DJ - We are back on the road in China. Shortly to depart from Beijing and the Great Wall of China for the capital of France, Paris. An extraordinary trips awaits us ahead and we'll just have to deal with it as it comes. By that I mean we begin the journey not understanding or totally comprehending all of the obstacles and physical and mental stamina that's going to be required to complete the journey. Already three cars have been eliminated. Those three cars were amongst all the cars that were off loaded from the ship into the docks on the shore of the Yellow Sea, which divides Korea and China, where we were today to pick up the cars. Three of the cars had mechanical failures and difficulties and will not be able, we understand, to be repaired in time to even begin the race. So a little heartbreak for the operators of those three cars. We traveled by bus today from Peking for about three hours to the port city of Tianjin, a city that didn't exist five years ago and has several hundred thousand people living in it today. There we went into a shipping yard where containers off of ships are sorted out and the containers held the cars that were sent from different ports around the world. The cars were removed from the containers and stored in warehouses, empty buildings, and when we arrived, the cars were taken out of the buildings, first started, pulled in some cases, and the process began of getting them ready to travel to Peking where we report to you at this time. We had a momentary flash of setback when we went to start the car and Carl announced that the battery was dead. But we kept our wits about us and quickly realized that we had to attach the battery cable which had been removed for safety purposes while the cars were in transit. Once we did that, the 1954 Packard fired right up and we skidaddled to a nearby gas station and filled up the nearly empty gas tank with 50 gallons of fuel in preparation for the first stage of the competition.

We traveled from the port city back to Peking, arriving in the evening, about 7 o'clock. We were guests of one of the teams in the race for a dinner and a social gathering Wednesday night at a very fun location called the Hard Rock Cafe in Beijing. The Hard Rock Cafe operators of Asia have two cars in the race, an older classic automobile and a more recent vintage racing type automobile. They've structured an advertising campaign with a lot of memorabilia, buttons and T-shirts from the Hard Rock Cafe, commemorating their participation in the re-creation of the Beijing to Paris Race in 1997. We wish them well and thank them for the hospitality.

So we were back on the highway and the road we traveled today was very much up to interstate highway standards. The distance compared to traveling from Fond du Lac to Chicago, which is about a three hour trip on Highway 41. The countryside that we saw was very similar to the Midwest in that it almost looked like Indiana or Ohio when you drive through on the interstate highway - a lot of flat countryside, a lot of farms, a lot of corn in fact, a lot of sunflowers. Very pretty, very picturesque countryside with a lot of people tending ponds, some farm fishing and a lot of gardens - it really appeared to be quite lush. So the countryside that we've seen so far in this region of China is very similar to what we would see in the Midwest of the USA. One of the appeals of this journey is to see the diversity of China and to see if there is continuity throughout China in terms of the progress and economic development that we see in the Beijing. It took us three days to cross the United States, roughly 2,900 miles from Times Square in New York to Nob Hill in San Francisco. It's going to take us two weeks to get across China by way of the Silk Route from Beijing to Tibet and entering Nepal and the Himalayas. The race actually begins Saturday morning at 7 AM with the cars being sent off in one minute separation from the Great Wall, which is outside the city of Beijing. The Great Wall itself is an incredible story in the history of China and the world and we'll tell you more about that on another report.

We'd like to share some impressions about our visit to Peking in the last several days. It is a city that is as every bit as exciting as any major city in the world. The amount of construction here of high rise offices and apartment buildings is really quite staggering. The vitality of the economy, the dress of the people, their use of telecommunication technology (pagers and cellular telephones) is remarkable. The growth and use of the automobile has created a whole set of issues in managing this society. Here are some economic statistics about all of this. The inflation rate in China is less than 2%. That compares with the US inflation rate that is running at 3-4%. This 2% rate is for the first half of this year, it's that recent. Meanwhile, for the last decade, economic growth in China has been in the double digits, 10%. You could say that China had a long way to come from and that is true, but for any economy that is the size that this culture is, with 1.2 billion people, to grow at 10% over a ten year period is just remarkable. A statistical fact. The US economy is currently growing at a rate of about 3% and that's quite good given the order of magnitude of the US economy which is very, very substantial - the largest in the world at the moment. Repeating a statistic that we shared with you a few reports back, China is expected to overtake Japan's economy in about 2010 and to overtake the US economy in about 2020. The number of automobiles in the city of Peking has grown 15% in recent years and that has complicated traffic conditions. There are traffic jams on their interstates and city multi-lane highway system just like in Chicago and all major US cities. The growth of automobiles has created a parking shortage - there is no place to park all of the cars. The number of parking spaces is only growing at the rate of 2% a year, while the growth of the number of automobiles is 15%. The amount of road surface currently available is growing at the rate of 3-5%. So the pulse of life here is very impressive and a substantial transformation from what we originally saw on our first visit to China 20 years ago in 1978 is remarkable - the people are very joyful and very industrious. I would say that China's emergence as a economic force is not even in dispute or in doubt, it's just a matter of over what period of time China is going to continue this incredible rate of growth and change.

