The smell of burning incense wafts out slowly as the massive wooden imperial red doors of China open wider and wider finally letting the foreigners peek in and letting it's own people get a fleeting glimpse of the outside world as well. Welcome everyone to the Middle Kingdom.
Maybe it was because we lived so near Chinatown for so long that I thought I knew what to expect when we got here but the moment we set foot in Beijing I knew I was in for a wonderful surprise. The first night we arrived, bumping up and down the cobblestone streets through the dark in a red rickshaw to our guesthouse we knew we had made a big mistake. Three weeks of allotted time in this country would not be nearly enough but the pu pu platter sampler would have to do. Angelo was mad I was "rushing" him through this trip and was frustrated that we hadn't planned to travel for a year. Sighhhh.
The driver steered the rickshaw deep into the old hutong (a neighborhood made up of a labyrinth of tiny alleys connecting peoples' houses) and stopped in front of a dimly lit unassuming little building. We brought our bags in to find a soaring and silent glass atrium, glowing red lanterns lining ornately carved wooden balconies, a fountain full of koi and a 12-foot carved dragon greeting us. Ni how ma to you too!
China. Wild and poetic, this enchanting place has a tragic and colorful history filled with warlords, emperors, great fortress walls, gods and goddesses, concubines, invasions, temples and dynasties. While Europe was in the dark ages this middle kingdom was flourishing with advanced astronomy, math, art, architecture and music. Inventions like paper, printing, gunpowder, the compass, fireworks and silk were just a few things the Chinese had well in hand at the time- not to mention the food.
MU SHU THIS…
Food here is serious business. The dishes are as complicated and as varied as the land and people who live here and unlike in the west where we might make small talk about sports or the weather- here they will greet you with a "have you eaten?" It's not really that they want to feed you- it's just that discussing what you ate for your previous meal and the one before that and potentially the one this evening- what will be in it and who will be preparing it- is great conversation. And thankfully for the rest of us, their culinary art is also a huge export. For most of us in the west- Chinese food is the first, last and only real contact we have with this culture. (Not counting Bruce lee and Jackie Chan of course...)
As a matter of fact, all of the rich and riotous history here has been locked away in secrecy for so long that few westerners know much at all about this place- there's just not much PR. And thanks to the cultural revolution, the people here don't even know much about their own past either. I included a bit of history here for anyone who missed out on his or her China 101 class - skip over the next part if you want. I got a lot of the historical information below from a wonderful book I just read which has been banned in China- its called Wild Swans and I highly recommend it.
THE NUTSHELL:
1215: Genghis khan conquers Beijing
1279-1368: Kublai Khan rules all of today's China and Mongolia as well.
1368-1757: During this time there is a relatively constant state of war within China as different dynasties, warlords and Mongols fight over territory.
1757: The Opium War begins. The British and French have learned that selling opium to China is very lucrative. With massive numbers of people here addicted to the drug, business is good. The Chinese see the destruction it is causing and want the importing to stop so they sink a British boat full of opium and the first opium war begins. They were just saying no to drugs.
1856: Second opium war begins in which china loses Hong Kong and it becomes a British colony.
1927: Ruled by the U.S. backed Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-Shek massacres 5000 communists in Shanghai.
1937: The Japanese invade China
1949: The Communist People's Republic of China is established with Mao as leader. This wonderful culture is about to plummet to the depths of human darkness and become a barren land of red armies, famine, totalitarianism, the Cultural Revolution and the deadly trance of chairman Mao.
1958: Mao institutes "the great leap forward" making farmers turn from their crops and forge steel instead. This causes mass starvation. 50 million people die.
1960: Stalin dies and Mao watches in horror as Khrushchev denounces Stalin’s murderous policies and USSR develops a peaceful co-existence with USA.
1966: The birth of the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution
Stop.
Let’s talk Mao for a minute.
This is a man who's receding hairline and chubby cheeks grace t-shirts, ceramics, bath towels, fanny packs and ashtrays across the country. His kitsch value is astronomical and for the tourists that don't know much about him, the temptation to go home with a Mao bobble head doll is very real.
It is also a man who is still revered here in China as a hero. This is a man responsible for a holocaust on par with a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. We are incredulous at the reverence for him but keep reminding ourselves that this is a place where information is tightly controlled. Everything is censored from history books, to the Internet, to the music videos on TV. There is filtered foreign media news on everyday, side by side with official propaganda. The children in the schools still sing songs about Mao and they are still taught from the little red books of Mao quotes.
