Arriving at the mausoleum of Mao Zedong on Tian'anmen Square, I looked expectantly to join a long line of Chinese tourists awaiting their moment to view Mao's body, only to learn that (like a great number of major exhibits in Beijing) the mausoleum was closed to visitors this autumn because it's undergoing renovation for the Beijing Olympics (2008). I can't deny that the spectacle of his refrigerated body held for me at least as much morbid fascination as curious interest in the man as a historical figure and cultural icon. And thus disappointed by this development, I mused that perhaps the real reason for closing the mausoleum was to hide the evidence that Mao has been turning in his grave of late: watching China grind from feudalism to communism to capitalism in half of a century can't be good for his repose.

On the Bund, along the west bank of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, the morning sun illuminates the Victorian edifices from an era even before Mao's time. These old buildings, once bold proclamations of European wealth and power, were the seat from which Colonials had exercised their commercial interests in China; England had made a killing as the official pusher and pimp of the Chinese empire, setting up opium dens and brothels, strong-arming the decaying, dissolute Chinese monarchy with firepower when they tried to outlaw the drug that was devouring their cities. Today those façades appear quaint and antique. Freshly-scrubbed for tourists, they now overlook a wide pedestrian path that curves along the riverbank and hums with the traffic of families, lovers, and raffishly clad youths, chattering, snapping photos, sucking Coca-Cola, badgering their parents to buy all manner of trinkets and toys on offer, and generally basking in the glow of their emerging prosperity. Above them, shiny towers of glass and steel rise like a golden promise across the river in Pudong, as if proclaiming the victory of Chinese capitalist self-determination. After dark the buildings become gargantuan video billboards and their spectacular display of lights over the river turns every Shanghai night into a gorgeous celebration of consumerism; nearby on Nanjing Road, shoppers throng and bustle through the neon lanes.

If "communism" means a classless society with a centrally planned economy in which the state owns the primary means of production, then poor old Mao—as the man who fought for it, forged it, and upheld it for decades—was abandoned long ago. Though Mao is still revered, frozen in his crystal casket, the current and palpable zeitgeist in China was neatly voiced in 1993 by one of his successors, Deng Xiaoping: "To get rich is glorious." This new political design, coupled with the complete disintegration of free universal education and affordable healthcare for ordinary citizens, suggests that the only thing still communist about China is the name of the party that continues to rule it with an iron hand.

This was my first visit to China and, perhaps naively, I had expected it to look and feel more like a "Third World" and communist country and less like a shopping mall. Even after spending the first four days of the trip in Shanghai, I still believed that once outside this flagship city of modernity, the "real" China would present itself, someplace more like India: mired in insatiable poverty, broken and crumbling yet reverberating with ancient history and flamboyant diversity. But, in fact, none of this proved to be true—for better or for worse, quite the opposite.

Travel in China is much more comfortable than in India: Roads are modern, wide, and in good repair. Buses are comfortable (air conditioning was standard) dependable, and not over-stuffed. Trains are clean and relatively roomy, with proper waste disposal facilities. In fact, everywhere we went, even in the smaller cities, there was little evidence of the physical decay one sees in India. China's infrastructure is modern and fully-functioning; power is reliable; water is plentiful; though the air is quite foul with industrial pollution—probably worse than in India—city streets are free of trash and frequently lined with trees and bushes; stray dogs and livestock are nowhere to be seen.

Gone are the days of those famous photos featuring four lanes of wall-to-wall bicycles thronging the city streets. Your average Chinese urbanite today is far more likely to drive a moped or motorbike, or perhaps one of the tiny, three-wheeled cars fondly referred to as "mice." The streets of mid-sized cities are rapidly filling to capacity even with four-wheeled compacts of Chinese make, while Shanghai and Beijing brim with GMs and Toyotas. The Chinese automobile market is six times that of India (but still less than one-third that of the US). Compared to India, the Chinese middle classes are huge; at least in the urban areas, they seem to be the overwhelming majority. And while the middle-class Chinese still wouldn't have quite the purchasing power or living standards of the middle-class American, I found it far more rare to see anyone begging or sleeping on the street than one ordinarily sees in any US city. (This turns out to be one of the "mixed blessings" of authoritarian rule: housing for migrant workers is strictly regulated, both ensuring a certain minimum civilized standard of living and preventing the development of slums while controlling the movement and intimate lives of the workers. But this is a subject for another post.)

Still, it's true that the rural areas are a different world from the cities. For one thing, I didn't see cars in any of the agricultural villages we glimpsed along the highways between Xi'an and Beijing, a distance of at least a thousand kilometers (a similar distance from Delhi to Bombay or from Chicago to Washington, DC). But I noticed only a single instance of anyone riding a mule-cart (or any animal-powered vehicle). The otherwise gorgeous countryside was also dotted with scores of belching factories and proud power plants: I counted over half a dozen nuclear power plants just along the roads we took. Yes, there's poverty in the villages compared to the cities, but in magnitude, depth, and desperation, it simply doesn't appear to compare to that in Indian slums. China's rural situation actually reminded me more of Eastern Europe in the 1980s—in many ways better off than rural India today, or even rural Mexico for that matter.

But for me, the most enjoyable aspect of the trip was the challenge and opportunity presented to communicate with people across an immense language gap, for I speak not a word of Chinese and English hasn't much penetrated China. Utterly perplexed at how complex ideas are communicated through a pictorial language, staring at Chinese signs without a key left me mystified, my mind twisting into knots of frustration.

But in the pursuit of an edible meal, a bus ticket, or night's lodging, I got to experience the patient warmth and good-humored curiosity many Chinese displayed toward me and my partner, both as outsiders and as Indians. Wherever we went, people wanted to chat—or at least try. Ordering a meal in a restaurant typically provided amusement not only for the clutch of waitstaff who gathered around, but most other diners in the establishment, as well. We never were sure what we would get until it arrived at the table. Whenever we needed directions or assistance, bystanders patiently worked with us despite the communication gap. They seemed not to have heard that India and China are officially not on the friendliest of terms. (But then, there's a good deal their government hides from them.)

I also noted the utter lack of suspicion against my dark skin color. Generally anywhere I've lived or traveled within the lighter-skinned world, I've sensed some level of reflexive fear or aversion to dark skin, some group-think, sub-rational discomfort that usually persists below the awareness of those who possess it. Even when it's not overt or vicious, it's nearly always there, a subtle current. I've taken it as a given in the world. But in China, I sensed no such thing; this took me entirely by surprise. While the Chinese expressed a lot of curiosity and wonder toward us, it seemed untainted by primitive fears or unseemly stereotypes. I found that wonderfully refreshing.