If you are going to the Summer Olympics in Beijing, be prepared for a shock. China overwhelms. It drowns the senses.

Look out your bus window and see, for better or worse, an emerging world power. The country is almost impossible to describe, but I can share some experiences and impressions for those who will travel there in August, or any time, for that matter.

I first visited China with a group from the Los Angeles County Art Museum in October 1981 - five short years after the destructive Cultural Revolution (1966-76). I happened to check a world map and found that Beijing's climate was not all that different from Minot's.

Since one of our stops was Beijing and the Great Wall late in the month, I packed a parka. Fortunately. When I visited China again in 2006 and 2007, everything had changed. Everything.

Both my first and second journeys to China started in Shanghai - that exciting, historic, compelling city of intrigue I had dreamed to visit for years. To give you an idea of the magnitude of change: In 1981, the Shanghai airport lights had to be turned on for us to land our Russian-made jet from Guangzhou (formerly Canton).

It was dark everywhere. The terminal was empty, dismal and depressing while Chinese guards watched us. There were no shops. Our footsteps echoed. Now, both Shanghai and Beijing international airports are modern labyrinths of marble, vistas of lights, shop-filled to the brim, and hum with traffic from everywhere in the world. They are a beauty.

Shanghai was the largest city in China in 1981- about 8 million people. We drove to the Peace Hotel, a landmark near the Bund that is still there. Nanjing Road facing our hotel was a sea of blue Mao jackets. We were stunned by the numbers. Barricades were set up on each side of the street so that people could walk, allowing only one path down the center for bicycles, occasional buses and rare cars (I never saw one).

People walked eight across, jammed together, taking up all available room. I went out one evening, down Nanjing Road, heading for People's Department Store No. 2. I promptly got lost leaving the store. It was dark and hard to see for all of the bodies.

Fighting panic, I found a policeman, showed him the hotel address in Chinese and he pointed me in the right direction. Hotels now hand out cards to their guests with hotel information in Chinese. I feel I had a part in this gesture.

The Bund, a spacious promenade that runs along Shanghai's Huangpu River, is still lovely. In 1981, elderly Chinese gathered there to do their graceful Tai Chi. Walking the Bund, we were constantly surrounded by crowds of young people who wanted to touch our hair, look at our big feet and practice English they had picked up from Radio Hong Kong.

They asked us if we were from San Francisco, and we said, "Near there." Well? There was no concept of our geography. Looking across the river from the Bund, you could see scattered development on the other side.

Now? Shanghai is pumped. It throbs. It's immense (a word that describes so much in China), with a population well over 20 million and growing. A cataclysm of lights at night make you feel you've walked into a Federico Fellini movie.

Three levels of roads like a layered cake try to accommodate endless streams of cars and buses. Nanjing Road is now a prosperous pedestrian way with everything you'd ever want to buy. Luxury hotels abound. The Bund buzzes with strolling Chinese families (with their one child) in colorful clothes snacking at refreshment stands. The view across the river through a haze of air pollution astounds you with its skyscraper panorama and nightly blazing lights.

The Shanghai Museum that once showed the world's first compass and earthquake seismograph on dreary pedestal affairs along with revolutionary posters is now a magnificent, modern marble wonder with elegant lighting and displays of Chinese treasures - the ones Chiang Kai-shek didn't take. It is perhaps the most beautiful museum I have ever seen.

Beijing, on the other hand, is a government town - more serious and not as much fun as Shanghai, then and now, but rife with monuments and temples.

In 1981, traditional hutong neighborhoods were everywhere, but now are being replaced by high rises in central Beijing. There is an outcry over this destruction of Chinese history. Tiananmen Square, the largest square in the world, was basically empty then, surrounded by hefty concrete government buildings, Mao's mausoleum and, at one end, the Forbidden City (now called the Palace Museum), with a huge portrait of Mao hanging on its front facade.

It's all still there. And the square? Suffice it to say, the Chinese are out seeing their country en masse and fill the square, including throngs of schoolchildren, each group identified by color, such a red hat or yellow T-shirt.

The broad boulevard that runs from the Beijing Hotel (where Henry Kissinger stayed) to the Forbidden City was mostly empty of cars in 1981. That year, I walked along the boulevard and stopped at a stand selling tempting candied cherries on sticks. A young man approached me, obviously wanting to talk, but after a moment he suddenly veered away and left. Someone was watching somewhere. It was a lonely walk.

Traffic now is monstrous. New highways spiral out from the city, especially to the Olympics site. You'll soon see why China needs petrol desperately. You also will see the awesome investment and construction China has made to host the Summer Olympics. Your mouth will hang open.

They mean to put on a world-class show no matter what. The "no matter what" includes the government's brutal suppression in Tibet and the horrific earthquake that brought world sympathy for its victims. China will have its party.

There are so many places to experience the country. They can't all be listed. Much of Xian (pronounced she-ahn) has morphed into a beauty with the terra cotta armies, famous pagodas, the city's musical fountains and fine hotels -not the Russian-built concrete blocks with roach motels we had in 1981.

A cruise down the Yangtze is a must to see the Three Gorges Dam and the many villages and farms abandoned to make way for rising waters. One brave Chinese said his city wanted David Copperfield to visit so he could make the dam disappear. The cruise ends in Chongqing, a city of 70 million we were told (I've heard higher) that is now China's largest.

This is where Chiang Kai-shek hung out during World War II. There is no monument to him but there are to Gen. Claire Chennault and his Flying Tigers and to Gen. Joseph Stillwell, commander in chief of the WWII China-Burma Theater (read the fascinating "Sand Against the Wind" by Barbara Tuchman).

In all, no trip to China is wasted, especially if you want to grasp China's continual rise in power - both economic and otherwise - and begin to have a relevant understanding of that country's potential impact on us and the world.