I just got word that the great ABA player Mel Daniels will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this year. A well-deserved, far-too-late honor. To celebrate, here is a Slam Old School interview with Mel, conducted…several years ago.

I WAS A NUT. With these four words, Mel Daniels is trying to explain what drove him to be one of the ABA’s most dominant players, a 6-9, 225-pound center who combined athleticism and ferocity, offense and defense, gaudy stats and total commitment to winning. A Detroit native who attended U-New Mexico, Daniels was the ABA’s first Rookie of the Year in 67-68 with the Minnesota Muskies. After that season, the struggling team sent him to Indiana, where he helped the Pacers win three championships.

Daniels was twice the ABA MVP, led the league in rebounding three times with massive numbers that peaked at 18 rpg in 70-71. He also scored as many as 24 ppg. Daniels is the ABA’s all-time leading rebounder and was a seven-time All Star in the upstart league. He was a force in every aspect of the game who would almost certainly be a Hall of Famer if he had spent his career in the NBA.

He remains affiliated with the Pacers, as the team’s long time Director of Player Personnel.

SLAM: Your rebounding numbers were just insane. Was the key to your success strength, hops, tenacity or positioning?

MD: Maybe a little of all of them. I was always a good rebounder but I owe a lot of it to my roommate Freddie Lewis. I was the man in Minnesota and when I got to Indiana and I didn’t think I was getting the ball enough during exhibition games and I told that to Freddie, who was the point guard. He looked at me and said, “I’m having a terrible day. My dog bit me and my car won’t start. If you want the damn ball, go get it off the backboard. I got other things to worry about.” [laughs] And I just figured that if I want the ball, I better go get it. And I didn’t like to lose, so I did everything I could to win – rebound, score, run, defend.

SLAM: As one of the ABA’s elite players, describe your feelings about the league. Do you ever regret not having played your prime years in the NBA?

MD: I’m ecstatic that I had the opportunity to play in the American Basketball Association. It was an opportunity to be part of something new and exciting and I think everyone who played would tell you the same thing. It was a very competitive situation, but we also had camaraderie because we were all pulling for same goal: to make the American Basketball Association succeed.

I have no regrets whatsoever. Both leagues had professional basketball players and we proved our worth every time we had an opportunity to play against one another in exhibition games. We won a majority of those games .It really was an honor for us to play in the league, which led the way for the reemergence of basketball. The ABA really loosened up the NBA and introduced innovations like the three-point shot and the Slam Dunk and other competitions at the All Star Game. And we had all the hot young players.

SLAM: Who were your toughest opponents?

MD: Zelmo Beatty and Artis Gilmore. They were both bigger than me and Zelmo was more experienced.  Dan Issel was also tough because he could step out and shoot the jumper. All three of them were a challenge every time and I enjoyed it even though playing them gave me the absolute blues. Actually, I hated playing those guys to be honest but I would never, ever let them know that. It was a lot more physical then — we really pounded each other – and you didn’t want to give anyone the slightest edge.

SLAM: And you had a reputation as one the ABA’s fiercest brawlers.

MD: Well, like I said, I was a nut. I was a head case but I knew my limitations. It was part of that macho thing in both leagues. If you showed that you were apprehensive or afraid to mix it up, people would take advantage so you had to initiate the contact, be the aggressor. Otherwise, people would take you for weak and try to dominate you.

SLAM: The ABA also had guys like John Brisker and Warren Jabali, who were famous for initiating fights on a nightly basis.

MD: Yes, and Wendell Ladner was another one who would never back down. Those guys played on intimidation but it never manifested itself against us. Brisker and I grew up together in Detroit. And he didn’t try that stuff with me and really no one messed with our team because our whole team was a sick puppy situation — even our coach Slick Leonard. We always said if we didn’t win the game we’d win the fight. We’d play like lunatics and at the end of the game, we’d talk about where the party was. We’d go party together all night after fighting like cats and dogs. That’s another thing that made the ABA unique.

SLAM: Roger Brown was swept up in the point shaving scandals with Connie Hawkins – unfairly most would say – and banned form the NBA> He finally joined the ABA at 25 and was a key member of your title teams. Just how good was he?

