China 1997

On the night of August 12, which I spent sleepless in Beijing airport waiting for the last plane of this trip, I read the whole “In the land of Confucian” that I had downloaded from the Net, printed and taken with me to China as reading material. I recognised the impressions of Mr. Robert Westbrook. The difference between the standard American attitude to life in general and the European one is going to make my observations about China sound rather pitiless. However, I am not a cynic: it’s just a matter of how disposed to condone you are or, if you prefer, it depends on how bland you are. Europeans tend to be less so. I am an Italian. (This also accounts for mistakes in the use of the English language).

DIARY ENTRIES

17.7.1997

The heat, the dust, the language gap, the poverty, the lack of worth of human life, all conjure up the notion of an Arab country. And there are other gaps that can’t be filled: the ones between the China I see and the China of the International exhibitions, of the Dynasties, and again the China of the ignored human rights, the one of the “yellow peril”. Yellow peril? Actually, they can be quite cute. I wouldn’t mind playing with some of them at all. Some more than others. They give me the impression of being, in essence, sausages, especially the non-skinny ones, with their translucent skin and lack of hair.

18.7.1997

It was, in Mr. Bear’s words, almost a relief to walk all over the Forbidden City, in comparison to yesterday’s Temple of Heaven walk, all made under an unremitting sun - no shelter whatsoever from trees and roofs. And it gave, in the Northern sections, the impression of having actually been “lived in”, as opposed to merely being a place for the ostentation of power. The scale shrinks remarkably when the buildings deal with a man - as opposed to an emperor. A man who has to take care of himself - as opposed to taking care of the needs of an entire nation.

19.7.1997

The bastardisation of Opera: that slapstick humour was awful and didn’t help Chinese credibility at all. The story was risible and the translation the funniest thing of the evening (“You depraved Taoism and partial too!”). The music was as garish and loud as the costumes and the audience of Dutch lesbian tourists appalling. The masks hanging from the theatre walls, however, reminded me of Greek tragedy’s masks.

20.7.1997

Not detected by my sitting neighbours on the train, I, through my earplugs, used to tone down the decibels for the long, long Beijing-Luoyang trip that lasted the entire day, was aware of a mini-drama just metres way. A gentleman was raising a big stink with a youngster. The plastic bag full of orange-coloured iced lozenges that the hand of the youngster raised, for an instant, before throwing it out of the window, revealed him to be a popsicle seller. What prompted that drastic measure was the fact that the stink-raiser resumed pushing, seconds after the action, a cart of approved refreshments.

21.7.1997

China is: extremely thin, highly breakable, small plastic bags; China is pop music broadcast in the trains, whose floors and tables are wiped before arrival; China is the possibility of throwing all you want from the train windows, and indeed being forced to throw your goods from the window if you are an illegal seller; China is small children without nappies (indeed their clothes sport a convenient hole in there); China is small crowds slowly gathering around a non-oriental and bicycle carts that gather spontaneously at the exit of the temple your group is visiting; temple grounds that are havens of quiet, beauty and spirituality; China is dusty markets; a lot of third world street life and a place when three kg of jio-zi are twice what eight people need for supper (heh-he). (How can you order by weight? Doesn’t the restaurant know the weight needed for a portion?)

22.7.1997

We have to pay for saunas, while Chinese people are in one all summer long for free! There’s no escaping the heat, and anything I would write would sound like a war bulletin. “Avventure nel mondo”? Certainly you find them if you plunge, like we did, in yet another country that reduces you to illiteracy, pray of profiteurs, robbers and all sorts of parasites. I much resent the fact that the ones who beat the path we are trodding now didn’t leave traces for us to follow. Past experience, good for everybody after you (ever heard of BUILDING culture?) has been thrown to the wind. It’s a constant impasse, this business of having to get along without communication. For this fact I have been more generous with Shao Hui, self-appointed unpaid guide out of mercy, than all the group, who decided on a 180 Y Swiss knife as a thank-you present. I put 200 Y in an envelope and Jim put 100. The lack of sensitivity of my fellow travellers deserves all the hardships we will get.

