I was working in a Chinese law office as an immigration attorney and was sent to China to try to get some difficult visa cases approved before the U.S. consulates. Beijing was very smoggy. The people in general in Beijing were very nice but a few in the countryside seemed to hate non Chinese. I also visited Shandong and Shanghai. Shandong was very primitive; I was housed in the finest hotel in town and there was no heat in the dead of winter. I had to wear every item of clothing in my suitcase. I remember traveling in a car on the streets of Shandong at about 3:00 in the morning. There were about 300 adults having a giant snowball fight in the dead of night on a city street, not far from the giant statue of Mao. Maybe they were night shift factory workers on a break but I found it very odd. I visited the Great Wall which was extraordinary. I also visited a gorge north of Beijng on which a dam had been built and a large man-made lake had been created. I walked a very, very long way up an ancient stone staircase high above the gorge to an old Buddhist monastery. I was stunned at the strange sense of peace that enveloped me, even though I know very little of that religion. It was a palpable and profound feeling I had never experienced before.
One of my clients was one of the new Chinese multi-millionaires and had a large chain of stores across China. I got a visa approved for one of his family members to come to the U.S. and he showed his gratitude by inviting me to a lavish lunch in which he and I and a Chinese assistant from our law office who was my translator were the only patrons (he'd hired out the entire restaurant for lunch). Despite the fact this man had phenomenal wealth, he was rather backwards, especially in his manners. He would spit on the floor and blow his nose on it. The poor young waitresses looked terrified and stood in a row as he kept asking for services. He shouted at them and I was told the translator that he was being extremely vulgar with them and insulting. He seemed to be a man who liked to throw his weight around but he was very friendly with me. Later that night, he arrived at our hotel in a chauffeured Mercedes and took us to the building in Beijing which was the seat of government. We went past a number of armed guards with machine guns and ended up in the room where Dong Xiaoping (successor to Mao for China's leadership) entertained heads of state. The room had a number of easy chairs arranged in a semi-circle and I was invited to sit in Dong's favorite chair (he wasn't there and I believe he was quite ill at the time) and was offered one of his personal favorite cigarettes. After that, we went into a banquet hall where a lavish dinner was served and several dignitaries were supposedly present (my client was apparently a very influential man). He later told my translator that all the beautiful statuesque waitresses (who spoke excellent English) were all intelligence services personnel. I had another influential client on another occasion, a young man whose grandfather had been one of Mao's generals during the Great March. He had a new Mercedes that had a top flight military sticker on the bumper that allowed him to go everywhere he wanted. I was sent to Beijing to get a visa for his fiancee, a Chinese fashion model. I remember freaking out when during a traffic jam in downtown Beijing at a major intersection with no traffic lights (I saw very few back then in Beijing) and hundreds of bicycles fighting with cars, he decided to drive on the sidewalk. At about 40mph, he just honked his horn and forced everyone to get out of his way to get around the traffic.
One night we were taken out to visit bars. Our Chinese guide said we could have any woman we wanted in the bars for a price. I saw lots of men in uniforms in and around the bars. I was told that the Army controlled prostitution and made money from it.
I think the most disgusting thing I witnessed was the behavior of the U.S. Foreign Service. One Consular Officer known to ask for "favors" from attractive Chinese female applicants for visas (according to my translator) locked himself in with a young beautiful Chinese client of mine and asked her out at the conclusion of his one-on-one closed door visa interview. Another consular officer in another city who refused to even speak to me, later got into trouble for selling visas under the table through his wife, who was a native Chinese. Apparently, according to other immigration attorneys I've spoken to, these absolutely horrendous activities were not uncommon on the part of our government employees. I don't know if it's still that way, as I haven't practiced law in some time now and haven't been to China since the mid 1990s.
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