Our guide - Cathy Lee

We were extremely fortunate to have "Cathy" Lee as our primary tour guide (we also had a local guide in each city we visited).  She has lived through the trauma of the Cultural Revolution (1969 - 1979) and the Tienanmen Square shootings in 1989 when thousands of students were massacred, and others arrested and executed.

Her grandmother was the third concubine of her grandfather, suggesting that he was a wealthy man.  As a result, he was jailed by the Red Army during the Cultural Revolution and died in jail.  Her 93 year old grandmother is still alive.

She was a university student during the protests that resulted in the killings in Tienanmen Square and it was obvious that these events shaped her life.  She declined to join the Communist Party and cannot bring herself to act as a tour guide in Beijing although she is qualified to handle tours in all of the cities we visited.

Cathy has her Masters in History and is obviously a very bright, talented and caring woman.

Her husband is a manager at a state owned business in Beijing.  Both he and Cathy's daughter are members of the Communist Party (although there are about 1.4 billion people in China, only 89 million are members of the party).

Her work as a tour guide for Sinorama takes up about a third of her year - she works during the two prime tourist seasons, spring and fall.  When not working she lives in her home town of Xi'An with her in-laws.  

Despite the pain that was inflicted on her family during Mao's reign, she credits him with giving women equal rights.  While she says that the Chinese don't have "freedom"  they do have "harmony".

The Han people are the majority in China (87%) and there are 55 minorities.  Also due to Mao, the minorities are given special rights - to maintain their ethnicity, and being allowed to have a second child during the "one-child" era.