23.7.1997

The manifold face of life, part 15,617. The guidebook lists things to see, recounts the history, states the facts. And yet, nothing prepares you for what you see: a picture would be worth a thousand words. And yet what is actually there accounts for a very small part of its experience. Accidents stomp in in a big way. And the tint of the glasses you’re wearing that day has its saying too, for a resulting complex that is “the lived”, life (for you). An unholy mixture of the inside and the outside, of the real and of the imagined, of the experienced and of the recounted. Nothing is sacred.

24.7.1997

Communism is bad for you. Look what happened to the Chinese intuition. Absent. Zero. Nil. They don’t get it. They don’t understand. Even when the situation is clear and they could make a profit trying to understand the need that you are willing to pay to get satisfied, they don’t get it. There’s a bus waiting at Zijin Shan, clearly making the rounds of the three points of interest on it or going back to Nanjing. You mention the next site on the hill where you want to go, and they don’t understand. And they should have heard it named in all possible languages, with all possible accents. But, no, they don’t understand where it is you want to go, mate. Enterprise zero. Rightly so: for whom should you make your brains work: for the common good? Let the others do that if, at the end of the day, all get the same pay... Deeply unfair, and deeply diseducative - and featured all through China.

25.7.1997

For what I would like to do, with an “Avventure nel mondo” group, there would be need of a tape recorder. It would upset people, but the idea goes like this: record what people say so as to be able to throw it in their face when they hold that they (basically) didn’t said that. People need re-education. Somebody has to be able to show to trouble-makers that they are trouble-makers and that they have to change their ways or else they should be treated the way trouble-makers deserve, i.e. without respect, with disdain, as if they were beasts of a worrisome kind.

26.7.1997

The Orientals are startled by us, sometimes. The kids laugh, the adults are curious. And, for me, the maximum excitement would be for Mr. Bear to be black (1st preference) or to be Oriental (2nd preference). I think it’s high time a coming together (in more than one meaning) happened and that we became able to communicate more - the Westerners more aware of the social dimension and of the diminished rights of the individual, and the Orientals boosting what seeds of individuality and enterprise they have.

27.7.1997

Shanghai is hot, the humidity can be cut with a knife and the group has had enough of China to start misbehaving. It took only ten days in China for the group to feel done in, and to wander aimlessly, in need of a bamboo chair in an air-conditioned lounge rather than of yet another sight or another antique market. As it’s usual with me, I wasn’t aligned with the group feelings: I felt tired but full of spirit, ready to counteract the hardships and willing to make the most of our only day in impossibly-exotic sounding Shanghai.

28.7.1997

On the strength of my surprising resilience, I am today starting to really enjoy the trip. I feel “on the road”, determined to steal sights, glimpses, intimacies. Two weeks are enough to just get started. Today the second gear was inserted, and I am ready to defend myself with as many “Get lost” to botherers as needed, to help myself with the Avventure dictionary and even the way L. is addressing the Chinese: talking to them in Italian. The music of the voice and the situation will (hopefully) convey the meaning.

29.7.1997

Canton is the most fantastic place we’ve been up to now. It is bustling with activity (though Chinese people are sleeping everywhere even in the busy market - but the Chinese don’t seem to have a life schedule - you see them eating, sleeping, working and relaxing whatever the time). Though many types of merchandise are sold, they get repeated over and over. Flying lizards. Flying lizards. Flying lizards again. L. bought a couple of road signs. Not my favourite, though, the triangular one where the pedestrian gets chased after by a honking truck.

30.7.1997

You read about a town, you imagine the streets, you come to know about the key spots, the picture can be clear in your mind like a geography book. Then you arrive in it, you discover that you are holing up in one place, geography becomes land, paper becomes streets and you’re like a butterfly who had heard about the spider’s web but now that it’s caught in it, the perspective of it is all new.

