Once Upon a time in China

Back on the road again, from depression and brain death to firing neurons and a touch of happiness, its good to be traveling again, when we meet aliens I want to be an ambassador. Prepare to have your inbox flooded with long, semi-coherent rants of analysis from my surface impressions. Before I forget, a happy Gregorian new year to you all. I started off in Hong Kong and then flew up to Beijing, I love the cold and snow, so first bit is Hong Kong and the second section the Communist utopia of mainland China. First stop Hong Kong and a true megacentre of capitalism, the market gone wild, lives of transactions, I like this place, although I've been scared to look at my bank balance since I left. Hooked up with some cool backpackers from England, the U.S. and Masud from Bangladesh. Five days of heavy drinking and the residual pot has been strained out of my system, although a few tokes could not be avoided. New Years Eve was slightly chaotic, the street where we went was the scene of massive death a few new years eve's earlier in a crush that left trampled people everywhere. I spent a few hours wishing people happy new years in Chinese to later find out my beer addled head had got things slightly confused and I was running up to people saying the name of the street we were on. The confused nods from the innocent Chinese suggested that my pronunciation was incorrect and led to me repeating the name of street over and over again, progressively slower with a variety of tonal intonations. I could go on for to long about drunken nights but will sum it all up with a string: absinthe, bars, tragic cover bands, stylish Chinese, overpriced drinks, no weed, an international models party, brutal hangovers, 7am returns, body popping, smelly dorms, music of the uncultured and a hostel that charged everyone different rates. Hong Kong was a Bangladeshi-Australian adventure, I met Masud, my friend from Bangladesh who I have not seen for over 3 years, we had an excellent time together, sorted some stuff out. He is looking like a Bangladeshi John Travolta from Pulp Fiction, he reaffirmed my invitation to return to Bangladesh, on my return to Australia I will try and swing past Bangladesh. The Chinese are exceptionally polite and well mannered, I'm not too sure if I've ever been anywhere where this is more the case. Anytime I stop someone in the street and ask for directions, they stop and will take their time to give me the correct directions. Hong Kong and Beijing are possibly the most polite places I've ever been. Although this Japanese girl I've been hanging out with Beijing, who the Chinese confuse with been one of their own, said amongst themselves it is a different matter, it is a matter of cultural loss from the cultural revolution. A gap between the collective imagined identity and the post Mao reality. They have a sense of greatness lost, they are fumbling in the dark trying to recreate it, hospitality been the mark of bygone era when we relied on it for survival, not transactions. When they confuse her as Chinese they are blunt, when they realize she is foreigner polite. Its interesting with the language, trying to pick emotion in an overheard conversation, most of the time the sound on the ear is so blunt that it seems conflict is all around me. I wonder how much this has to do with a tonal language, in Indo-European languages tone is all about emotion, here it is a mixture of meaning and emotion. All who have heard me sing will attest to my exceptionally bad tonal control making me uniquely unsuited for tonal languages. First impressions, so many people, can't believe how many people, the throngs, the masses, the tactic seems to be walk and don't look, the wave will pass, interact and be doomed, fall over children and the elderly, let them make space, its a human tsunami. There are no cues, just pushing to the front, come in on the angle, shortest distance. After a few hours the tension builds and I need to find sanctuary from the masses, they must have a high flip out rate. They have signs only in English about taking it easy and not to rush in crowded situations. Its amazing with such a population density Hong Kong manages to operate, its the self discipline, not crossing against the red man, staying on the correct side of the walking line, truly efficient, machine made man. Everything seems to work so well here, yet another public transport system that is so far in advance of Melbourne that I feel like I'm from the fourth world. Clean streets, no rubbish, no cigarette buts, no spitting, only an occasional Asian sewer waft, and a system of filth that only a one party state could deliver. In a drunken stupor at about 6am stumbling round the streets we came across the closest thing to disorganization on the whole island when two guys punched each other a few times, within a minute there were four police cars on the scene, handcuffed guys everywhere. One of the English guys said if they employed this sort of response in England to every drunken fight the entire population would be police. Buying and selling, I want to engage, spend my money, engage in the trade An economy built on transaction