Days 70-75. CHINA

     China is the fastest growing economy on the face of the earth. It is also the most populous country on the same planet. At 1.3 billion individuals, it’s more than 4 times the population of the United States, and growing.

        I’ve never been to China, and I didn’t have too much of an idea of what to expect from the country. The civilization of China (not it’s government) has been around for almost 3,000 years, and due to its geography, has retained much of its individuality. With the ocean to the east and the Himalayas on the west, the country is separated from the rest of the world, and has much of its unique character.

        It should be said now, right up front, that I had a rough time in China. Being a rights-loving-tree-hugging American, I am used to my liberties and my freedoms, and the lack of them was palpable in the People’s Republic of China. The Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, for instance, doesn’t exist in Chinese books. It is censored on the internet, and the tour guides have a set line they memorize about “a small conflict on the square 20 years ago.”

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Hong Kong is a completely different place than mainland China. A British colony for many years, HK has grown to be the economic center of the east, and one of the world’s great cities.

        Sailing into HK was incredible. Even though I was under the weather, I was up on the 7th deck to see our entrance, and it was well worth the cold(er) weather. I have never seen so many sprawling skyscrapers in any city in my life. It dwarfs the likes even of NYC back home in the US. Set on an island with mountains in the background, the city is magnificent, glowing, and un-ending.

        I had one day to explore the city, and I did my best to work up the oomph to do so. I had been getting over a pretty crappy illness, so I worked to get out of bed. We left the ship, which was ported connected to Harbor Center mall on Kowloon island to head to the city center on Hong Kong island. We took the Star Ferry, the same ferrys that have been running for nearly 100 years from Kowloon island 4 minutes north to HK. Once there, we took the double-decker public bus that would take us to “the peak.”

        Victoria Peak is the tallest mountain peak on the island in the city, and provides anybody who wants to pay the 5 USD to get to the top with a great view. We took the bus to the tram station, and then took a tram up to the peak. The tram is a street-car looking contraption connected to a cable that gets pulled up the steep incline all the way to the peak. It’s a 4-5 minute ride up the incline and it was well worth the trip.

        After that, we explored through the city for awhile, stopping on odd streets and talking to the locals. I made it back to the ship in time to go out with one of my friend, Brendan’s family who had come to see him in Hong Kong. The McNamaras took us out to an amazing Hong Kong dinner, complete with Peking Duck, one of eastern Asia’s most famous delicatessens.

        Post-dinner, my ship family and I went out to Hong Kong’s most famous nightlife. We didn’t realize, however, that we had arrived in HK during the city’s international “Rugby 7s Tournament.” We found ourselves face to face with thousands of rugby fans from everywhere on god’s green earth, uproariously drinking and chanting for their favorite team with the entire city present. It was a scene from a movie, one of the craziest nights out I’ve ever had. I met people from Singapore, the US and Canada who were so excited to have other Americans to talk to. Talking, though, was nearly impossible since the street was so loud and rowdy you could barely move. It was an amazing, amazing night.



        The next morning began my Chinese Adventure. I left at 9ish for the airport in HK to fly to Beijing, where I would be a part of SAS’s Tshingua University exchange program. For the next 4 days and 3 nights, I explored Beijing’s most famous landmarks and sights. Mixed within there was a tour and night with university students at Tshingua where I was able to see a world-class educational facility. The students were so generous with their time and their information, and through them, I felt like I learned a lot about being a Chinese student- their life, their living arrangements, their social life.

        The first day in Beijing, we arrived to the huge airport built, in part, to accommodate the millions of guests at the 2008 Olympic games. The place was a palace. Immigration was slightly more intensive then I was used to, with temperature sensors and face-to-face interviews. The Chinese officers, though, were congenial and unobtrusive. They certainly had their practice last august.

        We got settled in to our residence, the university’s conference center/hotel, and were happy to get some wired internet for a change. The next morning, we awoke early to conquer one of the world’s most famous landmarks, the great wall of china. Contrary to popular belief, the great wall is not a straight wall- rather a sequence of walls that defend over 2,000 miles of the old imperial China. The portion we arrived at was straight up a mountain, and we spent almost 2 hours climbing the wall, through 6 guard towers up a mountain ridge. Once we had reached the top (and I had stopped hyperventilating from the climb) we descended. That proved to be almost as difficult as climbing up; the stairs are all different heights, and not falling on your face required leg strength and patience.

        We also went to visit the Summer palace, the location where dynasties of Chinese emperors spent their summers. It’s an amazing place located on a lake, and it was unlike anything I had ever seen.

        That night, Sara and I decided to just leave the hotel and walk the streets of Beijing. Beijing is not an “English” city, and we were faced with an impossible language barrier. For the first time, not only could we not communicate, but we couldn’t even read a word on a building, street sign, etc… Chinese script characters mean nothing to us. Frustrated from being lost and alone, we stumbled into a McDonalds and decided to get a French fry (you know how much I love French fries). To our surprise, we sat next to a group of friends practicing English. Curious, we asked if we could join and help them learn English, and they obliged happily. We found out that they were from Korea and Kazakhstan learning Chinese and English for 7 months. We had a great conversation about their time in China and their countries at home before saying goodnight and heading back to the hotel.