31.7.1997

Our Easter visit to Hong Kong lasted two weeks and we seldom got bored but, for the two days the group will spend here, I don’t have a clear idea what to recommend the others. The importance of each place evaporates in the face of collective indifference. Because of the roughness of certain elements in the group, things are either despicable or wonderful - nothing in between. To satisfy certain people you’d need the seven wonders of the world. To me, it felt a bit like a homecoming. The rush of activity of HK I really like. As the coming together of gweilos and Chinese in the bars doesn’t cease to pleasantly surprise me.

1.8.1997

The reason I like big big cities so much is that custums, life, habits and beliefs are exploded thanks to the variety of people that the big big city attracts. So, there’s no set hour for anything, and this frees me from social imperatives. In practice, I can save myself the effort I would have to make to get out of the schemes, and I can do whatever I like, I can use all of my energies to build, on this culturally barren land, my own beliefs and style.

2.8.1997

I’m travelling up the river Xi - a smooth, peaceful trip through a hilly countryside with few ships and even less houses. Occasionally, a banana plantation. Once home, this will be deemed as impossibly exotic. In practice, life goes on as normal, with the small things always taking the upper hand: had we known, we’d have bought lunch on the ship rather than panic at the 7-Eleven, or: I worry slightly about the conditions I’ll find the CD cases at the end of the trip, and also: I have to buy another cart for the newly-formed additional baggage. Not exotic, these daily thoughts in these impossibly exotic locations...

3.8.1997

The most uncomfortable trip has also been the most interesting: a sleep bus through the countryside. The position it forced me into was evil and painful. The scenes my eyes stole, unforgettable. The pig in the basket on the back of a bicycle. The availability of a common shithouse (in the West, we don’t need these things, in our rulers minds). The women that storm around the bus offering eggs, water, ice cream, buns. The dark interiors of the houses and their earthen floor. Water buffaloes and people in the fields. The terraced land of China.

4.8.1997

It’s curious to notice how the group now is in need of gratification and it looks for it in food. Ice cream, big plates in restaurants, rivers of beer... Let’s face it, we are tourists and it’s hard work and we want some instant satisfaction. Later, we can think about what we saw in a manner free of the contingent troubles - but now, deep in shit - heat, sweat, lack of sleep, hard climbs - even a 2 Y Chinese cornetto imitation is enough for one hour or so.

5.8.1997

My reaction to L. having an Ex Libris sculpted is typical of a kind of competitiveness that afflicts me. I think the idea is genius and I want the same. It’s human, yes, but some don’t care. I do, and I can spot intelligence there where my brains don’t reach. So, through toil, application and sacrifice I manage to get the same. And it has a bitter taste: I am there but I didn’t get there on my own. And I can’t help that.

6.8.1997

I know about the insignificance of my life, of looking at things from my side of my eyes, and I still wonder about other people’s lives. I’m not willing to hold my own, because that’s just one of the many possibilities - the fact that it’s me who feels it, doesn’t make it any more real. And the others? Aren’t they ashamed sometimes to be always tied to their tiny reality? Each one with his tea-jar? Collectively making hot water a primary need, so that in the airports a tank is present? Even if the faucets of cold water don’t work - because the cold water for your thirst, somebody strongly wants to sell it to you?

7.8.1997

It was inevitable to get to the exchange of opinions about the maximum systems. We got to it late in the trip, L. says. We must be callous travellers - hardened by trips made, by shopping, or just jaded. Late, this time, the trip has become the way to self-discovery, looking at what is here - comparing it with our notions - and judging the different manifestations of human nature as the result.

8.8.1997

Dafo today. The heat of this hazy day is hellish. Have we had enough of China yet? Almost. We got to the point that we don’t care what we do - provided somebody takes care of the details for us. We don’t care how the day passes, provided it does, somehow. Fact is, all these troubles will be forgotten.

