My husband and I were traveling through China in 1986, a much different China than can be found today. The old buildings were being torn down and rebuilt for the impending economic boom. We literally went to breakfast one morning and returned to find the walls of our hotel room torn down, our belongings sitting amid the rubble. Traditional techniques of construction could be observed everywhere. One day as we walked the streets of one city, we spotted this beautiful young woman using baskets to extricate dirt from a big hole in the ground, looking every bit like the heroin of a Chinese opera.