How I view China after 12 years Living Here - by Trip Bitten

In 1981 I went to China with a friend as independent tourists. Our connection at the time was a mutual friend working for the Australian Government in Beijing with whom we planned to stay. Unfortunately he was "Medivac-ed" out the day we arrived so we were on our own although still had the use of his apartment. In a nutshell, our stay in China was a nightmare from which we spent all our time trying to wake up. Basically we were unwelcome as independent tourists and as a result of this had a lot of difficulty getting around.  We were detained at Xian airport but after questioning, allowed to leave. The old Russian hotel we booked into asked us to leave ASAP. We could not make a successful train booking through China Travel Service as the tickets we were given were useless. Twice we waited at the station but there was no train.  It seemed equally impossible after several days of trying to book a flight out of Xian until we were lucky enough  to get a flight back to Beijing when a young man we met selling tickets by the roadside took pity on us and organised our "escape".  When we finally left China after about a 8 days of this stress I swore never to return and had not revised this resolution until seeing this video.  Perhaps I can finally expunge these bad memories.