10/04/2005. China--a window on the future?

So, how was China?

I've been asked this question over and over since we spent three weeks there in August. Each time, I've paused before answering. My response isn't simple. With myriad stories in the news about China as a putative developmental success story, the world's economic engine for the 21st century, and so on, I know my interlocuter most likely is waiting to hear an affirmation of that media impression. But my answer is anything but.

We had planned a trip with an itinerary termed "découverte" in French--a mixture of the Big Sights and Big Cities with a descent through the legendary landscape of the Li River and then a 4-day roadtrip to visit some ethnic minorities, and visits to a couple of cities known for their gardens.

We began in Beijing, and that's where I got my first taste of the end-of-the-world air pollution that hangs over China's cities and bleeds well into the surrounding countryside. The most striking thing about Beijing was the rapidity with which the remaining traditional neighborhoods (called hutongs) were being destroyed to make way for the ugly modern buildings of which China is so proud. Areas of several blocks were under the wrecking ball behind construction fencing. Only one small area near a lake has been preserved for the tourist industry. In this neighborhood, the wonderfully preserved former residence of Mme. Song, the second wife of Sun Yatsen, a formidable intellectual and activist in her own right, provided my best memory of the city.

We did have a couple of hilarious intervals. One evening, as foot massage is a local specialty, Denis and I ducked in for one beside our hotel. We were seated in special chairs side-by-side, and a smiling young woman handed each of us a "menu" of foot baths that would precede the massage. The choice was so complicated that Denis asked her advice.

"For man, she-maa! she exclaimed. "She-maa, she maa!" she repeated, her voice rising in excitement and volume as we struggled to understand what she meant. Then it dawned on us in an "a-ha" moment--sea mud! Sea mud was "strong for man" she assured us, and Denis assented. Meanwhile, she recommended "soft for lady." "Soft" turned out to be unremarkable, but Denis' sea mud was interesting. The attendant poured the contents of a mysterious packet into his footbath, stirred thoroughly, and then left the room. After a few seconds, Denis looked at me quizzically. Wiggling his toes in his bath, he had the bizarre sensation that his feet might be embedded in hardening cement. The bath water was coagulating into a thick, viscous mass. This was sea mud of course!

After our foot baths, the massage experts entered--a man for me and a woman for Denis. She examined his feet, and then called over my attendant. They conferred in hushed voices over Denis' feet, and we noticed the number "45" being pronounced over and over in English. After much excited chatter about "45", they nodded decisively to each other and the woman left the room. Obviously, Denis was a Code 45!

She returned shortly with three other people. At this point, the room was getting crowded. One of the newcomers wore a white coat and carried a black doctor's bag. He pointed to himself. "45!" he explained. (We now noticed that all the attendants wore name tages with a number and a name in English. My massager introduced himself as Number 20 Louis.) Number 45 was a doctor, one of his assistants explained, and Denis' toes needed a doctor.

Denis looked at me in alarm. A doctor himself, he assiduously avoids all medical encounters. He has never visited a doctor as long as I've known him. Now he was surrounded by Chinese medical personnel--an insistent ones at that! I was of course snorting with laughter by this point.

Like many people, Denis has a couple of toenails infected by a fungus which deforms the nail, and this is what Number 45 had been called in to attend to. I urged him to go ahead. We negotiated the price for this additional service ($45 per nail!). The doctor whipped out some terrifying-looking tools and the sweat popped out on poor Denis' forehead. But all that happened was the painless trimming of the nail. Then a secret herbal poultice was applied to each one, and the entire toe bandaged up securely. Denis was instructed to take hot footbaths everyday to activate the poultices, and to leave them in place for 10 days.

After a couple of hours of fantastic massage, we emerged blinking into the street. It was nearly eleven at night, and all restaurants except for a garishly lit joint across the street from our hotel were closed. We were seated on sticky banquettes and handed plastic-coated menus showing photos of the various dishes. The plastic photo menu factor made me want to flee, but Denis reminded me that this was not the moment to be a food snob. Dutifully I ducked my head and started to read the choices, which were helpfully labeled in English as well as Chinese. It wasn't until I got to the "Grilled Dog Meat" photo selection that I convinced Denis room service back at the hotel would be the best option.



On a visit to the Great Wall, I was mildly thrilled to see Artemisia annua, the plant containing the world's only remaining effective anti-malarial medecine, growing absolutely everywhere. No wonder the Chinese were the first to figure out how to use it!