In his quest to make the whole country peasants again, Mao purged China of all educated people, anyone who opposed him, anyone who had been part of the former Kuomintang government and their families, anyone that had had any contact with foreigners or imperialist tendencies (foreign music, books, clothes etc...), and later anyone that had been in his own communist army was murdered or sent to gulags to work and starve. He destroyed families, drove hundreds of thousands of people to mental breakdowns and suicide and later backed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I have heard the number of deaths he caused quoted as 30-60 million people.
His was the reign of ignorance. Because of his calculation that the cultured class was an easy target for a population that was largely illiterate, because of his deep resentment of formal education, because of his megalomania which led to his contempt for the great figures of Chinese history and because of his contempt for the things that he did not understand such as art and architecture and music, he succeeded in destroying much of the country's heritage.
Unfortunately Mao understood ugly human instincts such as envy and resentment and knew how to mobilize them for his ends. He got the ordinary Chinese to carry out many of the tasks undertaken in other dictatorships by soldiers. That’s why under him there was no real equivalent of the KGB. In bringing out the worst in people, Mao had created a complete moral wasteland. He left behind a nation of brutalized people stripped of their history, their dignity and their individuality.
I can only imagine his support and popularity were rooted in the fact that he was able to re-instate national pride after years of China getting kicked around by other countries (see above) - he was getting it back on its feet. Another thing to realize is that China has a long history of worshipping their Emperors so Mao was not just a political leader in their eyes. He was a deity, and he was infallible.
The main reason there has never been any justice or even admission of guilt for that matter- was that anyone who had done anything wrong simply claimed they were acting out of loyalty to Mao, and there has been no clear criteria for judging criminality. So many people had been involved in house raids, destroying historical sights, antiques, and books that there was no way to separate the civilians from the criminals. The widespread destruction and murder had been carried out by the population collectively. The other issue is that after the Cultural Revolution ended there was no independent legal system to investigate and to judge. And of course, there is the small matter of the same political party that perpetrated such horrors still being in power. Details, details. Today the official Communist Party line today is that Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong in his leadership of this country.
1977: The totalitarian practices of the Communist government are significantly modified. Through the modernization programs, which included: agriculture, industry, science and defense- China has increased its contact with the capitalist west.
1980's: Major economic reforms bring an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.
1989: Hundreds of thousands of students and workers turned out for a pro-democratic peaceful rally in Tiennemen Square and were promptly open fired upon. Hundreds were killed.
So far the 21st century has been good to china, with the return of Hong Kong and Macau to the motherland, the win of the 2008 Olympics bid and China's admission into the WTO, things are moving in the right direction. Despite the international criticism over human rights issues and it’s rejection of sovereignty over Taiwan and Tibet, the economy is booming, the future here is bright and the people seem happy and optimistic.
Sorry, for the historical interruption- back to the trip.
IT’SNOT AVIAN BIRD FLU THAT THEY HAVE…
But it IS an extremely contagious case of Olympic fever. The frenzy is definitely in full swing here and highway signs and street signs already have English on them and every ad on TV seems to be related somehow with the Olympic theme on constant repeat. Beijing 2008 T-shirts are on every corner and in the middle of the city there is a clock with the count down... ONLY 728 more days... HURRY! HURRY!!! The thick forest of frantic cranes respond to the panic, picking up the pace and giving Beijing it's extreme Olympic make over. The entire city is under construction. (I am told half of the world's cranes are here.) Safety walls lasting for miles and miles cover dingy building fronts with bright posters and ads of what's to come... it's a like a big movie trailer for Beijing '08. The endless miles of crisscrossing highways are absolutely enclosed with 50 story apartment buildings, which, thanks to Communism and the borrowed brilliance of Russian architects, are bleak, concrete and crumbling. Mmmm.. pretty.
The world debut of the New China at the 2008 Olympics will be a spectacle to be seen for sure. Angelo told me by 2020, china will be the #1 tourist destination in the world! So start planning your trip before the onslaught of cargo shorted, camera toting, backpack-lugging tourists descend. Oh wait, that's us and we are already here! And as a matter of fact we do have to say that the backpacking infrastructure here is AMAZING! The people at the guesthouses are friendly and helpful and speak enough English to get us around. It’s been far easier to travel here than we ever dreamed- a nice break on our wallets after Japan too.
