Jane Wooldridge first visited China in 1985; she has returned several times since, most recently in June 2007.

1985

The plane from Hong Kong to Beijing is half full; most passengers are Chinese or Western diplomats. While individual travel to China is now allowed, getting the visa has taken hours of quiet waiting and endless smiles in a Hong Kong office.

Though this is a ''direct'' flight to Beijing, we stop first at another airport, small and dark, outside the capital. No one speaks English, but a sign directs us to fill out health forms. I'm terrified a slight cold I have will land me in quarantine; I lie and check ''no'' in the space for sniffles.

We fly on to the real Beijing airport -- dingy and equally eerie. I'm vaguely panicked on the hour-long car ride into the city; the country lane is unlit, and the canopy of trees overhead seems more menacing than sheltering. The legendary harshness of a then-strict Communist regime gives me comfort; surely kidnapping or killing a foreigner would bring penalties too severe to risk.

My hotel is on the edge of the city; all foreigners are sequestered far from the center. There aren't many of us. I'm the sole Western visitor at the Temple of Heaven, and one of only two English speakers on my one-day bus tour to the Great Wall. The only others climbing past the first steps are a quartet of soldiers. In icy December, the trek from the city takes all day.

The city itself is a tangle of blue Mao suits and bicycles. All signs, all road markers, all menus are scripted in Mandarin. The ''official interpreter'' I've hired knows only a handful of English words. The only shop selling goods is the Friendship Store; I buy a rabbit hat for $5 as protection against the snow. When it gets damp, it exudes a peculiar smell. It's probably been cured in ox urine, I'm told.

2007: The direct flight, Chicago to Shanghai, is packed with school kids and an American musical ensemble and Chinese families heading home with gourmet chocolates for the relatives. Everyone has a camera and a cellphone; many carry laptops.

Getting a visa has been a simple matter of popping down $75 and FedExing my passport to Los Angeles. Five days later it was back on my desk.

There are still a trio of forms to fill out: Customs, Entry and the Health Declaration, inquiring whether we've handled birds or poultry recently, or are suffering from fever, diarrhea, snivel, cough, vomiting, sore threat, headache, TB, venereal disease or psychosis.

Anticipation hums through the Main Cabin. For most, this a Great Adventure, or at least a Homecoming. A brief ground delay -- awaiting clearance for Russian airspace -- doesn't dim the cheer. Adrenalin is an anti-jetlag power drug.

Kari Zuidema, 23, a saxophone player and music teacher in northern Illinois, is traveling with a group of 50-plus musicians, a wind instrument and percussion band that will be playing in seven Chinese cities over the next two weeks. ''I never wanted to leave the country,'' she said. ``Then this trip came up, and I went for it.''

Harold Petty, 21, an international business student at Southern Illinois University outside of St. Louis, will spend the next two months studying Mandarin Chinese. He visited last summer on a school program and decided to return. ''The money is all going to China,'' he said.

Shanghai's slick Pudong Airport lies 30 miles out of town. A maglev train whisks you to the city center in a matter of minutes, zooming at a max speed 268 mph.

It fits: cosmo Shanghai buzzes along at warp speed. The Jetsons would feel right at home.

-- JANE WOOLDRIDGE

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