From Beijing we flew to Xian, the relatively recently archaelogical site of the 5,000 clay soldiers that is touted as a must-see. As gargantuan as this site is, it left me cold. The clay soldiers are not particularly beautiful and certainly not expressive of anything but the arrogance and bloodlust of a war-faring king. They are not art. However, what I reluctantly "must-saw!" about Xian was the air pollution. Over the airport, which was probably 30 km from the city, and over the entire agricultural area surrounding the city, hangs a thick gray pall. While the weather was "sunny,", we never once saw the sun or a blue sky the entire time we were there (or in Beijing or Shanghai either). When we asked our guide if the pollution was always this bad, she replied brightly that it was much worse in winter.

The pollution was so thick that a visible gray haze intervened between your eyes and a point half a block away. My eyes were red and my sinuses clogged. Every night I washed a black film off my skin. The Chinese I met in these polluted cities seemed at best oblivious to it, or at worst seemed to treat it as a badge of "progress." This doomsday pollution is due to China's reliance on coal, and now to a growing car exhaust problem. I was shocked to see that the Chinese are driving cars as big or bigger than American cars in a country that has no oil. (Of course, I'm shocked at the size of American cars as well.) In our entire time there, I saw only a couple of vehicles the size of your average European commuter car.



Our next step was the city of Guilin, from where we descended through the mythic landscape of the Li River on a boat to Yangshuo. This landscape of small steep mountains, called karsts, is familiar to anyone who knows Chinese Zen landscape paintings of the 16th century. We could tell that Yangshuo must have been a lovely village once, but it is now indundated in touristy claptrap. The local 'hospitality industry' is anything but hospitable, with sullen service at inflated prices.



We then left on a road trip from Guilin into the surrounding mountains to visit some Dong and Miao villages, which were the highlight of the whole trip. Two things struck me on this rather grueling trajectory. First, I never saw a single piece of farm machinery, this in a purportedly communist country in rapid development, where billions are being spent on superhighways that no one is even driving on yet. The peasants seemed as poor or poorer than those in Burma, where at least we saw an occasional walk-behind tractor. It seemed to me that the peasants had gained nothing whatsoever from the "People's Revolution."

Second, I saw not a single bird. Imagine traveling 3 days through remote countryside without seeing a single bird! It was frightening. What had happened to the birds? Had they all been eaten? Was it loss of habitat? Environmental pollution? I thought of all the pesticide applications I had seen in progress on fields of table grapes and peaches nearer the cities. (Incidentally, China has the most absolutely flavorless fruit I've ever tasted.) I thought of the cacaphony of birdsong that wakes me every morning when I am in Dakar, Senegal, a country poorer than China and yet full of birds. Even in downtown Paris, birdsong wakes me up in the spring and summer. The silence at dawn in China was deafening.

We finished our trip in Shanghai. As we approached the city from the airport, I slipped into a gloom as deep as the one hanging over the city. The pollution was so thick that I felt I would never escape from it, and the cityscape had me feeling as if I were inside the movie Bladerunner. Our hotel was in the chic-est quarter, full of new restaurants and hectic activity. Only the former French concession retained a bit of authentic charm, yet "renovations" were rapidly taking their toll even in that beautiful old quarter, gutting stately old houses to transform them into expensive bars and nightclubs of the most generic, soulless nature.



I suppose I'm glad I went to China, if only to have a dose of the reality of what is happening there. On the one hand, you might say, who can blame them? Who are we, the biggest consumers in the world, to complain when others follow our example?

Exactly! Seeing China makes for some sober--and sobering--reflection on the example we set and the images we market to the world. China is set on a path of profligate consumption, at any and all costs. It has the most rapidly growing economy in the world, something for America to envy, we're given to believe. Yet, people in urban areas live in a year round atmospheric murk, and no city has potable water. In the countryside, the farmers labor in exactly the same way as they have for millennia, and there are no birds (or probably other wildlife). In this country where cars have become available only recently and which has no oil, people choose to drive the biggest cars imaginable. In this "communist" country, all health care is privately paid for, meaning that only the rich have health care. A country with one of the richest cultural heritages in the world, China is in the midst of destroying most of what little had survived the Cultural Revolution--in the name of progress.

Seeing what had become of China was more painful in some ways for Denis than for me, as he had been there 25 years ago and seen it before the poisoned marvel of its development. It made both of us reflect on how incredibly fortunate we are to live in a country which--for all its anachronisms and problems--at least makes an effort to be wise--to treasure the past, to safeguard the public good, and to preserve the environment.


~Shanghai August 2005~

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