They were 1 billion workers — one-fourth of the world’s population — wearing faded uniforms and having very little to amuse themselves. They were hauled to and from factories in old buses or in "stand-up" stock trucks. They were peaceful, law-abiding people — and their lives were at stake if they got out of line. Motor vehicles were trucks, buses and, in big cities, an occasional taxicab; most were manufactured more than 30 years before I bicycled there. It took as long for a family to save to buy a bike as it takes for us to save for a car. Even then they couldn’t make the purchase without a committee’s "proof-of-need approval." Many bikes carried two or three persons; others were used to haul heavy loads of hay, huge baskets of manure, five bales of cotton and seven empty 50-gallon metal barrels.

There was also a strange device that served the purpose of a pickup truck. It looked like a large lawn mower with trailer attached. The driver, holding the long steering mechanism, drove while sitting on the trailer.

Tum was just one of 1 billion Chinese people when I visited with her in 1981. I guessed her age to be 17, but who knows? She was carrying two baskets of moist sand on the ends of a bamboo pole supported across her shoulders. I watched a middle-aged woman weigh Tum’s load; it weighed 128 pounds. She climbed from street level to a construction site where the hotel backed up to a rock hill. Up, up, up she went in long, slow steps to the second level, the third and the fourth. Back she hurried for another load.

Tum smiled as I spoke to her and, on another trip to the top, I followed to see her dump the load. We smiled again as she trotted back down while I was still climbing. I rested while contemplating Tum’s future. Later I asked our interpreter, "Will Tum make more money than the woman who weighed her loads?" "No."

"Will she trade jobs with the girl who opens orange soda pop bottles for tourists?"

"No. Once she’s trained for a job she’ll likely do that as long as she lives."

I suddenly wished I could hide her in my bicycle box and bring her back to our farm forever.

The interpreter and I waited till Tum ended her long day of carrying loads that I could not have even lifted. Tum picked up a package as she checked out. It was tourist laundry, which she’d wash, dry and iron to return the next morning for some extra coins to buy "pretty things for her mother."

Tum is now nearly 40 and still carrying moist sand. I hope she knows she has an admirer in America.