On a recent whirlwind trip to China, a delegation representing Inland Valley chambers of commerce took in sights from the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall to the towering skyscrapers of modern Shanghai.
     In all four cities to which the 115-person delegation traveled during its weeklong visit -Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou ~ the group was greeted with big red welcoming banners. Chinese feasts were organized in its honor and officials of the cities addressed the group to discuss the many business opportunities available in China.
     The visit was timely -- upon the delegation's arrival on Nov. 10, China learned it had won approval to join the World Trade Organization, a move that will require it to reduce barriers to trade for a number of goods and services, from farm produce to foreign investment. China will have to open wide its doors to foreign competitors as it gives up a planned economy for the free market. "We need to learn more from other governments" about a market economy as a result of WTO membership, the deputy mayor of Suzhou, Wang Guo Xing, told a group of delegation members who attended a private luncheon with him.
     But despite the rich potential the visit afforded, few delegation members were actually on the trip to explore business opportunities in China. The visit turned out to be largely a mix of snapshot tourism and extended visits to government stores selling Chinese artifacts, from cultured pearls and jade to painting-like works of embroidery and silk carpets and comforters.
     "My only complaint is we spend far too much time at factory stores," said Ron Birchard, 61, of Upland.
Birchard is the vice president of Pomona-based Kingsley Library Equipment Co., which manufactures and sells book drops, video drops and the like. He was among the few people on the trip who established ties that could lead to business deals. Birchard met with officials of libraries in Beijing and Shanghai who expressed interest in his firm's products.
     The trip's low cost -- $ 1,100, including air fare, hotels, three meals a day and transportation within China -- attracted many to the trip who had no immediate tie to Inland Valley chambers of commerce but merely heard about the opportunity and couldn't pass it up. Trip members came from as far away as Indiana and Northern California. Even a Portuguese resident, Nelson de Melo, whose brother Neville owns a Rancho Cucamonga deli, was on the trip.
     Not that business wasn't being conducted on the trip. Every time the delegation's three buses stopped, vendors would besiege the tourists, persistently offering cheap goods, from $5 "Rolexes" and watches with portraits of Mao Zedong on the face to cloth handbags, Chinese musical instruments and silk scarves.
Many in the group found the low prices irresistible. Through sharp bargaining, a number of delegation members walked away with 25 small silk scarves for only $5, for example.
     With two full days still left in the trip, Ontario police officer Eric Jordan and his wife, Deanna, both 36, no longer had room left in their suitcase for further purchases.
     "We both had to lie on it" to get it to close, Deanna Jordan said. In fact, some trip members had to buy new luggage to carry home all their purchases.
     The day the group visited the Great Wall ended with a stop at a Beijing health center, which looked to be purely educational, for a change.
     Professor Fu Xu Kun, a balding Chinese version of Robert Young, star of the old television series, "Marcus Welby, M.D.," smilingly explained the uses of different herbs in treating a variety of ailments, from arthritis to diabetes.
     "We think Chinese medicine should not just benefit Chinese people," he said.
     With that the educational quickly turned commercial. Doctors in' white lab coats came into the room and, by feeling the pulse of delegation members, diagnosed their ailments and recommended herbs to help. Young female assistants in pink lab coats translated and handled the sale of the herbs. 
The doctor who diagnosed Fred Lantz, husband of Pomona Councilwoman Paula Lantz, determined he had pain in his right shoulder from an old injury.
     "That came right out of right field," Fred Lantz said. But it was accurate,he said.
     The doctor also diagnosed him with high blood pressure and a prostate condition, neither of which is uncommon in middle-aged men like Lantz. He bought a month's worth of herbs for the prostate condition, which he'd been treating unsuccessfully with Western medication. He paid 450 yuan - about $55, figuring it was worth a try, he said.
     Hans Davidson, 55, of Redlands, a doctor who owns the San Antonio Fertility Center in Upland, wondered out loud afterward whether Chinese people, who earn an average monthly salary of 2000 yuan, or about $240, could afford the herbs ~ or whether tourists were charged more than Chinese patients.
Some of the health care staff gave brief massages to a few of the delegation members. Deanna Jordan said her masseur seemed a bit worn out and wasn't doing much of a job.
     "I pulled out $2 and all of a sudden that massage got harder," she said. 
     Most delegation members seemed more interested in shopping and the sights than in investing in China, but the Chinese municipal officials who greeted them were unaware of this and earnestly touted the advantages of doing business in their cities.
     At a banquet for the entire delegation in Hangzhou, the vice chair of Hangzhou's municipal people's congress, Zhang Mingguang, talked of all the changes the city government was carrying out to encourage economic development.
     "So many things to come I can't count," he said through an interpreter.
     Rancho Cucamonga City Manager Jack Lam graciously took to his role as "leader" of the delegation for these official encounters. In response to Zhang, he summed up the benefit to China of the group's visit.
      "I know we will help with the economic development [of China] because we spend a lot of money at every stop we make," he said.
     Seeing the growth, Birchard, for one, said he plans to return next year to explore the lands he developed on the trip.
     "They call China the sleeping giant," he said. "You know what? It's awake.