Simon Winchester on a Chinese love affair with the outside world:

“These days there can be no mistake: China is at long last waking from centuries of slumber. And what is our response? We tremble at what we see, or we condemn it. The shoddily built schools. The riots in Tibet. The recalled toys. The fog of pollution. The reports of human-rights abuses.

“China is getting terrible press these days, and understandably so. Yet I have been an admirer of China and the Chinese since I started going there in the cold, gray days of the late 1970s, when Mao was still in power. I have in particular admired the ability of the people to persevere in the face of adversity. Fifteen or so years ago, I met a young woman deep in China’s western desert, and her story distills for me all that is good about the land they still call the Middle Kingdom.”
…

“Good afternoon,” she said, with the faintest of accents. “Do you by any chance speak English?”
I whirled around to see a young Chinese woman—tall, pretty, smartly dressed, smiling. Yes, I said.
She glanced at her watch. “Good,” she said. “This train will be here for 23 more minutes. Do you know anything about Anthony Trollope?”