The little boy pointed at me, turned to his grandma, pointed to his eyes and laughed

The 35 years of traveling, I hit hundreds of famous places throughout Asia, and hundreds more of places that never saw a white man with round eyes. One of my best experiences was while walking into a very small village on a dirt road in Central China, which I always loved to do first thing in the morning, just to get out of what was considered a hotel. While walking, an old woman walking very slowly towards me, was holding a very young boy in her right hand and had a fresh fish hanging on a string in her left. When they saw me, they stopped, and the little boy pointed to me, then turned to her, pointing to his eyes and laughed. Actually it was wonderful for me to know that I was their,”first”, but can you imagine what they said when they got home? It actually happened often in those early days when China was waking up to the world around it. One time when at a little manufacture that I was planning to use for a new product I was developing, I asked: “How much to make the sample I showed him, and he said to my interpreter Mr S. W. Wong, “Whatever he want to pay”. When Wong told me, I said: “Well ask him what is his cost? He answered, that it does not matter what the cost is, it only matters that we keep our people working and can give them rice to eat. At the time, manufacturers I visited had all their workers come from farms way out in the hinterland, so they had no place to sleep or keep the little belonging they had, so the manufacturers, all who were run retired army generals, had buildings for all their workers to live in and basically they fed, clothed, and gave them a place to sleep. One day I asked to look at the dormitories and I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it! Each worker had a 18” square sided box, that was  5 foot long, with all their belongs in it. Then one box on top of the other, five high, in rows, side by side the full length of the room, with no spaces between. When they showed me where all the workers ate, I was shocked again! The workers, young girls, were in a line with a bowl and each passed into a cabin that had smoke coming out of the roof, where each was given a bowl of rice and nothing else. There was a spigot for them to get water in the middle of the yard outside. The crazy thing was that all of them were happy giggling and laughing and talking, they were actually little girls, and the men were all scrunched down like a bunny, with their butts resting on their ankles, smoking like crazy, and talking away together, and ignoring the women who giggled and ate. There was no sadness, cause each of them knew they were sleeping and eating a lot better than they had it back home. I learned then, never to be shocked after that, cause humans can overcome all their hardships wherever they are, so wait till you read my story about the Philippines!