China
1:54 p.m. -- 2002-01-20
Earlier this year, I was a (very reluctant) visitor to China. I�ve been meaning to blog about it for ages, but like many things in my life, it seemed too big, somehow. Too much of a job, just now... and so it gets shelved until later. I want to say some things... but I fear we�re in for a long one here, and there�s other jobs that need doing. Oh, I dunno.
Anyway, maybe I should just get on with it. There�s no law that says I have to write a good article about my travels, is there?
I feel some dreadful gaffe coming on. Like one of those unforgettable sentences that begin, �I am not a racist, but...�
Well, here goes.
I don�t like China. I think of China as a rogue state; a slum nation that pollutes on a massive scale and has brought dozens of species to the brink of extinction. Not that this disregard for nature indicates any great love for mankind: they execute far more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Amnesty International admit they simply can�t get accurate figures (the number of people executed is classified as a �state secret�) and simply quote it as �thousands� per year. (For comparison, the USA executed 52 prisoners last year.)
The unelected junta that ordered the army to open fire on the Tiananmen Square protestors are still at liberty. Tibet is under military occupation, its people are being persecuted and the countryside is being ravaged. China claims also claims Taiwan as part of its territory, and threatens many neighbouring countries. In fact, what other country, at sixty years old, had already been involved in over twenty �territorial disputes�?
So I don�t like China. It offends my sense of fair play, but my job required that I went there for a while. I felt icky about it, because my �doing business with China� felt like a tacit acknowledgement that China was something other than a rogue state. A more reluctant visitor, then, China has yet to see.
Still, off I went. A nice flight, across Russia and over Mongolia in a big arc. Non-stop all the way to China: beat that, Marco Polo. As we walked towards passport control, we were �welcomed� by a team of people wearing surgical masks, misting the air about us with disinfectant. This is done because �lawai� (a derogatory term for foreigners, somewhat like �gaijin� in Japanese) are clearly dirty barbarians, and will bring disease into China if precautions are not taken. A fellow traveller said that when the swine flu concerns were at their height, these airport staff had worn full-body suits, as if they were working in a chip manufacturing plant, or handling nuclear waste...
Next: passport control, where a funny thing happened: my reluctance to visit China was almost equalled by their reluctance to let me in. My documents were faultless... but the officials didn�t like the look of my squeaky-clean passport one little bit. �Wait, please,� they said, and had me stand at once side while they processed all the other passengers off the flight. I watched as a white-gloved official carefully studied every single (blank) page of my passport... and photocopied them. They seemed particularly irritated that I hadn�t written any details in under �next of kin�... and photocopied that blank page, too.
Meanwhile, I waited, and projected an aura of calm. Reasoning that the worst they would probably do to me would be to say that I wasn�t welcome, and put me on the return flight � an outcome I would have been delighted with. The reluctant visitor to China is not intimidated by the prospect of not being allowed in. (�Oh please... don�t throw me in that there briar patch...�)
I was called back to passport control. Did I have another passport, the official barked? �No, I said. It expired.�
So, I didn�t have it with me?
�No. It�s years out of date.�
It seems that those guys really wanted to know where else I�d been. But since I got the new passport, all my trips have been within Europe, so no stamps and no visas. That�s the way we do things in the Free World.
Maybe I still have an unintentional aura of �works for the government� or something. Or maybe the airport guys have some kind of quota that means they have to pick one foreigner at random off each flight from the UK, and try to make them squirm. In any event, my other aura of �go ahead, send me home if you like� meant that their bureaucratic games had very little effect on me. In fact, I found it a little amusing. Although, come to think of it, I was carrying contraband... but more on that in part 2.
Quite soon, they ran out of questions to ask me, and reasons to delay me, and let me in.
As I left the arrivals area, the first thing that hit me... was a whiff of sewage. This was unfortunate, since I would soon realize that this was just a localized plumbing problem. An unfortunate first impression: China doesn�t actually smell like sewage... but the airport did, that day.
My employer had sent a driver to collect me, which was nice. The guy was very pleasant, and quite possibly the worst taxi driver I have ever met. First of all, he forgot where he�d parked the mini-van. At the multi-storey car park, we had to bob in and out of the lift several times before we found it. All part of the rich tapestry of life, right?