MD: Michael Jordan was blessed by God to play basketball and Roger Brown was the closet person to him I ever saw. I don’t say that lightly. Roger was phenomenal. There was nothing he couldn’t do.  He was so quick he would trick people blind – I even saw him miss layups because he was laughing so hard at what he had just done to someone.  He had great body control, great hands and a will to win.             Now, he hated practice and he really didn’t care for the season until playoff time. He would say, “Get me to the playoffs and I’ll win it for us.” He was unreal in our Finals. [In ’70, Brown scored 53, 39 and 45 points in the last three games of the Finals to help the Pacers to their first title.] Like MJ, Roger was endowed with a special will to win, an ability to will himself on his opponent.  It’s unfortunate that guys like Kobe, Dwyane Wade, Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter could not see him play because it was special.

SLAM: What other great ABA players do you think have not received their due?

MD: All of us! But I’ll tell you this: James Silas [Spurs] was the best point guard I’ve ever seen in and that’s not to take anything away from John Stockton and Magic Johnson. James was right there with them. The sad thing is most of the guys who played their prime in the ABA will never, ever get the recognition they deserve. If their name was Jumpty Dumpty Mishoski and they were from Europe, they would probably get into the Hall of Fame before we will. The Hall of Fame is an absolute joke and I don’t care what hey think. It’s a sad situation but it’s their situation and they do what want to. Nothing can take away our memories or what we know.

SLAM: Compare yourself to Hall of Fame centers Nate Thurmond and Walt Bellamy.
MD: I would have put myself first. Nate was a tenacious defender and rebounder but I think my all-around package was a little better.  I know I was better than Bells. He was slower than molasses in January.  I know they would disagree and that’s only natural.

SLAM: The Cincinnati Royals drafted you in the NBA. Were you tempted to go play with Oscar Robertson?

MD: No. A lot of guys say they would play for nothing, but even back then when I had no idea of money, I understood that $27,500 was a hell of a lot more than $15,000. That was a lot of money and no one in my family could understand it. I remember my father saying, “They’re giving you what to do what?” He worked at Chevrolet Gear and Axle in Detroit and I think he made about $7,000, leaving home at 5:30 in the morning and coming back at 4:40 in the afternoon every day of his life until he retired.

SLAM: You were an assistant coach at Indiana State when Larry Bird was there. What did you teach him?

MD: Oh come on. Larry was special. You show him some thing and he enhances it, perfects it and adds it to his repertoire. He wanted to learn the pro game so we played every day and I just killed him for two weeks. Then he started beating me — and we didn’t play any more. [laughs]

I first saw Larry when I was still with the Pacers. Coach [Bob] King asked us to come down and check this kid out. Me, Freddie, Neto [Bob Netolicky] and Roger drove down there and played 3-4 games in the gym. When we got back, Roger – who complimented no one! – told Slick Leonard, “That kid is one of the best basketball players I’ve ever seen.”

SLAM: IN 1972, Jim O’Brien wrote about you: “A fiercely competitive, driven man . . . When challenged he is as awesome as the Loch Ness monster . . . Favors bulling opposing pivots into the cheaper seats”

MD: Jim had a good imagination. [laughs] Hey, you had to play with an attitude because if you didn’t you would be taken advantage of and I just hated, hated, hated to lose.  I was a lunatic and I knew it. My parents were at games and I was ranting and raving and my father would sit me down afterwards and say, “Your mother heard every word you said.  I don’t want you cussing any more” and I would put my head down and say “Yes, sir” but next game….

I was definitely out of control, but I loved the game of basketball and I played to win and I didn’t understand anything less than that. That’s why I have a hard time with the young men of today who can’t play because they went to the dentist this afternoon.

I was enthralled watching the live stream of last night’s White House celebration of the blues, the music which has been so central to my career and my life’s soundtrack. Mick Jagger was a big draw, of course, but he doesn’t mean that much to me, especially in light of the other artists there. Buddy Guy and B.B. King would be two heads on my Mt. Rushmore of music. Buddy was the first musician I ever interviewed, for the Michigan Daily in 1985, in preview of a show at Rick’s American Café, where I also worked. That performance changed me from being a blues lover to a certified blues freak. And it changed my career arc, from writing about literature and fine art to following my passion and writing about music and musicians.

Warren with my Jacob.

B.B. King is… B.B. King.

And Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks have been central to my musical life for 20 years. The guitarists helped revitalize and fuel the Allman Brothers over the last 20 years and I have spent countless hours listening to them perform and have probably interviewed the two of them for Guitar World more than anyone else. Anyone who has read Big in China knows that I regularly perform Warren’s song “Soulshine” and that it holds special meaning for me. I’m proud to call him a friend.

