My Thoughts on China

China

China

China

What can I say about China?

I realize I have been lacking in information about my experience of China. Instead or writing about my experience and thoughts, I have used pictures as the distraction from that needed responsibility. So for this post there will not be any pictures. Nada. Zip. You might want to skip over this, but you probably shouldn’t. See the truth is that I did not really enjoy China. I liked parts of China, but I did not enjoy it. Actually, throughout my whole trip to Beijing, I felt an unsettling feeling. I felt this lingering anxiety wherever I went. What caused this feeling of unease? I don’t really know. The people I traveled with were horribly kind, funny, and friendly, and the place I stayed in was a comfortable place. Despite all these positive conditions, I felt a feeling on unease.

This flustering feeling might be because of my preconceived notions about China, or it might be because of the vast amount of stuff we did in a short amount of time, but it all started when we got off the plane at Dalian airport.

On the plane to Dalian airport I did feel an eagerness brewing inside me. For me, I kept thinking how amazing China was going to be, and how this was the start of my traveling whirlwind adventure.  However when I got off the plane, that elation disappeared. At first I was hit full frontal with the blast of hot humidity mixed with the rancid smell of cigarette smoke. However cigarettes were not the only thing that changed my mood, but the atmosphere itself. Dalian is a pretty ugly airport. The interior painted a mixture of eggshell white walls and blood red lining. The seats were the standard dark blue seats that you see in most airports, but this one contained an odd feeling where it seemed like it would have been new and modern in 1974, but it was still had a strange sense of pride and ignorance of its own beauty. Throughout my whole trip to China, although short, I felt like that sense of ignorant pride ran abundant, and that might be why I felt so uncomfortable.  I felt that the Dalian airport might be a minuscule problem that would eventually go away, but that sense of discomfort continued when I went to the Beijing airport.

However before I talk about the Beijing airport, there are two extra things that needed to be said. One was the potential arrest of me at the Dalian airport, and the other was the plane ride to Beijing. When I was transferring planes I needed to go through immigration. When I was handing my passport to the official, they pulled me aside and interrogated me. The problem was that they did not believe my passport picture. While this might seem like a comical fable, the truth was that I was in full panic, and my nervousness grew like a tumor. In the end I managed to get through, however I carried a heavy burden with me. This burden continued flying to Beijing from Dalian where I managed to bring up conversation with a lovely Chinese lady. This was close to the small chitchat we shared.

            “Hi,” she said.

            “Hi,” I replied.

            “Where are you from?”

            “Hollywood” (this is my usual response to that general question. I may be American and English but I am from Hollywood.)

            Skipping ahead of the conversation it became revealed that she is from Beijing, but she works for a Japanese company that buys off companies. She is married and she wants to have children. She speaks Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, and English. While we each talked about our lives, our conversation moved to a political one.

            “The environment is pretty bad here,” she said, “you might have some trouble with the pollution when you get off the plane.”

            “Yeah I’ve heard.”

            “Yeah I haven’t seen a blue sky in China since I was a child, and we can’t have milk anymore.”

            “I’ve never heard about the milk thing what’s that about?”

            “Because of the high levels of pollution in China a lot of the cows have become sick. They’ve been eating poisoned meal, which has been killing the children in China. Now there is ration of powdered milk in Hong Kong.”

            “Oh god that’s awful.”

            “Have you heard about the pigs?”

            “Los Angeles cops?”

            “The pigs that were killed in Shanghai and floated down the Shanghai River.”

            “No”

            “One of the farm’s pigs got sick, so sick by the pollution that they all started dying one by one. Instead of getting rid of the pigs the farm threw them in the river. They started floating down the river and they contaminated most of the water.”

            “Jesus.”

            And our conversations sprung up from there. Instead of talking about the problems in America we focused mostly on the issues in China. There was nothing that we didn’t talk about. We talked about how she wished she could live in an environment that was much more free and open, and that despite the changes in China, there still is a lot of work to be done. We talked about the environment, and we talked about relations with America. The biggest issue she dealt with was the rapid wealth gap that was forming in China. While China was experiencing an economic shift, it seemed like the rich were getting richer and the poor were being suppressed by the sky rocking prices of Chinese products. She talked about how Chinese wine is too expensive in China, but in America it is dirt-cheap. I personally couldn’t stop thinking about cruel Chinese wine is because some of the wine is made with tiger bones. In order to get the tiger bones they starve the tigers to death then use their bones.

