We had lunch last week with friends who recently returned from vacation in Poland. Both were born in China and have lived in the U.S. for many years; in their retirement, they have become avid travelers.
In Poland, they were surprised by the scarcity of Chinese tourists. In their previous travels – to Switzerland, Italy, even Hungary and Czechia – they had found busloads of people speaking Mandarin.
Then they thought about the places they had gone in Poland. In Warsaw, they had visited the Warsaw Uprising museum – on the 81st anniversary of its start, when thousands of Varsovians took to the streets to commemorate the ill-fated revolt against the Nazi occupiers. In Gdansk, they had spent time at the Solidarity museum, dedicated to the free trade union that was born in August 1980 as a challenge to the communist government and that led, eventually, to the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. Qian pointed out that June 4, 1989 – the date of the first free elections in Poland since prewar independence– is also the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre. There were no Chinese tour groups in Poland, she decided, because their government didn’t want them getting any ideas.