To see all of them – plus other musicians I love and admire – performing in the White House, a few feet away from the president and first lady, was powerful. I literally could not walk away, even when it was time to put the kids to bed. And to see Pres. Obama get up and sing a few lines of “Sweet Home Chicago” just blew me away. Imagine how B.B. King, born in Mississippi in 1925, must have felt. He certainly looked delighted, as did Buddy.

The pres., after he sang...

It’s certainly a million miles away from Mitt Romney dryly reciting the lies to “America the Beautiful,” much less Rick Santorum essentially proclaiming America a modern day Gommorah. The main point of this post is not really political, but this really highlights a crucial difference in worldviews and cultural sensibilities. Take your pick.

8 y.o. Anna wisely asked me if the president singing was pre-planned. I’m still not sure, but Buddy is the one guy who would dare to hector the pres.

Watch it and weep:

I came across this video I made several years ago capturing the wild Wall hike I always loved to do. This time, I completed it with Jacob, then 10 or 11, my nephew Jesse, about 16, and a visiting friend Nico, 14. It was scorching hot and this is not an easy hike, but what Jacob made it almost all the way without whining. It was a very fun and memorable day.

Another plus, for me, is this is an early version of the Woodie Alan song, “Got Love if You Want it.” We re-recorded it on for the CD at a much faster tempo  and I think I actually like this version better. Well, except for my vocals…

Once again inspired by Jim Yardley’s wonderful new book Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing, I present my own experiences with Chinese basketball.

I am in the process of interviewing Jim and in the next week, our conversations will be popping up in a couple of different places, covering his book, basketball in China, what it shows about how the country is and isn’t changing and, yes, Jeremy Lin.

Photo by Ryan Pyle - www.ryanpyle.com

This article, adapted from my book Big in China, originally appeared in Slam magazine.

When I moved to China in 2005, I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing, other than exploring my new home. We were going because my wife had a great job offer with the Wall Street Journal and I craved adventure. But I was leaving behind my beloved gig as a SLAM Senior Writer, or so I thought. SLAM opened a Beijing bureau, with me as its chief, as a favor, so I could get a sought-after journalist credential. I wasn’t sure how relevant basketball would be to my life in China, but it didn’t take long to realize that being a hoops insider there could not only open some unexpected doors, but also be a lot of fun.

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Me and God (Shammgod) in Taiyuan

TMac on camel - Mutianyu Great Wall.

Days after arriving in Beijing, I was hiking the Great Wall with Tracy McGrady, in town to launch a new shoe. He was at his peak, a five-time All-Star coming off a season of 25.7 ppg, 6.2 rpg and 5.7 apg. Here, he was a true superstar because every Rockets game was televised due to Yao. I hiked the Wall by T-Mac’s side, trailed by a pack of Chinese journalists. I chatted with him and his pack of friends and trainers and watched him bargain (poorly) for souvenirs. I was there when he insisted on climbing up on a musty camel for a short ride—the only time I ever saw anyone do so even after I visited the same place and passed the same animal dozens of times. I had been covering basketball players for a decade but had never witnessed anything quite so intimate and silly; back home, we stumbled all over ourselves to get the kind of inside access that was now just falling in my lap.

I also learned a lot riding around with a van full of adidas execs, who explained that the Chinese market was a battleground. This is why McGrady’s visit to Beijing was preceded by a visit from LeBron James and followed by Allen Iverson, and why giant billboards of all of them loomed over the city. Our little convoy was escorted through the city’s slow-moving traffic by police cars and motorcycles with flashing lights, evidence of McGrady’s—and the NBA’s—status in China.

A few days later, I visited Beijing’s massive central police station with Mr. Dou, the Journal’s Beijing driver and fixer. Like most people in his position, Dou was at first intimidating, a former military man who was loyal, efficient and skilled in maneuvering the Chinese bureaucracy. It felt good to have him on our side, even if he seemed a bit puzzled by me, as a male tai tai (lady of the house), who was married to the boss and didn’t have a job.

The Slam Chop that made us official

We were at the station to secure our long-term visas. My approved journalist credentials as SLAM’s Beijing Bureau Chief were attached to my application. I was intimidated by the long lines of people waiting behind rows of desk-bound, uniformed officers, but Dou walked directly to the front and dropped our papers in front of an officious- looking cop. The officer began reading through the papers, marking every other page with a chop, the ink stamps without which nothing is official in China. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up at me. I braced myself for whatever the problem was.

