Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Day 54 - Culture in Beijing

"Shanghai is like New York.  Beijing is Like Washington DC." Our guide said this within the first thirty minutes of our all day tour, which was to include: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Hutong Area (Old City), and the Lama Buddhist Temple. 

We had gotten in around midnight the night before, and I was excited to have a fully packed agenda; if left to my own devices, I probably would have frittered away the morning.  I notice I have this tendency if cities feel overwhelming.  I get this feeling mostly when a city feels unwalkable-- and especially if it has lots of highways and/or hotels that are located in strip malls or over giant parking garages.

And Beijing feels built for cars.

This is a completely crazy thing to say for lots of reasons.  But mostly because Beijing has existed for most of history without cars.  In fact, the earliest remnants of human habitation stretch back to Homo erectus (the Peking Man) between 230,000 to 250,000 years BC.  Cities were in this area in the first millennium BC, and Beijing first got it's name all the way back when it was established as a capital city during the Ming dynasty, in 1403.

You would never know it today.  In fact, the characterization by our guide is somewhat fair.  In 2009, Beijing is a show city.  It's well organized with a series of concentric ring roads, east-west roads and north-south roads.  The streets are clean.  There are historic preservation projects in old Beijing.  Its most famous sights are well-managed, -signed and -concession-fed.  My favorite symbol of the new, New China, post Deng Xiaoping, are the placards everywhere that say "Help preserve our culture.  Do not touch."

China is deeply fascinating.  And like a total greenhorn, or worse - an ass maybe? - there was something about standing in Tiananmen Square that made me want to jump right in to all the awkward questions.  Chairman Mao - do people respect him still?  Is he still a hero?  Did your parents live through the Liberation?  Was your father "Reeducated"?  How many children do you have? What do you think about Hong Kong?  

I couldn't quite help it.  You see, this was my chance to try my own hand at understanding the Chinese. 

I have been reading a terrific book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangzee, by Peter Hessler. It is the memoir/travelogue of a super intelligent guy, who taught English for 2 years in the 90s in Fuling, China.  Over two years, he works hard to learn Mandarin and make Chinese friends.  And he offers all these bits of insight, which I might have missed on my first several (hundred) trips to China - things like how the Chinese refer to everything before 1911 as "feudal times" or "feudal" society.  Or that there isn't an equivalent word to "farmer":

  • People who work the land are nongmin, literally "agricultural people" and in English, this word is usually translated as "peasant"...Farmer fails to convey the negative connotations that are associated with working the land in China.  Roughly 75 percent of population is involved with agriculture, and the divide between these people and the urban Chinese is one of the most striking gaps in the country...Even the word for soil -- tu -- can be applied to people as a derogatory adjective, meaning unrefined and uncouth. 1

It was in this light that I revisited an exchange I had with a sales woman, who replied to my interest in traveling outside China's major cities.  "Oh.  But they are not modern."  When she first said that, I originally interpreted her reply as a bit of caution - the same as when a tour guide tells me that the toilet at a particular sight-seeing attraction is "only 3 stars," meaning it lacks a Western-style option.  You are going to have to squat, its not what you expect, bring your own toilet paper and by all means, DO NOT sit on the "seat."  

I think the same thing when our tour guide Sandy, takes us to a nice, tourist-trap lunch on our first day, saying it's "nice and clean."  In countries like Malaysia or Thailand, "clean" meant it came with fork, was not spicy and you could eat uncooked vegetables as a foreigner without getting sick.

But after the past several days here, I realize that the sanctity of the past may not be as relevant here.  For our guide, a "clean" place was infinitely preferable, even if her own customers were asking for local noodle shops.  Even if we said that waiting in line for a 10 Yuan bowl would be great. For the sales woman, "not-modern" was an indictment.  And it was without irony that another young guide  told us that the Old City would have been redeveloped if foreign professors hadn't lobbied Beijing to preserve it as a historical area.

For one, the country spent 10 years eradicating its past as part of the Cultural Revolution from 1966-76.  Secondly, when you have thousands and thousands of years of continuous history, how do you pick which parts are relevant to save? And most significant in my mind, progress is always good when starvation is a recent memory.  Preservation, heritage sites and societies -- these are my fetishes.  I buy heritage breed meats, order handmade crafts on Etsy.com, switch to "Obama bulbs" as my sister calls the energy-efficient ones.  To a Chinese person, I am crazy.  I might be crazy anyway...

In the old city, I climbed an 15 c. bell tower.  I gulped down incense at the Lama Buddhist Temple.  Tiananmen Square was big.  The Forbidden City was lovely.  It was anything but forbidden feeling.  It was overrun with tourists - mostly Chinese tourist.  To see in the "Hall of Supreme Harmony," you had to either throw elbows or have them thrown at you.  

So while Culture did not make it on the list of Xiaoping's Four Modernizations (Agriculture, Industry, Technology and Defence), I am happy to report that I enjoyed every moment taking it in.  So did the Chinese.

Maybe those signs - "Help us preserve our culture" - are signs in more way than one.



Footnote:
1. (Hessler, pg. 228)

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