not production. I want a new mobile phone, digital camera, digital camcorder, mp3 player, all hanging from my neck. If mobile phones kill via radiation or genetic mutation then Hong Kong will have found its way to population control. Every third person on the street is on a mobile phone conversation, mobile phones hanging round necks, dangling in front of hearts, every fourth store selling mobile phones and everyone has the latest. I'm feeling out of date, unable to fully contribute to the market economy, driving demand, spending money on the latest techno wizardry, sitting a few years behind with my slim but ancient laptop, light but antiquated handme down mobile phone. Everyday I've been browsing shops, they've got these mega-computer and phone centre's, floors of tiny shops selling every imaginable bit of electronica. It requires a most determined act of self control to drag myself away from these places. From store to store I am in toy heaven, I want to be rich and surrounded by toys. For the geeks, the hostel in Hong Kong I am staying in has 4 unsecured wireless connections, I've been downloading new Simpsons and South Park, some of the best bits of home have come with me. All the best parts of an animal are sent overseas, the bones and the unsellable cuts of meat are left in my soup, at least this is my guess. Only a nibble on the meat is possible before the revulsion sets in, still the broth is good, not dissimilar to my memories of Vietnamese Pho. They seem quite set against peeling meat from bone, rather the hack, chicken bone, meat and skin all seem to be valid edible animal parts. Decorum is a funny thing, with no discreetness of self consciousness as they eat they will spit out the invalid bits of the animal onto the ground, rich and poor, men and women, young and old. The variety of guttural sounds, the spitting give me much greater scope to indulge my cruder habits. Sharing the dorm in the Hong Kong hostel was the worlds best traveler, a Korean former pharmacist who had sold his business, traveled with his own full sized rice cooker, four super market bags full of Korean two minute noodles, shirt tucked into his pajamas, a Thai Lonely Planet which he read constantly and an itinerary that saw him return to Korea for one week before flying to Thailand, a unique human. Landed in Beijing, coldness like I never believed, need to shop, Hong Kong will not go away, new clothes, all the brands in fakes, I like the Chinese, they fuck intellectual property, born pirates. A day of culture, finally into the mode, no more drunken backpacker nights. I met a Swede, Marcus, a man born in the cold, he directed me to the ideal fortress against the cold, the three layer rule, the thermal, fleece then shell, all bought in an overpopulated market on its last day, impermanent stores on both sides of a narrow lane, bargaining, the price dropping from 1200 to 150 within 30 seconds, a demonstration out the front to save it, interviewed by a reported from the social column, photo taken, I'll be in a Beijing daily tomorrow. Then to culture, the search for the experience, two girls in Tienanmen square, no blood to be found, just covered in snow, a city in snow, never seen before, a beautiful sight, less cold, just clean. Off we went to a tea store, lots of different types of Chinese tea, very nice, already I can feel the health flowing through me, to Peking duck and a true stuffing of my gut and finishing the night with karaoke, barely beatable. The two Chinese girls doing duets to their ancestors, parent love, the Swede and I, childhood classics like the final countdown. For the golfers, this Swede is the world champion one armed golfer, he has a handicap of 5, before he lost his arm it was 22. I'm close to been converted to tea, very refreshing, a more pleasant and engaging way to relate to people than alcohol or drug induced inebriation and stupidity. I need to rework the images in my mind of the different peoples of the world, a shift in my travel style. I am back in Asia, the travel pitfalls of Latin America do not apply so much here. I am wary of people approaching me, befriending me then ripping me off, the Latino scam. To the Asian scams of overcharging, pickpocketing and generally ripping me off without realizing its happening. For instance these two girls approached us in Tienanmen Square, I think they are hookers, there is a scam, but there is none, they just want to practice their English. Thoughts of the Tienanmen girls, an atheist, Mao did some good things, the revolution freed women to an extent, no longer bound to the home or having their feet shrunk, yet the cultural revolution was a 100% disaster and the government is a mess, she says Mao was half right and half wrong, . All freely communicated within 30 minutes of meeting. Cuba seems like more of a dictatorship than here. I always wondered how it would be possible to keep one and a half billion people oppressed, but as always it is a matter of historical political compromises. A girl in Hong Kong I met said it does not bother her that there was little democracy during British and now during Chinese rule, what matters to the people is good governance, its