He smiled and said, in rough English, “I very like SLAM.”

I had been a SLAM senior writer for a decade and knew that the magazine had die-hard readers. But I did not realize how far its reach extended. I thanked him and he asked, “Who do you think is best Chinese basketball player, after Yao Ming?”

I had no idea: “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

Mr. Dou watched this conversation with the shocked expression of someone listening to cats chatting. He and the officer had an animated discussion, and Mr. Dou looked at me and chuckled. Something had changed in the way he regarded me; I had earned some face.

I saw this cop, whom I nicknamed Officer Hoops, every year when I renewed my visa and we always talked ball. It made the visits easy and fun and once greased the wheels despite some mistakes on the application. Afterward, he ran after me and asked me if I would join him for a run some day. “Sure,” I said. “Just call me.”

Hoops called on a Sunday morning a few weeks later. I jumped in a cab and showed the driver the address Hoops had texted me. It was winter and I assumed we were going to a gym, but we pulled up to a large complex of outdoor courts, each running 4-on-4 half-court games, ringed by a few packed soccer pitches. I paid 10 rmb (about $1.50) admission and entered.

My game—mediocre at its peak—was rusty, as I had not played in the two years since arriving in China. I walked on the court and everyone stopped to check me out. I knew what they all were thinking: “This is the American basketball guy?”

“Can you dunk?” Hoops asked.

I laughed but didn’t say, “I’m not even sure I can touch the net, but 23 years ago under the guidance of my man Ice, I squeaked a tennis ball through the rim at Davis Park.”

I just said, “Uh, no.”

“Oh,” he replied. “You just work for Dunk magazine.” Then he repeated that in Chinese and everyone laughed.

They were all savvy, solid players. There was one big guy on my team, about 6-5, with long black hair pulled into a ponytail. He was wearing a black Air Jordan tracksuit and in between games, he headed over to the chain link fence to sit down and suck down cigarettes. There was one other guy about my age—40—who delighted in bodying me up and battling for boards.

Rashid Byrd with fans

The other guys were a decade younger, but their games reminded me of countless old guys I’ve played against at JCCs and Ys. They were awkward but understood angles, were tough, could hit bank shots and put in ugly looking jumpers and little runners. The big guy was skilled but lazy and kept calling weak fouls that would have led to raging arguments at an American playground. I didn’t know how to say “foul” in Chinese and don’t believe in anything but the most vicious hacks being called on the playground anyhow, but others called a few for me.

My first two shots were airballs and my left contact lens got knocked out, so I played with one eye. But I gained steam and defended the honor of, ahem, Dunk magazine, passing and defending well, getting a lot of offensive rebounds and put-back baskets and swishing a few foul line jumpers—my one sweet spot. The sore hamstring was well worth it; especially since Hoops told me to call him any time I needed anything.

The power of SLAM presented itself in the unlikeliest of times and places. My Chinese teacher Yechen was a quiet intellectual who would eventually leave Beijing to become a monk on a holy mountain. He once took me to an ancient Buddhist temple deep inside one of Beijing’s maze-like hutong neighborhoods.

We found it after a long stroll, trailed by yapping street dogs at our feet and an army of cats silently hopping along the roofs above. Small kids in padded winter clothes peered at us from behind their parents’ bikes and doorways. I felt a million miles away but closely observed. At the entrance of the peaceful little temple, an old man sat inside a ticket booth. I looked over his shoulder and laughed; the walls were plastered with SLAM posters of KG, Kobe and LeBron.

“Do you like basketball?“ I asked in Chinese.

“Oh yes, very much,” he said.

“I work for that magazine,” I said, pointing. He smiled and waved me in.

NBA players kept coming to China. I interviewed TJ Ford in the shadow of a giant statue of Chairman Mao when he was visiting a sports university for an adidas camp. There, I also watched Dwight Howard dunk on a teenaged Zhou Peng, then the camp MVP, now a member of the Chinese National Team. The blurry video I took of this moment just to show my friends at the SLAM Dome now has over a half-million YouTube hits, which keep coming.

The ultimate basketball moment came during the ’08 Olympics. I was in the Wukesong Arena for almost every minute of the Redeem Team’s triumphant march to Gold, covering the games for NBC.com and SLAM. Before the first game, Officer Hoops called.

