It was grand to see beloved people, to look into your shining eyes, but I am ever unsatisfied with the limited time I have to spread among those I want to share it with. I want to tell you about the year I've had and hear about yours but until we have brain sharing igoggles we're just going to have to make do with words, and when those won't do, hugs. On this visit in particular it seemed, with several lovely exceptions, that I was especially unable to communicate. It was weird.
I felt like the madman who has seen something that has so shattered him that all he can do is clutch at strangers with wild eyes, except in my case I want to shake people and implore them: "can't you see what I've seen? don't you understand that our lives are different now? don't you want to know CHINA?"
It's not, of course, that anyone I know isn't interested in China, it's that I don't know how to show it to you. I was thinking of this as my plane began its descent from the Mongolian grasslands, down over the mountains that give way to the plateau of Beijing, and how I wished certain people were sitting next to me so I could gab at them about what we were seeing. So I took some pictures and made some mental notes.
China still has beautiful, wild places.
The mountains above are where the Great Wall snakes and towers, though it isn't quite visible here.
But inhabitable places are inevitably inhabited.
Outside of the something like 170 Chinese cities with populations of one million or more are endless small settlements like this one, many bustling in their own right, others providing a source for the hundreds of millions of migrant workers in the country (the largest movement of humans in history).
Above, one of the numerous "villa communities" outside Beijing proper, places with names like "Shakespeare Town" and "White Peony Hollywood Village" that take out multi-page ads in the glossy real estate magazines I sometimes pick up at the gym. While the vast majority of the Chinese population lives comparatively lightly on the planet, occupying small spaces, using public transport, conserving water, using 1/4 the energy used by the average American, the wealthy folks (including, I should mention, some foreigners) who occupy developments like this live like the elite of another European era, far away from the teeming hordes, retaining drivers, wet nurses, maids, and even enjoying (if the magazines are to be believed) such bizarre luxuries as private waterfalls. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the homes of the new rulers of the world.
Infrastructural capacity hints at plans and potential for continued economic growth based on personal consumption.
"It's interesting to see all those huge roads with hardly any cars on them, isn't it?", said the man next to me on the plane as we flew over one of these highways. New highway and road construction was occurring at breakneck speeds over the second half of the decade (nicely treated in Hessler's Country Driving) and received a further boast from the 2008 stimulus package implemented in response to the global economic crisis. Cars are comparatively few now, but with Chinese car buyers now outnumbering American car buyers, and Chinese car companies growing both on their own accord and through acquisition (i.e. Geely's recent purchase of Volvo), these highways should fill up fast.
I saw Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent for The Guardian, speak about his new book a few weeks ago and make the argument that "Red China" has become "Gray China". There is hardly a better illustration for the national unwillingness to sacrifice economic gains for environmental improvements than the descent into a Chinese metropolis. Sky never looks so blue as when you know you won't see it again for months.
I love it. I hate it. I love it. I fear it.
We've all heard similar inconceivably large numbers and frightening trends associated with China, and not a day passes here when I don't see people's appetites for cars, plastics, and concrete and worry about what it means for our world. So much of what is happening here goes against all the principles I have always held dear, and yet, as I saw the sights above from my window seat I felt an unaccountable affection for the monster. What is wrong with me?
It's not, of course, that anyone I know isn't interested in China, it's that I don't know how to show it to you. I was thinking of this as my plane began its descent from the Mongolian grasslands, down over the mountains that give way to the plateau of Beijing, and how I wished certain people were sitting next to me so I could gab at them about what we were seeing. So I took some pictures and made some mental notes.
China still has beautiful, wild places.
The mountains above are where the Great Wall snakes and towers, though it isn't quite visible here.
But inhabitable places are inevitably inhabited.
Outside of the something like 170 Chinese cities with populations of one million or more are endless small settlements like this one, many bustling in their own right, others providing a source for the hundreds of millions of migrant workers in the country (the largest movement of humans in history). The standards for comfortable living established by rich, sparsely populated countries are aspired to by those living in poor, densely populated countries.
Above, one of the numerous "villa communities" outside Beijing proper, places with names like "Shakespeare Town" and "White Peony Hollywood Village" that take out multi-page ads in the glossy real estate magazines I sometimes pick up at the gym. While the vast majority of the Chinese population lives comparatively lightly on the planet, occupying small spaces, using public transport, conserving water, using 1/4 the energy used by the average American, the wealthy folks (including, I should mention, some foreigners) who occupy developments like this live like the elite of another European era, far away from the teeming hordes, retaining drivers, wet nurses, maids, and even enjoying (if the magazines are to be believed) such bizarre luxuries as private waterfalls. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the homes of the new rulers of the world.
Infrastructural capacity hints at plans and potential for continued economic growth based on personal consumption.
"It's interesting to see all those huge roads with hardly any cars on them, isn't it?", said the man next to me on the plane as we flew over one of these highways. New highway and road construction was occurring at breakneck speeds over the second half of the decade (nicely treated in Hessler's Country Driving) and received a further boast from the 2008 stimulus package implemented in response to the global economic crisis. Cars are comparatively few now, but with Chinese car buyers now outnumbering American car buyers, and Chinese car companies growing both on their own accord and through acquisition (i.e. Geely's recent purchase of Volvo), these highways should fill up fast.
I saw Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent for The Guardian, speak about his new book a few weeks ago and make the argument that "Red China" has become "Gray China". There is hardly a better illustration for the national unwillingness to sacrifice economic gains for environmental improvements than the descent into a Chinese metropolis. Sky never looks so blue as when you know you won't see it again for months.
I love it. I hate it. I love it. I fear it.
We've all heard similar inconceivably large numbers and frightening trends associated with China, and not a day passes here when I don't see people's appetites for cars, plastics, and concrete and worry about what it means for our world. So much of what is happening here goes against all the principles I have always held dear, and yet, as I saw the sights above from my window seat I felt an unaccountable affection for the monster. What is wrong with me?I think it's probably that I love an underdog, and even though most of the world regards China with a mixture of curiosity, fear, and admiration, living here you come to understand that Chinese folks don't see their nation as an industrial-policy-wielding human-rights-abusing new superpower, but rather, on a good day, The Little Engine That Could. I want to cheer for the Chinese people who have been through so much in this century and have worked so hard to obtain their own version of the good life, and, too, I feel so at home around bicycles and street markets and earnest belief in the transformative power of education and hard work, so much less than I do in the land of cars and strip malls and irony. 中国加油!
If only it weren't for the things I see from the air or the train or the streets reminding me that this little engine won't stop until it has eaten all the oil and burned down all the trees. Don't fall in love with national entities boys and girls; it will only lead to tears.
4 comments:
"...like a peanut butter sandwich eaten in the desert."
Yes! And I want to live in "Shakespeare Town."
Really? Well you'd better start saving up your yuan...
Yup. I know. But when you stop, for a long time, then it will all settle out. When I came back to the US in 1983, I never expected to stay. But here I am yet, more than a quarter of a century later (though I've quenched my interior otherness with much short-term travel.)
Not that you will lose any of it, only that it will all become compressed into You, like picture sandstone.
I can imagine that exactly, thanks for the lovely sentiments Alia!
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