            The biggest and most conflicting issue I experienced with her was towards the end where I said, “I hope you have a lot of kids!” and she replied,

            “My country doesn’t allow that.”

            Maybe my issue with China wasn’t the pollution but the feeling of guilt. It is funny to travel because you realize how lucky or how fortunate you are. I understand now America is dealing a lot with the issues of civil liberties, however it still isn’t as bad as everyone else. Truthfully, I have been given a lot, and I have been given the gift to keep my and sustain my sense of freedom. Right after that conversation I began to feel unsettled, but I hoped that would pass once I got to Beijing.

When I arrived at the Beijing airport I instantly got a headache. It was certainly a light headache, and I did not need any form of medication whatsoever, but it was a type of headache to let you know it was there. I felt it right after I took my first breath, and I felt more restless being there. See I think the uncontrollable heat mixed with the years of fifth in the air caused me to feel out of my element. I was lost mentally in a clusterfuck of unusual looking people and customs, which frightened me.

            My next theory of my unsettling nervousness might have spurred from the cultural shock. Maybe I wasn’t ready for something different, but I still can’t put on finger on it.

            However China wasn’t horrible. It actually has something that South Korea misses greatly. I feel like China is going through a transitional process where it is slowly moving into its new role as a superpower however it seems like China is still trying to sustain its tradition. I feel like I have grown up respecting the old so to me, the sense of culture and tradition is really important and it creates the country’s sense of identity. I have found that South Korea has leaned a bit far from its tradition, which has made it really hard to connect to the country’s history. China however is very prideful of its history. Spewed throughout the streets in Beijing were beautiful red lanterns hanging from the curvature of the Chinese roofs. Dragon and dog statues guarded every block, and throughout our journey along Beijing, there was never a time where I did not feel like I wasn’t experiencing what I wanted to see.

            We spent most of our first afternoon exploring the streets and alleys of Beijing. I think, at that exact moment, I felt most comfortable with myself. Even though I felt the uncontrollable heat of the day, the protruding throbbing of my head due to the pollution, and the overall cultural shock of where I was, I was fully invested with that day. I really sensed that I experienced culture and beauty of the east, and that consciousness of pleasure continued when we had dinner.

            My first meal in China was nerve wrecking and exciting. We had originally wanted dim sum, not knowing that dim sum is a Cantonese meal and would be very rare in Beijing, so instead we went to a small restaurant in a back alley. I was nervous that I would have to eat something not vegan but the restaurant’s menu contained all the ingredients used in the meal. I got to have two things, the lightly fried celery with cashews and the lightly fried tofu in a sweet and sour sauce. The tofu was perfectly fried, and the celery and cashews were the perfect concoction of flavor and nutrition. Biting into each individual tofu bite I experienced the light crunch on the outside mixed with the scalding hot aroma of the tofu. The sweet and sour sauce made the meal spark a bit little more, and the dish in general was fun and fulfilling. While we were there, we made friends with a stranger, and we talked about simply moving to China and never coming back. I wasn’t going to go through it, but it was fun to fantasize.

            After that, we went to bed. It was a comfortable hostel, and it had air conditioning. All in all I felt like it was less of a crappy hostel experience, and more of a small hotel. The atmosphere was nice, the staff was friendly, and I generally wished I could stay a lot longer at that place. The atmosphere was centered around a traditional look, with cherry wood cutouts and dark red tapestry, but it also had a ominous look that made it feel like you were in a Los Angeles Noir novel. The staff provided a lot of helpful information to get us around Beijing.

            The Great Wall seemed to be the last straw of unsettledness. For me, it was a mixture of amazement and lack of belief. It seemed so interesting and big, but it did not seem real. With the hustle and bustle of the vast quantity of people around me, I felt like I was at Disneyland. Despite how early we went, it was still crowded. Everywhere we walked it seemed commercial and fake. For some strange reason I felt that the Great Wall was not as important or as exciting as some of the other Seven Wonders of the world that I went to. Machu Picchu and the Coliseum were powerful and amazing, but the Great Wall failed to live up to my expectation. In the words of Karl Pilkington, “it isn’t a great wall, it’s a o.k. wall, but it isn’t great.”