When I suggested to Sweetie Pie that we do Chinese takeout for dinner, she proposed we do dinner in China. I shot back that her way, the chop suey would come to between $7,000 and $11,000, depending on whether we flew business class. And that’s not counting the tip.

As usual, one thing led to another, “another” being a 6 a.m. departure for China out of SFO. Sweetie Pie came up with a motel that offered two weeks of free parking with a one-night stay – Bud and Dolly’s Pit Stop Inn outside of Santa Cruz, just under two hours away if you make all the lights.

Before we left, Sweetie phoned our son to say goodbye. She got his voicemail and left a message that our key was under the mat, our money was in my sock drawer, her jewelry was in the piano bench, and the gold bars her grandmother left her were in the freezer. She said his voicemail sounded different. I reminded her that he had changed phone numbers. Then I asked if she had mentioned our street address.

By 6:40 a.m., we were going through the airport’s new security device, me in my support hose, legs spread apart, when a throat lozenge in my pocket rang the alarm. Alert: a cough drop bomber!

Aboard the plane, Sweetie settled in, tipped her purse, and out fell her seven-day pill dispenser, spreading vitamins up the aisle. I was on my hands and knees picking them up when a woman across the aisle took my photo. Halfway through the flight, I tipped my wine glass, spilling the contents into Sweetie’s purse. Sweetie stared in horror. The woman across the aisle took another photo.

When we landed in Shanghai, I dug out my video camera to film the sights. But what I saw in the view finder were the words “cleaning cassette.” Four years it waited, holding off for Shanghai to clean the cassette. We sped past gleaming skyscrapers, world-class designer boutiques, statues, beautiful gardens, and a palace with my cassette being cleaned and me composing my letter to Sony.

Then we came to a forest of 40-story apartment buildings – densification gone berserk. This is China’s answer to a population exploding to 1.4 billion. The only place they can go is up, making the construction crane the new national bird. In these neighborhoods, a million-plus will show up for a backyard barbecue.

Here, people go out on the street in shifts. The local McDonald’s sign reads, “More than two billion sold yesterday,” and license plate numbers indicate which day of the week you can drive. China’s number one national resource is crowds, with 10 million people in a train station being their idea of ambiance.

We were billeted in a newly completed five-star, ultra-swank hotel, so cool that the room’s light switches didn’t look like light switches, just little ivory-like square pads behind the drapes, beneath the tables, and behind the lamps. Sweetie pressed what she thought was the bathroom light switch and the TV came on, the window blinds went up, and housekeeping brought ice. My note to hotel management suggested a naked light bulb with string attached in every bathroom.

Next came a four-day Yangtze River cruise. The river looked on the oily side and a P.A. announcement OK’d smoking on the back deck, but not throwing cigarette butts into the river as it could start a conflagration.

Tables in the dining room seated eight, each topped with a huge lazy Susan that spun the dishes your way as everybody said, “What do you suppose this is?” You were right if you guessed egg noodles and hen’s feet plus poached spicy carp with fish scales included. “Takes guts to eat a dish like this,” I said eyeing one bowl. “That’s what it is,” said the fellow on my right.

After disembarking, we visited a zoo to see giant pandas. The parking lot held more cars than there are in France. Inside were signs directing you to various animal habitats such as monkeys, rhinos, and one that pointed toward “the wild ass.” I’m not making this up. I left my group and followed the sign expecting to see perhaps a donkey doing a pole dance. The enclosure turned out to be empty, possibly because of the large number of children visiting that day.

Our escapade included the Great Wall of China, stretching across China for 6,400 miles, or roughly from Boston to San Diego and back to Chicago. Not knowing when to stop is a Chinese trait. Their eighth wonder of the world is two to three stories high and wide enough for ten people to walk abreast, an incredible undertaking even though there were more Chinese handy than bricks.

In fact, it was first built of stone but over time, sections got rebuilt using brick, which were invented in China, by the way – a technological breakthrough akin to the internal combustion engine. You can just imagine the initial excitement: “Hey Xing Phong, check out Poodung’s place!” There stood the world’s first split-level ranch built of a new material made from blocks of Chinese clay. It was only a short leap from there to the first gated community.

Sweetie suggested that the emperor must have been the apprehensive type, him needing a walled-off continent before he could get to sleep. I told her that it was built during China’s Paranoid Dynasty.

Fred Gehrung is a freelance writer who lives in the Marina. Fred has written features and humor for newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times. E-mail: [email protected]