This page chronicles my recent trip to China.  It was my first visit, and to compensate for my lack of knowledge about the country, I tried to take a crash course beforehand.  First, I watched the DVD series "The Rise and Fall of China" by UCLA professor Richard Baum, 24 hours of lectures which traced the last 200 years of Chinese history from the collapse of the 19th-century empire to the aspiring 21st-century superpower.  I watched the 2007 film Nanking, about the 1937 massacre committed by the Japanese army in the former capital city.  The film drew on letters and diaries from the era and, most strikingly, archive footage and interviews with surviving victims and perpetrators of the massacre.  A truly gut-wrenching film.  I also watched Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film The Last Emperor, winner of 9 Academy Awards.  I remember watching the movie when it first came out.  I found it incredibly beautiful but also incredibly boring at the time.  I must admit, it's one of the only films I've ever walked out of before it ended.  Alas, 25 years later, after a second viewing, I still found it rather dull.  Last, I watched the 2011 historical drama 1911 starring Jackie Chan based on the 1911 uprisings and the founding of the Republic of China when nationalist forces led by Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Qing Dynasty.  Finally, I ordered several books, of which I only had time to read one - "China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future - and the Challenges for America" (Awarded 2006 Business Book of the Year by the Financial Times) by journalist James Kynge.  I also consulted by National Geographic Traveler and  DK Eyewitness Travel guidebooks before departing.  I apparently have no ear for the Chinese language (except when singing), so I viewed any attempt to learn the language before my travels a fruitless venture.