Some come as a surprise, like the sprouting of skyscrapers in Pudong, across Huangpu River from Shanghai's famed Bund -- a leap into the 21st century. There are generally good highways, public transport and telephone service. One thing you will find is the work week looks more like seven days, dawn-to-dusk, for most people, especially laborers and the self-employed. Office workers manage to be on five-or six-day weeks.

For anyone planning a visit during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, schedules for sightseeing should include more than the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven in the capital and the Great Wall, just outside.

Despite the non-stop hustle-bustle, there are innumerable places of calm and unusual splendor worth a visit, from the ceramic soldiers of Xian to the Three Gorges. The list is seemingly endless.

Then there's mystical Tibet, the "Roof of the World," as it has been dubbed.

For those thinking of perhaps taking in Tibet, they had better start planning now, because there is a boom going on in tourism in the Land of Snows, another moniker for Tibet.

There is plenty of history and it comes with heavy baggage: Beijing says Tibet has been considered a part of China for centuries. Those advocating "Free Tibet" say otherwise.

Those holding views contrary to that of Beijing say China invaded Tibet with 35,000 troops in 1949, the same year the People's Republic of China was declared. The separatists say there is no basis for Beijing claiming sovereignty.

The Tibet Support Group of London questions whether present-day Tibet is really autonomous and says the influx of ethnic Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, has destabilized the economy.

A 1959 uprising took the lives of 87,000 Tibetans "by the Chinese count alone," the support group said.

Tibetan exiles put the figure at 430,000 killed in the uprising, when the Dalai Lama and some 100,000 followers fled over the Himalaya Mountains to Dharamasala, India, an old hill station.

Exiles say up to 260,000 people died in prisons and labor camps in the subsequent 15 years of guerrilla warfare. Some say more than 1 million died overall.

These days Beijing refers to the period as the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet, saying it ended a feudal system that included slavery.

China now calls old Tibet's main province of U'Tsang the Tibet Autonomous Region and has wrapped two other Tibet provinces into China's provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan.

So, Tibet starts in China's Sichuan province for most westbound travelers heading to the great plateau in the nation's southwest, if they ignore the much ballyhooed railway between China's capital, Beijing, and Tibet's capital Lhasa.

Tibetans have lived in the western reaches of Sichuan province for hundreds -- if not thousands -- of years and have, at least, the traditions and colorful architecture to prove long lineage, including 800-year old brown watch towers dotting steep, breathtaking mountain slopes.

Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, is a tidy but sprawling modern city spread over a general grid pattern, but for the confounding center city area which lies askew of the pattern. It is a very Chinese city, of some 11 million people and dating back 2,000 years.

It has been, at least until the Qinghai-Tibet railway was completed, a traditional jumping off point for both earthbound and air travelers to the TAR's capital.

For many just landing at Lhasa airport, the gems in flora and fauna are missed, for near this regional capital in Sichuan not only is there rugged natural beauty in mountains and forests, and striking traditional Tibetan homes, but it is also where the endangered but famed panda thrives, with a little bit of help. Sichuan holds an estimated 80 percent of China's pandas.

Two sets of twin pandas were born in August outside Chengdu, in the Giant Panda Research Base, one of the study and reproduction preserves the government sponsors.

I visited the reserve at Ya'an, west of Chengdu, not far from the end of a modern expressway leading west out of the provincial capital. Within 30 minutes at the reserve, I saw seven pandas, including one way up a tree, fed one through the bars of his air conditioned cage and, surprisingly, was led into an outdoor enclosure, in a unique privilege, to pose with a two-year-old panda sitting in a rubber tire.

A caretaker who had been feeding the handsome fellow carrots, rather than bamboo, was clicking a metallic-sounding clacker, perhaps to reassure the beast all was well and not to get excited. I nervously handed my camera to another caretaker and oh-so-briefly considered giving the panda a hug.

"It's a bear," I quickly reminded myself, and settled for gently touching the top of his head. Instead of fluffy, the hair felt coarse and thick as I stroked it, but he didn't seem to care.

A couple of pictures were taken and I was on my way, heading west, once again, with my host, Shen Lu from the State Council information office, who was accompanied by Wan Tailei from the Foreign Ministry, who served as an interpreter. They started with me in Beijing and stayed with me for the journey in and around Tibet.

It wasn't that long before our van began traversing winding roads clinging to the sides of mountains as we headed out. We soon began to see some Tibetan Buddhist markings on simple concrete or brick homes and a few prayer flags.

Coming around yet another bend, we came open the yawning mouth of the five-year-old, more than 2.5 mile long Erlangshan Tunnel. It cuts an hour out of travel.

On the wide plaza outside, local ethnic Tibetans formally welcomed us with the traditional greeting of "Tashi delek," tiny silver cups of barley wine on a silver tray, and presented us each with a long, white silk-like scarf, called a Khata, to mark our entrance to their homeland.

There was no refusing the wine. It had to be brought at least to the lips whether or not it was consumed.

This was a practice repeated at almost every stop during about two weeks in the Tibet region, and numerous times during a single meal.

(Editor's note: UPI sent U.N. Correspondent William M. Reilly to China this summer. It was his sixth visit to the country over the last 10 years. As a guest of the State Council Information Office he toured Tibetan regions of the nation, including Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, and areas of adjacent Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. He also traveled on the new Qinghai-Tibet railway. This is the first in a series of his reports.)

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