After the bleak historical picture I painted, I do feel like I need to redeem myself. This really is an amazing place- the hutongs, much like the souks of Marrakech, are these miniscule arteries of the city. They are made of concrete construction and are absolutely seething with the day to dayness of living in Beijing. Street vendors selling fresh fruit, noodles, and nameless meat on sticks bump shoulders with old men crouching while they play mahjong, toddlers with naked dimpled bums running around, chattering women and bicycles, taxis and rickshaws all being happily squeezed like toothpaste through these teeny alleys. They have an incredible sense of community and like my friends Tim and Alex pointed out, the government is bulldozing these decrepit hutongs and putting the people in apartment high-rises and they do not want this because they are worried about losing their communities. Amazing.
On the more commercial streets you have all of the above happening plus all of the clothing, jade and wooden dragon carving vendors yelling at passersby with megaphones over the music being blasted from the speakers competing with the neighbors speakers. One day we checked out the weekend market- unbelievable. There was an entire parking lot with 15 foot stone buddhas, 10 ft. wooden dragons, and marble fish ponds... Mom- Dad, if a house-size Buddha shows up at the home, just leave it out on the lawn until we get home. Thanks.
One day we even rented bikes in a suicidal attempt to "do as the Romans do." Our clinkity clankity bikes with baskets whisked us past castles and moats, the Forbidden City, Tienneman square, past lakes with boats shaped liked swans and through the claustrophobic hutongs. I definitely scored high marks for my fantastic use of bell. After the ride I was thrilled to find a massage parlor near our hotel where the girls would rub my feet for and hour for like $2.00. I chose to ignore the fact that there were red velvet curtains everywhere, the girls were in short sequined dresses and there was a stage with a big heart mirror. Hmmm. My feet have never felt better.
ONE IS ENOUGH
One day we booked a tour and we got lucky enough to have a lovely young tour guide named Winny who spoke good enough English to really talk to us about life there. Of course I asked her about the One Child Policy in effect here. Now I understand that there does need to be population control in this country of 1.3 billion but when I asked her what happens if you already have one child and you have an "accident," she told me "accidents are not permitted." (That sounds menacing). I later learned that if you get pregnant a second time, you get fired from your job and that child is not permitted to go to school and heavy fines are levied against the family. Ouch. They also give women random pregnancy tests at work.(!) Clearly there is no Chinese character for the word privacy.
On that same day, coming out of the park we saw dozens of European parents in a big group all nervously pushing their beautiful new moon-faced daughters in strollers. (Did you know 55,000 Chinese girls are adopted into the US every year?) And while I cannot help be happy for these little girls who will have good homes and loving parents, I cannot help but wonder if there is a hole in the collective hearts of this country for the loss of all the beautiful girls that will never grow up here. We have also heard much about the spoiled little boys here- it's actually a problem they have termed "the little emperor syndrome." I am afraid that the yin and yang gender balance here is being so disrupted that there is a real danger of the countries' centrifugal force spinning itself back into chaos despite the people's best efforts.
So after bustling Beijing we hit Pingyao, a glorious little medieval town surrounded by a high fortress wall. Once, the banking epicenter of China, it has somehow remained untouched by all the "progress" of the last few hundreds of years. What a great change of pace! Now grandma, don't have a heart attack but apparently I have not only hired a prostitute on this trip (see: massage) but I have also slept with almost the whole People's Republic of China! Yes. It’s called a "hard" sleeper and it's the class of train tickets you buy when you don't want to sleep sitting on a wooden bench on an overnight train and the "soft" sleepers with private cabins are all booked.
Here in the Peoples' Cabin we shared the tight space with hundreds of families. The space looks more like a moving prison than anything else with endless rows of metal bunks stacked 3 high as far as the train car goes. People are chatting, playing cards, reading the paper and eating dinner. A woman with a metal cart goes up and down the aisles selling hot ramen and fruit and magazines. It’s like a hutong on wheels! The lights go out at 10 and despite the help of my sleeping pill the bunk is hard, there is a symphony of snoring, the little girl above me is having nightmares and there is no sleep to be had. "Hard sleeper" indeed.