10.8.1997

The group is now at desperation stage. Everybody caters for his own needs, in juxtaposition with the ones of the others. The ritual drama about ordering food takes place every night and nothing is accomplished in merit to advancement of ordering skills. The little white dictionary of “Avventure” could have a couple of pages to solve the problems. If only the compiler travelled with us.

11.8.1997

The scandal is: people travelling and limiting their visit to the sanitised sights they want to see. This is tourism. The boldness, I hate, and the arrogance. Failing to get humble to understand. The lack of aperture. The canned meat in the suitcases. The lack of curiosity, of acceptance of the different, of the other. Looking for the confirmation of the stereotypes. I want to travel, I want to take a look, I want to taste - without intruding too much. Without offending anybody. I wanna be hosted, not visit a zoo. The canned meat eaters get dysentery? They fuckin’ deserve it.

12.8.1997

I have organisational skills and I see problems there where they are - that the “Avventure” leaders are not aware of. But I lack face, I lack daring, I lack sense of direction, I tend not to see things, not to read the signs, to overlook the traces. This is why I cannot travel by myself. I am not even able to ask people for something. But, really, the best choice is to travel with someone you love. The presence of other people is only hampering.

13.8.1997

Coming back to Italy, I resent what I see. I resent the well-groomed people who take exception to others’ faults and don’t see that they are just parasites. I resent the homely faces, the lack of pride of this nation of losers. I hate the pretensions - in this the Italians are like the Chinese: appearance accounts for a lot. I would like to land on a country where people worked and did their best for their own and other people’s good. A country where there’d be a strong civic sense to make it function. A place where words accounted for little and deeds for a lot. A place where culture were Number One on the list. A country untainted by pride, by nationalism, by poverty , by drought. Unfortunately, the only country like that is Smurfland. More than visiting China, this trip has been a forced living in with some people I hope never to meet again...

14.8.1997

It’s only once back to work, to the things that have been usual, and recognizing the utter casuality of their presence in forming your world, that one realises that life could be anything, that one’s things could be any, that life is ultimately immaterial, a façade, a mask, a dress without a body, a skin without the bones. Confused? I’m confused by the individual and often opposite indications of appearances, because I am con-fused with something higher, where these details vanish in the distance.

15.8.1997

“Take bronze as mirror, one can make up his dressing; take history as mirror, one can know the rise and fall; take man as mirror, one can understand the gain and loss. I keep the three mirrors with me to prevent myself from mistakes”, wrote Tang Tai Zong, second emperor of Tang. The fool. Life’s not a test you can fail. Life itself is the failure - existing, being one, thus being limited in everything - and the gain - existing, being one, thus having the conscience of being.

CHINA REVIEW

It’s a gentle geography the one slowly slipping under the aircraft. A map in relief of the world with the yellow sand carried by the waters on the valley beds, with the mountains and the worked fields. There are even little fluffy clouds. While I’m leaving it never to see it again, the “Middle Kingdom” is sweating yet another hot August day. It may be central for them, for us it’s decidedly oriental. I’m glad to close this parenthesis. I am tired of travelling with a group. I’m tired of travelling. And the language gap has become wearisome. And I see other people on edge too. Enough with misunderstandings. Enough with inflated prices to bargain down. Enough with the stampeding crowds, enough with being the object of endless requests of alms from poverty stricken that could live a month with what would amount to very little for you. Enough with the touristic desecration of mountains sacred, enough with the system of two prices, one for the Chinese and another for the foreigners. Enough with this battle. I know going places means this. It’s fun at first, to play the game of life with a different set of rules. But you never really integrate, and the choice becomes apparent: learn the language or go home. And home we are going, after four weeks.

The reason to go with a group was precisely getting some help with the language gap problem. Though our leader had useful information from the previous tours, this is mainly a matter of personality. Not being shy is essential. I am. But Mr. Bear is not. So travelling with him is possible. Moreover, the guide books available are almost enough to shed the light you need on your path in a foreign country. I found myself competing for the leadership in the group thanks to the Rough Guide to China.

