China Email

This is 100% My Opinion and ONLY my Opinion.


How do you describe a place like China, it's so large, so diverse, it's a confusing bipolar mess, trapped between two very different worlds, but somehow it works. Why do I love this country? I'm not sure but god is it a great place to visit.
On one side you have the old world, homes made of stone, hand made brick, clay, people living off the land eating and selling what they have cultivated, a very simple but hard life. This occurs all over the country, passing dry hot dusty landscapes on a sleeper bus or the train to Lhasa was an eye opening experience. Land that i never would have thought farmable was covered in terraces, water buffalo still being used to plow the earth, dry brittle soil being turned up for farming, and the people live here happily.
As you get out and walk around in towns like this you can see the hardships of peoples lives that they wear on their faces. years of hard work on the field is still a reality to millions of Chinese citizens, in the rice terraces of the south, the fields scattered across most of the country, and in high altitudes of the Tibetan Plateau, the hot sun will weather anybodies skin, it will hunch your backs, wrinkle your faces, and even put a permanent limp on you, a result of many hard years, working a simple but difficult life. This is visible all over china, but still through the hardships, years of rural living, decades of historical Chinese life, through a couple of world wars (whether they knew it existed or not), through life under Mao, and up to the present, these Chinese whom (in my opinion) make up a one half of this "bipolar" culture are wonderful people. always smiling back at you as you pass them in the streets, sometimes offering you a stare of "what the hell are you doing here? HERE OF ALL PLACES" (slightly confused by Western tourism), but overall just happy that you have come to see their way of life and share in their culture. I really loved this part of China.
On the other side you have the rapidly growing economic and industrial part of the country the push for progress no matter what the cost. This is a testament of what china will be, and honestly it is kind of scary, this country is NO joke and when they put their mind and effort into doing something, it will get done. Beijing Tibet Train was finished 3 year ahead of schedule, i mean who finishes a construction project 3 years ahead of time (unheard of), the 3 gorges dame makes Lake Powell in Vegas look like a joke. All i see in china, in the big cities or urban areas is the focused on growth and progress, progress, progress, and more forward progress, it's scary because it almost seems like they are building for the sake of building, knocking older buildings down (10 year old buildings) and throwing up a new one.
This idea of progress in infrastructure i think has also flowed into a life style change of this new generation of wealthier Chinese citizens, carrying umbrellas to shield them selves from the sun, mass consuming, frivolously wasting, and unfortunately adopting all the good but also all the bad aspects of western culture. New Chinese culture is all about the flash, what you have, what you own, and how your are perceived by peers. Over all what i have experienced is always looking forward and never looking back, it's a good way to think but when you flood homes that have been around for centuries (3 gorges), you turn places like Potala Palace in Tibet into a tourist trap, you stand amongst the masses in Tienamen square, or march along the great wall, surely their must be some value on the beauty of the past. The thumping beats of night clubs, flashing lights, mega cities that seem to be popping up everywhere, the rejection of the old ways seems to be the way china is heading. It's funny though because you still have young people getting up and moving so an older person can sit down (on the bus), and there still is many of the culture and customs of what china was and kind of essentially still is, but the forward progress of where this country is heading is slowly changing its culture (my opinion). I don't want to go out and say that it is becoming more westernized because that would make any proud Chinese person shed a tear or two. I think that it's hard to ever say china will be westernized, but honestly as i see the McD's, KFC, and Starbucks, and i hear American pop music playing in Abacronbie-esk stores, i feel a bit of it's unique character slipping away.
With two ways of living and cultural life styles that are so very different, i don't know which one i like more, sure the huge cities are amazingly fun to get lost it, to eat in, to wander around in. the idea of growth and progress is a good thing, but when you see dames put up in Tibet blocking a amazingly beautiful rivers in a landscape that is so scenically stunning, i think you have gone too far. Sure i would not have been able to travel to some of the places i went in china with out this progress, but i think there needs to be a limit. The old way of living is simple, beautiful and i loved visiting old farms, rural landscapes, but with out the progress, roadways, buses, trains, i would never have gotten their or gotten out of there. also with progress comes more english language which isn't always needed but god does it make it easier.
I really loved China, i'm excited to leave and i'm happy to see something new but it will be a place worth returning to, the mix of the old way of living and the modernization is something that some how works for me, you get the best of both worlds!