I arrived in Beijing, China on the 26th of August. Exhausted from an overnight trip from India, and suffering from heart ache and what I can only describe as Indian food coma: too much spicy, colorful, Indian prepared food. There’s a saying in China which I always used to describe my ability to digest food: 铁肚子（tie du zi ）meaning iron stomach. India has stripped me of that title….
Needless to say I skipped the first night of preparations for the language program that I am currently participating in. However this gave me a little more time to spend with my amazing hosts and one of my former Chinese language teachers. Part of my love for China comes from the amazing displays of hospitality that I have been fortunate to receive. It makes a mockery of the recent wave of American (Western) social networking. I sometimes feel that we (Americans) have co-opted the power of social connections and have compartmentalized them to create a game of self promotion played at bars, meetings, exclusive clubs and now internet social websites. The Chinese however (and I think most Asian countries, including India where Becca and my travels were solely dependant on connections we had made) have a society built on social ties of family, friends and extended to guests. Only it is rooted in the historical traditions, culture, religion and philosophy. In India we discovered the meaning behind the frequently used saying ‘guest is God’, in China a friendship gives you access to an extended family of family, friends and friends of friends of family….. etc. So for the second time in my travels through China (I spent two summers in Taiwan and China in 2005 and 2006) I fell sick and was cared for by worrisome mothers, fathers and friends.
After meeting an overly excited and slightly anxious group of American University students (my classmates for the language program), we took an overnight ‘soft sleeper’ train north to Haerbin. America is missing out on the joys of train travel. After a refreshing 8 hours of sleep I awoke to find myself in a completely different part of the country. All at a fraction of the cost that it would have taken to get there by air travel. Maybe they should just have beds on planes….
I awoke to the highly industrialized (although I have not yet glimpsed much of this industry) and also very agriculturally rich city of Haerbin - just south and west of Russia and north of North Korea. Because of this proximity to Russia Haerbin is a large trading hub for the movement of goods in and out of Russia and has a long history of Russian influence. In fact Russia occupied a large part of Northern China, including Haerbin prior to the era of Chiang Kaishek and Mao Zi Dong. Specks of this history can still be seen in the Russian architecture that is scattered in between communist block high rises.
Just to make the title complete, which I just now typed in .... It should be noted that in Beijing because of the Olympics and the worlds worries over air pollution, the citizens of Beijing can only drive on every other day. This is dictated by the license plates. A way to get around this, which is how the husband of my language teacher gets to work everyday, is to have two cars.... Needless to say he still drives everyday to work..... However the air quality has greatly improved, as has the general scenery of the city, sense my last visit to Beijing just two years ago.... We'll see if Beijing citizens get used to the better air quality and start demanding more lasting improvements to energy use and mass transit after the car restrictions are lifted which will be in another month....
I'm not pretending to have the literary capabilities that Steinbeck has shown in this book.
Nor do I pretend to be a dog accompanying you or anyone else through this journey. I just hope to be as good of a companion as was Charlie. And I hope you will join me in my travels.
1 comment:
Here's a good goal: regardless of the country/culture in which we reside, we should provide the kind of loving hospitality that you have described as common place in India and China. It is hard to get beyond the idea that social networking is our way of making everything a means to an end. Not every hour is a "billable hour" and most human relations are beyond measure in worth.
P.s. the sleeper train sounds wonderful.
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