all about economic management and benevolence towards the people, I'm thinking Confucius was the first apologist for dictatorship. The recent re-election in Australia of Howard follows along this path. It seems governments can do a lot of things, the average person, is concerned only with the basics, survival. Maybe the only human urge is to exist, not to be free, its only when a government so flagrantly mismanages the economy or abuses its power to the point where large chunks of the population are in economic descent that its power will be challenged. Not a new idea, but a saddening one when placed against the prospects of massive social change. What can I say, if this is the case our species is a right off, no better than pigs, concerned only with imaginary friends in the sky and the basest of existences. I ran into a cultural wall, five times the height of the great wall, I can't believe it, how can it not be obvious, the very act of government is unjust, isn't this plain for all to see? Unity, unity, how can this be important? The Jet Li movie Hero really sums this place up, such a good movie til just near the end, makes all the good points, then fails miserably at the end, oppression does not matter for the sake of unity. I refuse to believe, it will be the death of my ideals, when I accept that freedom is culturally specific. I've had some incredibly frustrating conversations with this 21 year old philosophy student, a very smart girl, but to her you cannot challenge the government, the students in 1989 were wrong, the Falun Gong are dangerous, private comment is fine but public criticism of the government is a no no. The country must develop, it must have leadership, to allow the vote would put power into the hands of illiterate peasants, there are too many people, what about India, no this is Chinese culture, Mao the tyrant was a great man who made some mistakes but it is about the big picture, he kicked out the European colonial powers. The victories are Mao's, the failures are the peoples. Unbelievable, truly mind boggling that an intelligent person could think this way. Although I exist under a similar delusion, just upside down, successes and advancement belong to the general population, failures to government. Do I take it that she is brain washed or could she be right? Every culture has there own way of doing things she says, I counter on two points, firstly, don't you as an individual want to be able do what you want and say what you want? No, the important thing is the development of the people. Secondly, thinking about the evolution of ideas, when is a new idea that challenges the status quo not marginalized? This is the history of new ideas, wasn't Marx chased from country to country? To put a clamp on something because it threatens anything is to stifle the evolution of thought and culture. We need to move faster, develop quicker, build the complexity. The Falun Gong, from my reading in Australia, are a silly superstitious cult, maybe I'm wrong, who knows whether they have developed a legitimate strand of thought, only time will tell what ideas become dominant and which are consigned to history, still ideas will resurface, collective judgment can never be passed, now or in the future. She agreed to this line but still thought the Communist party should rule in all its preposterous double speak, this place is 1984 times a thousand, 1,984,000. My head hurts, am I been to judgmental? If you are still reading at this point you'll read to the end, time to paint a picture of Beijing, an ordered chaos, too many people, rich, poor, old and new all side by side, little old people, tall young people, deference and more, in an underground hostel, four floors down, one elevator exit, a handful of old beggars, I wonder what happened to them, are they political outcasts? Food, a revelation, I have been scarred by suburban Chinese food, there is more to it than dim sims and badly done fried rice. The food I have been eating in Beijing is full of taste, superb noodle soups, rice dishes and only a touch of pork to be avoided. The summer palace and forbidden palace testaments to the opulence and filth of monarchy, although very beautiful. The summer palace is grand and truly beautiful covered in snow, an ice lake, this has been the best thing I have seen so far. I could picture myself as an emperor, little to do except be entertained by my concubines, must have been a tough life. Everything here is so ornate, so delicate, the people look delicate, the women fragile, ceremony and etiquette, except in public. Population determining the culture, its a rat race on the street, there is no giving way, you jam in where you can, push all out of the way. Walking down the street I am bombarded with people trying to hand me leaflets, all in Chinese, the latest movies on DVD setup on a carpet on the street, women with babies trying to flog off porn DVD's, is it water or piss turned to ice that seeps out of the building site, the smell suggests badly. Lots of construction and yes Beijing has yet another public transport system that is far superior to Melbourne's. Underpass's and overpasses to save pedestrian lives, this