A week's trip to Charleston and Beaufort, S.C. -- with a group focused on history and traditions, of which my wife is a member -- drew me deep into reflection on the South and the differences between Northerners and Southerners.

		Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).

This is in general dangerous ground in the United States. If anyone would like to believe that all of that was a long time ago, he should go down there, particularly but not uniquely to Charleston. My first gem of a moment came when a lady said, "The Civil War was one thing, but what really divided people here was the Revolution!" I made the mistake of asking about the Mel Gibson film "The Patriot," very loosely based on South Carolina's Revolutionary War hero, Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. She said she had the video, but hadn't been able to make it through it. "But he wasn't like that," she said.

And they know which family was on which side of that war. The family names are still around, and not just in the churchyards: the Heywards, Pinckneys, Middletons, Ravenals, Draytons and Rutledges as examples. And I am sure that if some Charlestonian reads my miserable scribblings about their fair city, I will be pilloried for having left out someone.

Everyone down there, black and white, is related; they pore over names, looking for "kin" and links to South Carolina. Knowing that our group was from Pennsylvania, but from politeness -- and Charlestonians are very polite, greeting one in the morning on the street in a city of 75,000 -- a lady obliquely but pointedly addressed the always lingering race and slavery question by informing us that there were 10,000 free blacks in Charleston at the start of the Civil War.

The "What are they like?" issue was only definitively addressed for me back in Pittsburgh when a friend of mine of imperial Chinese ancestry recounted the story of a Chinese visitor commenting on Charlestonians: "They sip tea, eat rice and worship their ancestors -- just like we do!"

Modern China interfaces with modern South Carolina as well. While we were in the state, Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi visited to discuss trade and investment. Ninety new companies have set up in Charleston since the Navy base there closed in 1995; a third of them are foreign. There were pro-immigration rallies in Charleston, Columbia and Greenville. Charleston has always traded to live. In "Gone with the Wind," Rhett Butler's blockade-running packets worked out of Charleston. Visitors constitute one-third of the city's economy.

But it is the old houses and their walled gardens that get you. The Heyward-Washington house was built in 1772. The "Washington" is tacked on because the first president did sleep there, in 1791. He called Charleston "wealthy - Gay - & hospitable." ("Gay" did not mean that in 1791. And they used odd punctuation.) What I found particularly haunting were the paintings of the early inhabitants of the old houses.

Charleston, Beaufort and South Carolina's Low Country were unhealthy places to live, because of mosquitoes carrying malaria and other diseases that flourish near water. Many people lived short lives. Many children died in their first years. It was a constant fight to stay healthy and some of the toughness of these people was survival of the fittest. Thus, also, in part, the importance of families that persisted.

The women sometimes did better than the men, in spite of giving birth to prodigious numbers of children. The myth of the pale, frail Southern belle is a myth. One brought her husband a huge house, Middleton Place, and a 200-acre rice plantation as her dowry in 1741. The house had a 10,000-volume library at its peak. And, oh, yes, the Yankees burned it in 1865. The paintings of these ladies make them look delicate, but many of the old houses' last residents were the widows.

Given the interesting, rich, distinctive food, the men probably ate themselves to death. There was Hoppin' John (rice and black-eyed peas), she-crab soup, shrimp and grits, hog jowls, roasted oysters and -- for a healthy break -- fried green tomatoes and okra.

Charleston and the coastal Low Country have had some hard times, apart from the Revolution and the Yankees. There was a serious earthquake in 1886. Hurricane Hugo damaged the roofs of 90 percent of Charleston's buildings in 1989. It has remarkable city officials. The recently retired police chief was an African-American Jew named Reuben Greenberg. The mayor, Joseph P. Riley Jr., was re-elected to his seventh term in 2005, after 24 years in office, with 71 percent of the vote. He is reportedly very honest and very adept at attracting business to Charleston.

The water is ever with one in the Low Country. The Charleston paper helpfully informed us that the College of Charleston Student Alumni Associates would be hosting the Oozeball-2006 tournament while we were there. Oozeball is volleyball played in a regulation 12 inches of mud. The Charleston baseball team is the Riverdogs of the South Atlantic League, like the Pirates off to a weak start this year. Their rivals are the Savannah Sand Gnats.

Two last "gems." The lady in the shop at the Mill House where we stayed handed over my morning New York Times cheerfully. When I asked about the local Charleston paper, she said, "Oh, we don't sell that, but you can have mine." When I said I wouldn't take her paper, she said, "But I've read it; I only read the obituaries, to see if I'm in there, and the editorials." I said, "The editorials! Oh, please come to Pittsburgh!" without explaining that I write the blessed things for the Post-Gazette.

Other gem. We attended a Saturday-night-before-Easter service at the Episcopal church at Bluffton, on the banks of the May River. It was more evangelical than we were used to but the mixture of the Anglican of that part of colonial South Carolina, and the ruddy faith that was required to survive in the Low Country rang out clearly as the congregation sang all the verses of "Lift High the Cross." Probably scared the fish.