Life in the West Bank behind the wall

Young inhabitants of Jalazone, the refugee camp 7 kilometers north of Ramallah that covers 25 hectares.[Photo By Peng Yining/China Daily]

Before I flew back to China, security guards at the airport unwrapped every piece of Dead Sea mud soap souvenir I bought and smelled and squeezed it.

There are some areas of Jerusalem, my friend said, that she dare not go to because of safety concerns, and she is very choosy about the buses she takes.

On one occasion when we passed the Damascus Gate of the Old City, a couple of youths yelled at us. Once we were well away, my friend whispered to me: "They called us b******."

That left me dumbfounded.

Seconds before we had been insulted, I had been trying to persuade her to take buses, no matter who uses them. "People are people," I said. "You shouldn't prejudge them."

It is easy enough to reach the simplistic conclusion that "Some people are just bad", but what does building walls do to solve problems, I wondered.

I had decided that after many years of traveling and training as a journalist, I was not going to rush to hasty conclusions and become a prisoner to ill thought-out and poorly formed convictions.

So here I was standing nervously on a bus full of Palestinians. If anyone knows about packed buses, the Chinese do, and even by our standards this bus was as packed as they come.

As I hung on to the back of the driver's seat he asked: "Where are you from?"

"China," I said.

"China," he repeated loudly.

He pointed at his plastic sandals and said: "Made in China."

"Very cheap, very good," he added.

People around us nodded, smiling broadly.

I was relaxed.