t to be nice although it was too short for me to see much of lndia.

From the moment we landed at Bombay airport, we three women from Beijing were surrounded by the differences in language, people, food, scenes and even traffic-one drives on the right side of the road in China but on the left side in India.

It was a completely strange place, but I felt easy and safe.

The Indians we met were so friendly that when each of the participants to the conference was invited to say one thing about the meeting, I said, "I am glad to have this chance to know you beautiful Indian women and hand'some Indian men."

I would not forget the guard at the exit of the international airport in Bombay who kindly insisted that we wait in seats usually reserved for the guards because the people who were supposed to meet us failed to show up as expected.

And when I wanted to make a phone call to get somebody to pick us up and could get no coins anywhere, another guard took me to a phone reserved for airport staff .

It could be a very frustrating experience to miss one's flight and arrive at the destination eight hours later than planried, which is what happened to us after the conference.

But it turned out somehow not as frustrating as it might have been. We were at the Coimbatore airport on our way back to Bombay after the conference, and we were to leave for home from Bombay the next evening.

We were told that we could not take the 10 a. m. flight as we had planned because our tickets had not been confirmed properly and there were no seats available. But we were told that we could be in Bombay that evening if we took a flight to a nearby airport in Bangalore and go from there to Bombay.

We were killing time by measuring the airport's modest waiting room when an airport officer stopped in front of us, introduced himself as the officer on duty at the airport, and assured us that there would be no problem, that things would be straightened out for us, and everything would be all right.

In, half an hour we had our new tickets in our hands.

Yet, before long, we were called to the ticket counter and informed that we would not be able to catch our connection flight at the Bangalore airport because the flight from Coimbatore would be one hoor late. And we would have to take the next flight leaving Bangalore and arriving in Bombay at 8 p.m.

One hour later, wben I was thinking how unlucky we were that day, we were lining up for the security check. A young woman in airport uniform approached us and said, "We are so sorry that we failed to arrange your morning flight. We did try, but..."

You don't hear such words very often when you are upset by travel problems in China, even when you are the victims of the travel service's mistakes.

Her words swept away my bitter feelings at having to spenci. the whole day at airports while we might have been exploring Bombay for the afternoon.

And that was one of the several moments when I could not help but fall in love with the Indian people.

I fell in love with them earlier when a taxi driver, a quiet old man, followed me and gave me his drinking water to wash my mouth when I got sick halfway to the conference place.

I fell in love with them when the children at the school close to the conference building passed by and greeted us with "hello" and "morning" with smiles and a little shyness.

I fell in love with t

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