned.

Shahrukh minus music

There are visible signs of glasnost all over China. Satellite dishes which telecast western TV news channels may still be forbidden, but DVDs and videos from around the world are freely available. You even get videos of Shahrukh Khan’s dances synchronised with Chinese songs, since the Chinese seem more taken up with his nimble footwork and gestures than the accompanying Bollywood numbers. State television has translated 40 Hindi films into Chinese and Tibetan, as well as TV serials such as Koshish: Ek Asha and Rishte.