What do you think of India?

People ask me that question immediately after they learn I just returned from my nine-day trip to cover Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to India.

I find it difficult to answer. I was there for only a few days and my travel there was limited only to two cities, New Delhi and Mumbai. I cannot rush to judgment. Even what I saw, heard, smelled and caught with my digital camera are only things rudimentary about India.

Some media comments have been derived from some events that took place while I was at my work there. Some seemed to me to be rushed.

For instance, my father questioned me about whether it was true that two CCTV cameramen violated the local rules and their acts almost prevented journalists from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong from covering the official welcoming ceremony, as reported by a Hong Kong-based TV network.

But this glitch was more complicated than what my father derived from the Hong Kong-based TV report. The two CCTV cameramen arrived in New Delhi onboard the presidential aircraft. Immediately after disembarking from the plane themselves, they started to do their job, to record the scenes as Chinese President Hu Jintao, his wife and other members of the official Chinese delegation walked down the red-carpeted stairs from the plane.

They had no way of knowing that even their shooting positions had been fixed along with other TV networks.

It was true that we journalists from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong had to wait longer than our Indian counterparts before we were allowed into the grounds of the Indian Presidential Palace, but I still believe we must refrain from making a hasty conclusion without getting the whole truth.

During my flight to New Delhi, I read a few pages of the Lonely Planet book on India, especially the Delhi chapter. I was forewarned about the scams that local taxi/auto drivers might try to pull on me. So each time I took a cab alone or an "auto" a three-wheeled motorbike I had the feeling that I was being cheated out of my money.

However, I was at ease with my last taxi ride, from the domestic terminal to the international terminal, because I took the pre-paid ride.

To be honest, taxi scams are not an Indian creation. Similar cheating is not uncommon in Beijing. And such scams do not present a whole picture of who the Indians are.

In fact, almost whenever I needed help while in India, I got it. One night I was refused to pay for my connecting red-line at the metro station for the yellow-line. It was already 9:50 pm, and I was told that the red-line stopped operating at 9:35 pm.

I rode the yellow-line and got off at the transit station for both red and blue lines. I saw a lot of the locals running to the red line, so I followed them and got onboard a red-line train.

I was the only foreigner on the train, and I was not sure whether that train would take me to the area in which my hotel was located.

When I asked the question, pointing at the rail map, several locals nodded and promised that they would tell me where I should get off, despite the fact that there is an announcement for each stop and the train itself has information windows flashing to indicate the next stops.

When the stop came nearer, two Indians told me that I should follow them off the train. In the end, one of them took me along the tricycle ride and dropped me off at my hotel, which was about a 15 minute-walk from the metro station.

What can I say about India? I cannot rush to judgement, but rather, must refrain from making my judgment until I learn more about and experience more of China's most populous neighbour.

(China Daily 11/30/2006 page4)