“Hello,” he said. “Is there any way you can get me a ticket to see the USA basketball team play? It is my dream.”

These were the most sought-after tickets of the Games, but I promised to try. When a friend told me that he had an extra pair of tickets hours before the game against Greece, I called Hoops right away.

“Oh my God,” he said. “I have to work and cannot get out of it. Thank you so much. Some day I will see these guys play in person.”

A few months later, the Warriors and Bucks were at the same arena, for the annual China Games exhibition. I was leaving Beijing in two months and was feeling sentimental about what was likely to be my last China hoops experience. I heard someone call my name as I walked through the hallway, just around the corner from where I had watched President Bush wish the US team well. I looked around blankly.

“Alan! Over here! It’s me, Wang!” Officer Hoops stood waving by the edge of the court. He was wearing an entirely different uniform; the military style greens of the Public Security. He was smiling broadly under his peaked cap.

“I switched positions with a friend for this game,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I am finally living my dream of seeing an NBA game in person.”

Now I could leave China in peace. The world seemed right. I sought out my friend before leaving and made sure I said a proper goodbye.

This story is adapted from Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing (Harper). Copyright 2011 by Alan Paul. 

I suddenly started getting emails from Canadians; notices of new YouTube comments on “Beijing Blues” videos from Canadian readers; and CD purchase orders from Canadians. All of them said they had just heard a CBC broadcast about me, Woodie Alan and Big in China. You’ll have to scroll down the page to hear it once you click through. Thanks CBC and my Canadian friends.

Years ago, Guitar World dedicated an entire issue to the 100 Greatest Solos Ever. As with all such lists, it was somewhat arbitrary but a lot of fun. I wrote a lot of the entries, and will be posting them here randomly, as I see fit,sometimes with added commentary. One editorial note: I did not rank them; I just wrote them.

First up, #33, B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone,” a song I still find incredibly haunting and powerful.

“I carried this song around in my head for seven or eight years,” B.B. King recalls about “The Thrill Is Gone,”which had been an r&b hit for its author, pianist Roy Hawkins, in 1950. “It was a different kind of blues ballad. I’d been arranging it in my head and had even tried a couple of different versions that didn’t work. But when I walked in to record on this night at the Hit Factory in New York, all the ideas came together. I changed the tune around to fit my style, and [producer] Bill Szymczyk set up the sound nice and mellow. We got through around 3 a.m. I was thrilled, but Bill wasn’t, so I just went home. Two hours later, Bill called and woke me up and said, ‘I think “The Thrill Is Gone” is a smash hit, and it would be even more of a hit if I added on strings. What do you think?’ I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ ”

Strings in place, the song rose to Number 15 on the Billboard chart, becoming King’s first and only pop hit and earning him his first Grammy Award. “I felt especially proud because the song was true to me, and because Lucille is as much a part of it as me,” King says. “She starts off singing and stays with me all the way until she takes the final bow. People ask why I don’t sing and play at the same time, I’ve answered that I can’t, but the deeper answer is that Lucille is one voice and I’m another. I hear those voices as distinct. One voice is coming through my throat, while the other is coming through my fingers. When one is singing, the other wants to listen.”

Also: A version of my story about taking Jacob to see B.B. King is up on guitarworld.com.

I was devastated to hear yesterday about the death of Jeffrey Zaslow, the great Wall Street Journal columnist and reporter and the author of many best-selling non-fiction books – a remarkable four in the last two years. I never met Jeff, but we exchanged a lot of emails over the past couple of years. When I was putting together a list of potential blurbers for Big in China, it occurred to me that Jeff might be a good get. I asked someone at the Journal to contact him to feel out his interest and he said he would be happy to give the book a read and to chat with me directly.

I was thrilled by this and even more so when he said he loved the book and would be happy to provide a quote. I was initially intrigued by what he wrote, because it did not really comport to anything I was thinking about my own book:

“An absolute love story. In his embrace of family, friends, music and the new culture he’s discovering, Alan Paul leaves us contemplating the love in our own lives, and rethinking the concept of home.”     - Jeffrey Zaslow

Harper liked this so much that they put it on the cover of Big in China. I wish that we had all realized something that Jeff inherently got – the book’s potential appeal is the way I write about relationships. It’ s not about China, or a guy fronting a band, or anything else. I had some rough idea about this, but could not quite articulate it – but Jeff automatically, immediately saw and understood.

