I'm Back

Happy Holidays to all! I've just come back from China. It was a so-so trip. The highlight was a little free time in Hangzhou that allowed me to walk the causeway through West Lake and long Bei Shan Lu on a nice late autum day, dodging the kite-fliers and the bike-riders and the other oblivious strollers. I also visited Nanjing and Shanghai on this trip, but for just one night in each city, so with little time to explore. In Beijing mostly it was too cold to spend much time outside, so I went from hotel to World Bank office to meetings. My jet lag persisted throughout the trip, until the last day or two, so I managed to get a whole lot of reading done, about which more shortly. The trip home was, fortunately, uneventful. I slept most of the flight from Beijing to Chicago, and then rushed to catch the Washington-bound connection. It was late, of course. And then at Dulles, the bags took nearly an hour and a half to show up on the carousel, so I didn't get home until 2:00 this morning. I'm fading fast.