Behind the Wall: Marketplace's China Blog

I've found myself completely fascinated by the receipts you get after you pay for dinner here.

Say you've just taken a few friends out for hot pot. The bill is 350 RMB, you give the waiter your cash, he gives you seven receipts. One for each 50 RMB note you've given him.

That is, admittedly, kind of ridiculous.

A few days ago I got a chance to visit a local high school class (actually called middle schools here). Of course, it turned out it wasn't just any high school - it was the best school in the greater Chongqing area - a school district that contains 8 million students and 10,000 schools according to the regional education superintendant.

First thing this morning, the phone rang.

"Are your bags packed?" It was my editors in Los Angeles. There are reports of village protests in Southern China over confiscated land. The protesters blocked a highway, and then the protests turned violent. A teenager was reportedly beaten to death. A newspaper said her parents were paid to keep silent.

Inevitably, your editor thinks it must be easy to get there. "Just a skip and jump from Hong Kong."

Well, sort of. But the closest airport is a three-hour flight away. And then it's a three-hour bus ride to a nearby city, and the village is about 30 kilometers beyond. Another detail: The village has reportedly been cordoned off by police.

I’m usually an adventurous traveler, particularly when it comes to eating. My family traveled lot when I was a kid and my sister and I were always encouraged to plunge in and experience the regional cuisine. From chicken’s blood soup in the Himalayas to raw pickled herring on the streets of Amsterdam, I’ve sampled quite a few local delicacies, some more to my liking than others.

CHINESE ETIQUETTE LESSON III: GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF GANBEI... OR "BOTTOMS UP" IN ENGLISH

When Chinese offer you a drink, they always start with "Ganbei." It means "bottoms up," and they mean it literally. If you accept, what follows will be endless "Ganbei" until you don't know who you are!

Walking around a back alley with my American colleague in Chongqing, people were sitting outdoors doing business, playing cards, and drinking alcohol. A foreign visitor in this district is very rare, so my American colleague drew great attention. A group of old men were sitting around a table drinking alcohol from rice bowls.

As many of my colleagues have described - working on this project has often meant working long hours. During our stay in Shanghai, it meant some of us in the production team didn't leave the hotel a whole heckuva lot.

This often meant eating dumplings from just down the street - or eating at the hotel restaurant in the interest of time.

In Chongqing however, I was able to break away for a little of the famed Sichuan Hotpot...

There's a saying at Marketplace - "what happens on the overnight, stays on the overnight." The overnight is the shift the producers and hosts of the Marketplace Morning Report work to bring you that program. It starts around midnight and goes until about 8:30 in the morning.

I'm going to break that rule though and tell you a little bit about the overnight this week. See, some of the crew putting together Marketplace's afternoon show are also working the overnight. That's because the 16 hour time difference between LA and China means that our daily live broadcast of 2 PM Pacific Time/5 PM Eastern takes place at 6 AM the following day here in China. And to make the 6 AM deadline, we have to start work at 3 AM. We're preparing for a dress rehearsal of the show this morning - to test out some ideas and make sure there are no technical snafus.

So it occurs to me…as we’re wait to check in for our flight to Chongqing…that you might not be aware of who’s here actually helping the show get on the air. It’s our fault, I suppose. We’ve all been blogging, but I don’t think we’ve really introduced ourselves. Allow me…

The other night I was in a cab on the elevated highway that bisects Shanghai. It was the last night of the third and final trip I've made to the city in the last four and a half months. There are times -- most times -- when traffic in Shanghai is just extraordinary. I would say it's like L.A. traffic, except in bumper-to-bumper L.A. traffic everybody isn't trying to change lanes at once -- and none of them are (literally) going in reverse or making U-Turns.

We've been working 12- and 14-hour days, every day. It's starting to catch up, and I'm occasionally feeling like the mountain climber who forgot to turn on his oxygen tank above 20,000 feet.

But despite feeling exhausted, there's so much to see and appreciate here. And mornings especially are worth watching here. A few days ago, I got up early to go to a Chinese elementary school. On the cab ride there at 7:30 in the morning, I saw groups of people all over town practicing Tai Chi. Some were on sidewalks, some under highway overpasses. I saw parents walking their kids to school - and not one of the kids carried their own book bag. I guess they really are little emperors...