A significant date in the history of China and the world that's affected what goes on in China is September 12th. It's very near now. That's the date of a major Party Congress of the central party of China, they call it the third generation of leadership of what is a modified socialist and communist system. The Party Congress is sort of the equivalent of the Constitutional Congress in the United States, not just an annual convening of Congress, but to have a Party Congress here with people all over the country is a major occurrence and considered to be a significant turning point in the acceptance of the new leadership of the country. This Party Congress is the first to come after the death earlier this year of Deng Xiaoping who for many years, was the leader of modern China.

The growth of the telecommunication industry here is 24% a year. And there is a new power generating facility under construction called Three Gorges. While I do not know and cannot recite all of the specific details to put this in the order of magnitude, I can tell you a few facts that are just remarkable to comprehend. 21,000 people have been resettled as of August 20th in order to clear the way for this extraordinary new dam on the major river, I believe the Yangtze river here in China. In the first phase, it will have 14 generators capable of 700 megawatts each and when completed it will have 26 total generators capable of 18,200 megawatts, or 84 billion kilowatt hours per year and is expected to generate $5 billion in economic benefit. We had to get some background to put that in comparison with some of the power generation facilities in California or Wisconsin, where many of you are listening to appreciate the order of magnitude 18,200 megawatts from this enormous power plant called Three Gorges for which the awarding of contracts was just done this week and construction is to take several years.

Some of the details about China almost defy your willingness to believe them. I'm going to share with you just a couple of things in the local English language newspaper that would never appear in our media and they're the kind of things that fall into the category of, "I just can't believe it, but I read it or heard it from a credible source, so I guess it must be true." For example, a new mountain has been discovered here in China and it is said now to be the 15th largest mountain in the world. It seems that in 1976 this high elevation was known about by Chinese glaciologists who observed that this particular mountain appeared to be attached to an adjacent mountain and was separated from being able to be accessed by a tremendous glacier. So it wasn't until just this past week that the Chinese have determined that this particular mountain range and this individual mountain was in fact separated and not joined to the neighboring mountain and it has now been declared an 8,110 meters, and as I recall there are about 3 feet per meter, making this about a 24,000 foot high mountain and it is now rated as one of 15 mountains in the world over 8,000 meters and 9 of those 15 mountains are here in China. Something really quite remarkable to think that mountains are still being discovered today.

Another item that's quite incredible is the fact that a 4 year old child who is capable of running, ran 42.195 kilometers in 6 hours, 1 minute and 10 seconds in a marathon test organized by the regional culture and sport commission on August 13th shocking athletic experts. It's reported that the child ran from 4:30 to 9:00 AM everyday to build up, in this case a girl, her body after she was 3. Her real age was confirmed as 4 in a bone test conducted by the sports technology college the same day and this child ran 42 kilometers at age 4 in the northwest province of China. There you have it - some hard to believe true facts from this really extraordinary place on the planet, halfway around the world from North America.

Well we have something extraordinary here in our hands, Carl and I. We are now the holders of drivers licenses in the People's Republic of China. The automobile carries a Chinese license plate and we are licensed drivers in China. I just can't ever recall thinking that I would either have the responsibility or privilege to hold a drivers license in another country, another culture in another part of the world like this, but it's part of the local requirements to be on the public highways.

As we reported earlier, the Chinese do not allow us to simply drive around. Our cars are stationed at an agriculture fairgrounds where they're guarded 24 hours a day until we depart very early Saturday morning for the Great Wall for the official beginning of the competition. Our car seems to be running quite well and we're back into it. We have to get it organized and do a lot of housekeeping tomorrow to get it prepared for the long journey to Paris. There are some foreboding reports ahead of the road. We're not going to dwell on those but they have to do with road conditions as a result of monsoon rains and one cannot dwell and speculate on what might be out there. We have to kind of go out there and find out and the organizers of the event are staying ahead and working on those details and will keep us posted at a drivers meeting that is to be held on Thursday evening.

Well the sun has set here. It's the end of this day and bedtime for all here, while in your part of the world the sun is rising and coming up and a new day is beginning. For a family that we know and care about, the David and Sharon Kreif family, today is a painful day, a day of personal loss in that today Sharon Kreif will be laid to rest at her funeral ceremony on Wednesday evening. An hour before we departed by airplane for Peking, China we fulfilled a promise that we made to Sharon Kreif that we would come and say good-bye to her, hoping that when we returned from this journey she would be well and able to greet us. But God had other plans and Sharon left this world in a journey of her own on Sunday and to David Kreif and to his two daughters, we want him to know from this far away, we care very much about your family, your loss and know that our thoughts, feelings and prayers are with you. We know that Sharon is on a journey of her own and watching over us on our journey.

All is well with Carl and his family, Narcelle and the girls, Suzy and Liz. They're having a good time doing a lot of shopping in Peking and learning about the bargaining system, which the Chinese still use today. They don't have a no haggle policy. They like to haggle about everything. It's just innate and their approach to business.

We'll complete this report because it's been rather lengthy and we're beginning to get into some of the particulars of what this journey is all about, which is learning and experiences and that's one of the reasons we have this service available is to share some of that with you. Thanks for joining us at this time and until next time, you be well and think of us. We'll report our progress to you in another 24 hours. So long.