And the inevitable problems in finding the places and the services you need will be more than made up for by being in complete control of your moves. What I wanted was to be taken places - a job I had to perform, at times, for the others. What I wanted was the support of the group in a foreign land - instead, week after week, the relationships within the group degenerated. Only one encounter was positive, and the relationship with this guy wasn’t positive - it just wasn’t negative. With the passing of the days, everybody’s idiosyncrasies came out.

The tourist schedule comprises an early rise, skipping lunch and finishing the visits when the establishments close - at 4, 5, 6 in the afternoon. P., instead, would propose leaving early, having lunch, having a rest and leaving again later in the afternoon. Not what everybody else was ready to do, so he would take off by himself. He smelled. And he would walk with a pink towel on his head and a plastic bag with fruit in it. He showed the lack of the sense of self of the lone person. And the loss of dignity that comes with it.

A. would not miss an opportunity to show that the destination of her trip was Shopping Land, not China. What she enjoyed of China was the bargaining process. I do not dare imagine what the apartment she shares with T., a silent nonentity, looks like after seventeen trips like this around the world. T., on his side, announced himself to be a vegetarian, only to order beef occasionally, refrain sternly from eating soups (was he reminded of cum? the table is an unlikely place to be aware of that, I’d say...) and - his most memorable feat in 28 days - ask for pork in a Muslim restaurant. He did, however, eat parmesan cheese brought from Italy that weeks of the unfeasible heat of the Chinese summer had reduced to a bloc swimming in grease. I’m not disgusted easily, but it would have taken some effort for me to eat that. So, I discovered why they had left Italy with a supply of canned food. Tins are a poor second choice to fresh food - and China is full of fresh food. The lack of adaptability, I find offensive. The lack of adventurousness, I find guilty. This man is a spoiled child that his mother and his wife failed to straighten up. He, of course, cannot cook an egg nor make coffee. If there were any justice in the world, he should be made to starve to death.

C., an elementary school teacher, would constantly chatter aimlessly. Insecurity. Need to be loved. Need to be taken by the hand, like a child, and, like a child, she showed limited understanding skills. Her company was rather wearisome. Thanks but no, thanks.

L., the co-ordinator, is a refined soul, aware of the world, specialised in his tastes, conscious of the boundaries of the person. L. is transparent. The less you put of yourself, the better. The less your presence is felt, the less your scories pollute the environment. The less you have to mediate reality, and the more it filters through you, the better. Disappear. He’s a tad too self-conscious. Very disciplined. Strict. Not surprisingly, rather unsuccessful in his amorous ventures (love requires tolerance). I found we covered pretty much the same territory, in our way of being.

Lack of co-ordination (these co-ordinators are always found wanting. This trip make me realise that I see the problems better than they - or maybe they just don’t care - or maybe I care too much) meant that the problem situations (taking taxis in 7, notifying the group the program for the day to come, ordering in the restaurants...) repeated themselves every step of the way. Spotted the problem, my style would dictate that I found a solution so as to get rid of it for good. I saw the problems, and I could think of a solution, but it wasn’t my task to do so (I didn’t want to invade the co-ordinator’s territory) and the problem-people didn’t deserve it either - my efforts would be lost on them. I considered proposing myself to ”Avventure” as a leader for future tours. I scrapped that notion. Now I see that going solo is the only way not to have to wait all the time for the group to get together, not to have to bear other people’s absurdities. My own are more than enough. The group dimension is desirable only when going solo in unfeasible. And China is difficult, but not impossible.