is the third world, the law of the road is the largest rules, pedestrians give way even when they have the green man. For all their cultural complexity there seems little individual complexity, although I can imagine tourists seeing Australia as both culturally and individually simple, full of individual beer swelling sport loving hicks. I guess it is a surface impression, it takes a while for friendships to develop, to meet interesting people, they must exist everywhere, it is just finding them. The philosophy student has dented my faith in China, confirmed my earlier boring suspicions about the collective cultural complexity yet individual blandness of east Asians. Within four hours of this frustrating stereotype affirming conversation I met this Japanese girl, Nobuko, who wiped it all away. Its a great day when a stereotype dies, the curtain dropped on misconception, she's a PhD student looking at allegory in Persian Sufism, exceptionally interesting, the rule is broken. My idea of the east Asian is finished, the uniformity no longer there, a relearning of my major lesson of traveling from Bangladesh, the world, and most definitely Australia, is full of aliens, people who I have nothing in common with and who have value only in belonging to the same species, the link ends there. There are a few people in the Australia and the world who are my people, my mission is to find them, unite them and re-engineer the world. The above passed in a night and I was off to the great wall, really a long wall, I think you need a plane to really see the magnificence of it. Its a few meters high and runs in both distances til the end of sight. A truly insane enterprise, its hard to see how it could keep anything out or in, maybe a testament to the bad decisions that are made when it is government by absolute power. Although the recent imperial wars by democracies undercut my argument heavily. I had paid at two different check points, then I hit a third collector and I thought this a scam, a little old lady with a stick, she would not let me pass, she had no badge, I think she must have been tortured by Mao, I was not interested in paying a third time so I pushed my way through to her various screams. Some young Chinese passed through, asked what was going on, they started laughing, they said there are too many cheats in China, she is not official. To the fear of a powerful China, this Chinese guy said to me that the government has a 50 year plan by which time they will be a developed country. I used to think the solution would be for China to democratize, a free society is not a threat to the world. How delusional could I be, the U.S. is a democracy and goes to war every few years, China pretty much keeps to massacring those within its borders. Hong Kong is a developed city, Beijing is developing fast. Assuming no major hiccups the east coast will be developed within 10 years, its just the vast rural masses. There seems to be little ethnic diversity within Beijing and Hong Kong, 80% of the Chinese population are Han, making them by far the biggest ethnic group in the world. A southerner cannot distinguish a northern by look, only language and custom, it is about unity. I wonder how an alien ethnographer would view the earth, the largest group producing everything for the world except food, yet with little power in the world, a un-sustainable and undemocratic situation. I have always snubbed the link between capitalist development and greater freedom in a society, an apology for dictatorship. I now think there is something to it, as China develops more it will have to open up more and more, the requirements of an efficient economy is driving moves towards an independent judiciary, greater freedom of movement and cultural expression. In Beijing I did a first, I lost a ticket, a A$70 train fare to Hong Kong, chaos in-sued, with the help of the Japanese girl who can communicate via the written word she managed to get a new ticket and my only glimpse of the Chinese countryside. Covered in fog or maybe smog, the towns are a testament to functionality over aesthetics, blocks of buildings in rows. There must be a question on the entrance exam for Chinese architects, do you consider yourself creative or artistic, those that answer yes are banned. As the train heads south the landscape becomes more beautiful, rolling hills filled with rice paddies, no space is wasted, little villages that have a touch of the old. Its a contradictory place, on one hand, a possibly imagined, legacy of beauty, traditions so delicate, yet a drive to destroy it all and make themselves as bland as possible. Maybe this is just the government, its a shame the way communists, once they have taken power, have to eliminate culture, as if it is in opposition to the welfare of the people. Still after seeing yet another example of the utter brutality of communists in power I am not swayed, I still believe in utopia. On that note I'm off to Russia and preparing myself for what I imagine to be the shiftiest people in the world, I am prepared, I avoided the scamming of a senile old woman, I can face the Russians.

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