By the time we were seated I had my iPhone out and was tapping out notes of all the interesting and bizarre things I had seen, thus far. Meawhile, taxi man accelerated like a bat out of hell, then spotted a steel bollard in his path and did an emergency stop. He didn�t know his way out of the car park.
This small problem was replicated at the next level of magnitude, when it was revealed that he didn�t know his way out of the airport, either. Some creative use of reverse gear and a broad interpretation of �one way� got us on track again, though, and this was all done with rally driver technique.
I never did work out whether he was called Mister Wu, or if that was the name of the company that he worked for. The communication potential offered by my Mandarin and his English was at that annoying point just above zero, where the other guy feels obliged to keep trying even though it�s clear you�re never going to break through the bafflement. Ah well.
Once on the highway, Mister Wu (or Mister Wu�s employee) was in his element. I was wrong about his rally driving; he was clearly one for the race track. He never wasted time doing anything mundane like indicating, and howled past just about everybody else. Reasoning that the front three feet of a vehicle is completely obliterated in a collision at motorway speeds, I knew I was in no danger of being hurt, so I relaxed and looked at the scenery.
The countryside was fascinating. Water, water everywhere. Southern China has small streams and rivers all over the place. It�s lush and green... although hardly paradise. Each farmstead looks cramped, and you find yourself wondering just how clean the soil and water can be, where industry, transport, housing and agriculture are cheek by jowl.
One of the brilliant things about going to a country so very different from your own is seeing the changes in the things that you normally take for granted. I particularly remember the strange shape of the pylons (it seems there are pylons everywhere in China) and the trucks. Trucks have an elongated, rangy look about them - and are followed everywhere by a cloud of blue diesel smoke. In fact, travelling in China seems a lot like you�re in a video game. You know, one of those 3D ones like �World of Warcraft� where you wander around a landscape and things loom out of the �mist� as you get closer. In a computer game, that mist exists to reduce the amount of detailed rendering that the computer has to do; in China, it�s just smog. It smelled faintly of bonfires.
Modern concrete apartment buildings have sprung up all along the line of the highway. The balconies all face the road, as if it�s the most interesting thing to watch. Not the sea, or the sunset... but the road, because this endless movement of traffic is China�s pulse. The Chinese are rightly proud of the amount of progress that has been made in recent years, but perhaps unaware of what the cost has been, in terms of humanity or impact upon nature. But they say you need a full stomach before you can worry about the environment, so perhaps I shouldn�t judge them.
Looking through my notes from that day, it seems I was particularly impressed by the fact that the billboards (there are billboards everywhere, too) don�t advertise DVDs or cars, but industrial machinery. It�s as if the whole country is a giant trade fair. Unfortunately, the transformation to industrial powerhouse seems to have left very little of the old China. Maybe it survives in remoter provinces... but not where the majority of the people are. I worry about being culturally adrift in this way... but perhaps my sentimentality is a very British thing. Again, not for me to judge.
Just when I thought that motoring in China wasn�t as bad as everybody had told me, Mister Wu (or his employee) spotted our exit ramp, and swerved onto it. A couple of baffling intersections later, we were downtown. Then I realized why they don�t let �lawai� drive in China. It was absolute bedlam: there was a crossroads, but the main road also had subsidiary roads running alongside it, with their own traffic lights. Between these were cycle lanes and pedestrian footpaths. Overhead traffic lights simultaneously showed red, amber and green in different lanes, and similar instructions were given to cyclists and passengers. None of the instructions appeared to be as mundane as �go� or �stop�, but rather exhorted road users of every type to constantly edge forward and then dart through gaps in the streams of vehicles and people. I�m pretty sure that we will understand quantum physics a whole lot better if we ever manage to learn how junctions of this kind work.
After a few of these, I gave up trying to understand, and let Mister Wu (or his employee) worry about it. He still didn�t use his indicators, but seemed to communicate his intent telepathically. We went through junction after junction, unscathed. And all of a sudden, we had arrived at the hotel that was to be my base of operations.
Mister Wu (or his employee) unloaded my luggage, shook my hand, and left me. And that�s where I must leave you, until next time.
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