China is a continent, really. They are so many that good manners are banned. The personal space that for a Westerner amounts to 30 cm, I would figure, around his body, is erased. Pushing, shoving, bumping into each other, being taken over while on a line, being part of a stampeding horde at bus and train doors are the daily fare in China. The traffic, half made up of bicycles and 1/3 of taxis, has a hair-raising fluidity that makes the Roman street chaos seem orderly in comparison. The Chinese are so many their lives - I have the impression - don’t mean anything. Not socially. But, sadly, not even personally. The Chinese seem to live superficial lives, ruled by the general poverty of the country and by the imperative to survive. The forced lack of independence, of individuality, results in conformity and in a child-like attitude towards life, art and entertainment. I’m still unsure about this - I haven’t had the chance to speak with many Chinese. But the general attitude is not facing problems. This could be no fault of their own: this could just be the Oriental mind-frame.

Exceptions were two causal encounters, one with a male, one with a female. The male, we travelled together for the eleven hour stretch from Beijing to Luoyang. He tried his best to communicate in his limited English. He showed good will, sensitivity, thoughtfulness. For some reason, he took upon himself the task of interface for the group in Luoyang. I felt so sorry for him, because some members of the group showed no concern and would expect solutions, rather than reducing their requests and make his time with us pleasant for him too. He had a beautiful, sad face. I had mentioned that we had gone to see Chinese opera and he took the initiative to take me to a tape shop (as in other third world countries, music in China travels on tape) and chose some stuff for me to buy. I appreciated that a lot. I’d have liked to give him lots of money for his troubles. The group settled for a small present, so I acted by myself.

The female, a tiny bird of a woman, was even more interesting. She probably craved company or was eager to get a whiff of the traveller life as much as we were craving a translator. Her good English allowed for serious conversation, and indeed one night she and I talked until three in the morning. She cried when we left; saddened, I’m sure, by her impossibility to travel as much as by having so fleetingly met people she could talk to and get understood by. With a mind-frame more suited to the West world, she suffers a lot in her country. She’s gentle but understands straightforwardness. She’s sensitive but is strong and determined. She is a person with a vision. Like the good people, she needs a companion and I wish her the best. She really deserves it.

This was a tour of the greatest hits of China. Tienanmen square finally took a face. The Forbidden City offers a pleasant day in dignified environment. The temple of Heaven is China’s own Parthenon. Luoyang Buddhist caves are a curiosity, as is the big Buddha in Leshan. Temples notable, we collected quite a few. A knowledge of the elements of these religions would have enabled me to appreciate more the subtle differences from one to the other. The lack of structure of their clerical class, however, and the loose, almost throwaway style of the religious functions doesn’t invite a closer inspection. Suzhou is a very pleasant place, not for nothing twin city with Venice. I could happily live there. Guangzhou is intense, the only oasis being Shamian Island, where the lack of hotel rooms meant we got an apartment for ourselves on the top floor of the Bank of China building. The Qingping market is fascinating, with all sorts of living things and human artefacts for sale. Yangshuo is the Western tourist paradise, with a lot of English spoken and Western cafes. I found that unnecessary, but in a country that makes no allowances for Western homesickness, it can be pleasant. The view of the karst hills from Moon Hill was the highlight of this trip. I had to force a grunting Mr. Bear up to the very top. We counted nine successive rows of hills in the clear blue air of the evening. Chengdu, among the big ones, is an attractive city, a bit like an overgrown Suzhou. Xi’an and its orderly plan were a discovery. Particularly attractive the Muslim quarter, a rare oasis of peace, pace strangely slowed down, almost sleepy. But: as tourists, we only had to do with souvenir sellers, not with “real” people.

The difference between East and West is that the East lives on a real mass culture, while in the West the individual is everything. The personality - what makes one different from another, the art or the madness, the idiosyncrasies, the attention to detail, the refinement, the glamour: all these elements by which our culture lives, are lost in the Chinese world, where only big numbers count.

Almost all the places we’ve been to deserved more time. I’d be particularly pleased if we found someone to exchange places in Shanghai (the only competition Hong Kong’s got), in Chengdu (the food!), in Xi’an (a big orderly city?) or in Suzhou (a real holiday). I am told you can bargain down even the prices of the books in the museums...