        Tiananmen square, the Forbidden city, and the Temple of heaven were our destinations the next day. Standing in T-Square was a surreal experience, and it was very saddening to me. To see the images of the massacre of 1989 flashing before me, the hotels around the square where western journalists captured the images we all know- and yet, no memorial. No words, no thoughts, not even any proof that the event happened. Suppressed under years of Chinese pressure, the event isn’t talked about, even acknowledged… and that was very hard for me.

        I was able to accomplish two of my goals for China, however. 1) I bought a Beijing 2008 ski cap. I had a Salt Lake 2002 one of the same variety and loved it. When a lady approached me selling them on the square, I jumped for joy (quite literally) and bought one for 5 yen (1 buck).  2) I bought myself a great North Face jacket. I had been looking for one in East Asia for the past month, but never bought it because the price hadn’t been low enough. Finally, in Beijing’s pearl market, I found a girl named Angel who really wanted to make a sale. I told her the truth: I had walked away in Vietnam, Thailand, and Hong Kong because they had given me crappy prices, and I would leave China too if she didn’t oblige.

        She offered me 1,280 yen for the jacket. I negotiated it down to 200 yen, roughly 28 bucks. A kick-ass North Face jacket which would have been 200 dollars in the US, ran me 28 bucks. I love it, and I love that I made a good friend in purchasing it
       
One of the best parts of the trip came the next day when I visited Olympic Village. Approaching the Bird’s Nest, China’s national Olympic stadium, was almost a religious experience for me. Anybody who knows me knows how passionate I am about the Olympics, and how much I watch every 2 years they’re on. I was able to go into the stadium and down onto the field, and my smile was a mile wide. I just couldn’t stop imagining myself down there on the same field where the opening and closing ceremonies took place under the world’s nose. For those moments on the stadium’s turf, the problems facing China and the world disappeared in my mind… all I could focus on was the togetherness of the Olympics and the effect they have on the world.

That feeling was duplicated when I entered the water cube, just across the Olympic green. The cube was the sight of my hometown hero’s victory and some of the greatest Olympic races ever. When I entered the main competition arena, I couldn’t contain myself… none of us could. To see this place on the television so many times and then to process it with my own eyes was too much. Near-tears abounded as we realized how far we imagined the cube to be from our living rooms in the United States, and how we now stood in it 8 months later. Crazy.

We departed Beijing later that day for Shanghai, China’s largest city and economic engine on the eastern coast of the country.

Shanghai, not having hosted the Olympics a few months back, is a lot less westernized, and a heck of a lot harder to negotiate with no knowledge of the Chinese language. The skyline is another testament to China’s growth, with the iconic tripod pearl tower shooting 300 meters in the sky. Behind it, the “Bottle Opener” building stands, 474 meters in the air. It was the tallest building in the world for a few years… and it is an incredible building.

In a fantastic feat of craftiness, we managed to get to the top of the “bottle opener.” Of course, the 100-floor building had an observation deck that was 150 yen to visit, almost 25 dollars. Being poor college kids traveling the world, we would have none of it. Instead, we realized that on the 91st floor of the building, the Hyatt hotel was located, and it had a nice bar. We dusted off our shirts and walked in like we owned the place, and sure enough, no questions were asked. We took the elevator straight up to the 91st floor and marveled at how we just got to the virtual-top of the building without paying a dime. Feeling bad, we did spend some money on a hot chocolate each, which was far from cheap- nearly 10 bucks.

Possibly the highlight of the trip, though, was the toilet in the Hyatt bar. I won’t dare post all the details of this amazing experience, but I’ll tell you this much: as you approach the toilet, it opens automatically and says “hello.” Next to where you sit is a full control panel, as large as our alarm system at home with such functions as “rear wash”, “oscillation” “pulsation” and “dryer”.

… I don’t know that I’ll ever love something as much as I did that toilet. Oh, and the seats were warmed electronically.



China was a unique experience. As I expressed to the shipboard community at the post-port reflections, I felt like much of what we saw was smoke and mirrors. That is, we see what the heavily involved government wants us to see: the beautiful skyline, the sprawling economy. The problems of china, the lack of rights, of due process, of social mobility or the right to move are serious… but are they actually problems? According to American standards, where rights are the most sacred (“inalienable,” remember?), China could be viewed as a disaster. However, to the Chinese, it’s unclear. It’s clear that 20 years ago, the youth of the nation almost toppled the same government that’s in power today… but was quelled on one June night in Beijing. It’s been relatively quiet since then, but the reason why is less known.

Could the Chinese be happy with their situation, and no longer wish to revolt against the powers that be? Could they harbor revolutionary feelings but be coerced into silence through fear and pressure? It’s hard to tell given the current state of things. This much I do know: there is a lack of information, of freedom of information. GOOGLEing things like “Tibet”, “Tiananmen” leads to censored web pages and mis-information. To many students, these events never happened, because information about them is not free flowing like it is in the US.

        I worry about the future of the country, and I truly hope that things work out. I hope that the underrepresented farmers in the undeveloped western part of the country stop being exploited, and even more so, that their concerns are just heard. We take for granted the ability to be heard, to be listened to in the US… and while our system is not perfect, it does have advantages such as this.

        This much I do know: it was very hard for me, a full-blooded American, to be there in China. As wonderful as a place it is, it has demons, and those demons are not being worked out in a way that we would work them. Who knows what will happen, but I hope that the beauty and individuality of the Chinese remains forever, no matter what happens.