“Mind your toes.” “Please keep away for safety.” “Please take care of all of your belongings.” The Chinese are surely a polite people. I am amused at the translation of the basic warnings, but their communication is effective.

The purpose of communication is to transfer a specific thought from one person to another. I like the “McDonalds Drive Thru” method of communication …. 1) I order something over the loudspeaker. 2) The receiver repeats it back to me ending with the question, is that correct? 3) After I confirm that I was understood, the receiver asks, “Is there anything else?”

Maybe I should explain the one about “Please mind your toes.” It was on the escalator, just below “no trolley’s.

The flight from Chicago to Beijing China was awesome. I was assigned emergency row seating. I felt like a school crossing guard. A lot depended on me getting the door open if there were an emergency. And the traveler next to me was as generous as he was friendly.

“Terry” was born in China, educated in Japan, and for the twenty years he has lived in the United States. Ohio is his present home. He works in research and development for a pharmaceutical company. He was baptized in the Chinese church of Chicago and took a great interest in the work I do, especially concerning those in Mongolia. When we parted company, Terry slipped me a handful of $20 dollar bills.

Fifteen hours in the Beijing airport isn’t bad. I consider it training for the Gobi Desert. Coffee shops, restaurants, and iPhone charging stations dot the landscape like life giving oasis’s here in the PEK airport, Terminal #3. Will the Gobi have coffee shops?

In five hours my flight leaves for Ulaanbaatar. Time enough to hit a few more local watering holes. “KUNGFU” is next.