That is not in any way a surprise, because writing about relationships and their centrality to life with honest, clear emotions was central to his own work. It’s what connected all of his WSJ Moving On columns, his great front page stories for the paper and all his books, including The LAST LECTURE and his most recent efforts, Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope and  The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters.

Jeff simply had an innate, well-honed ability to tap into a story’s emotional essence and to write about it in straight-forward manner that connected immediately to people. It’s something I really admired because I have also always strived to write with an emotional directness and I learned a tremendous amount reading his work. His passing, in a car accident, is a great loss to his many, many readers and, most of all, of course, to his wife and three daughters. I join the masses of grieving readers and friends in sending them my condolences and best wishes.

The Wall Street Journal paid loving tribute to Jeff here. Take a minute to read through the comments section as well and you will see how many people received personal emails back from Jeff. He and I had regular emails exchanges since I first contacted him about Big in China and he was never less than gracious. I’m proud to have some tenuous connection to Jeff, who was really an absolute mensch – a role model in life as well as in writing. Of course I now wish I had reached out to him more frequently.

Some of Jeff’s best WSJ columns are featured here on his own site.

POST-FUNERAL UPDATES:

Becky traveled to W. Bloomfield, Michigan for Jeff’s funeral yesterday. She described it as both inspiring and devastatingly sad. Here are a few more reminiscences. All available and developing information just reinforces the extent to which Jeff was a role model in life and writing.

•A reminiscence that’s about as raw as it gets from Jeff’s former Chicago Sun-Times colleague Neil Steinberg.

•Life’s Frailty, and the Gestures That Go a Long Way – NYT column by Tara Parker-Pope, a former WSJ colleague.

•The obituary from the hometown Detroit Free Press.

Just a reminder that the mighty Big in China band is performing tonight (February 10) at Suzy Que’s BBQ, 34 S Valley Rd, West Orange, NJ 07052

8:30 pm-12:30 am… Great food and family friendly atmosphere. My kids will be there for at least he first set. Come on down.

I have a real soft space in my heart for Western China. It’s a beautiful place filled with fascinating people – many of them Tibetan. Though outside the border of Tibet,  much of northern Yunnan and western Sichuan are on the Tibetan plateau and populated by many Tibetans. (Parts of other provinces are also on the plateau, including Qinghai and Gansu, but I have not visited them.)

So I have been closely following unrest in western Sichuan, where more than a couple of Tibetans have set themselves on fire in protest of Chinese rule and policies. It is very hard to really know what’s going on there, because foreign journalists are not exactly being invited up to explore for themselves.  Journalist Tom Lasseter captures the confusing but certainly sad situation quite well in this post on his China Rises blog.

Seda County, which he writes about in that post, is quite close to the beautiful mountainous regions of Western Sichuan where we traveled with Becky’s parents, sister and Aunt Judy 9 (as well as our own still-quite-little kids, of course). It was a remarkable, fascinating, grueling and ultimately terrifying trip, which culminated in a 9 or 10-hour, death-defying trip up and over a high and steep mountain pass under construction

I wrote about it in this The Expat Life column, which I think is one of my best. One of the few regrets I have about Big in China was that I did not include more about this wild and wooly adventure. I am going to write up a more extensive post, a sort of chapter-that-never-was-but-should-have-been. In the meantime, some photos and highlights from that column follow… At the bottom is a video I made. it was an early effort and is a little rough.

Note that we were driving a full size coach bus on this road - and it had two-way traffic.

Then things started getting interesting…. Eventually, I wondered if the guides’ standards for safe and normal travel were so vastly different that they couldn’t fully grasp our concerns, even while apologizing for the sorry conditions.

When we came nose to nose with a little car, the little guy lost - and he backed up into a ditch.

I had a pleasant surprise a couple of months ago when I randomly received an email from the Allman Brothers manager saying that drummer Butch Trucks wanted to chat with me – he had read Big in China and was really fascinated by it. This led to several, continuing conversations with Butch and the quote below. It was one of those sweet moments for me that completes the circle and makes everything feel oh-so worthwhile.

“I loved the book Big in China and the vistas Alan Paul opened into a brave new world. What a very cool adventure.”

-Butch Trucks, Founding member, the Allman Brothers Band

Studio version of “Beijing Blues”: