Day #107: Xiamen

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Xiamen is a very relaxed city by Chinese standards. People say that is because of the proximity to Taiwan, meaning there has always been affluence and a certain limited exposure to the outside world. No one batted an eyelid to see a Westerner. Xiamen is popular as a tourist destination for the Chinese, although it's a more laidback type of tourism, people come for the beaches and to hire tandems to cycle along the promenade.

I had an interesting conversation with the owner of the hostel I am staying at, who is Chinese but married to a Westerner, about the dramatic shift in China from Communism and collectivism to rampant consumerism. This is something almost every traveller I have met in China has remarked upon, but it is hard to escape: in modern China, shopping malls are everywhere, garishly lit up and packed with crowds, and advertising is everywhere too - even on the Subway systems, there are screens showing advertisements. China has become a very aspirant and competitive society: there are stories, which the owner said are true, of low-income Chinese saving every penny for a year or two, in order to afford an iPhone, the ultimate status symbol here. Everywhere there could conceivably be tourists, there are Chinese people in droves trying to sell them something, much more so than other countries I have been to, and it is a hard sell: pestering, bargaining, not taking no for an answer (it has to be said, some travellers I met love this kind of interaction). China is the first place I've ever been to where someone has seriously attempted to scam me, twice in fact (the famous tea-house scam, where a friendly young woman, speaking perfect English, invites you to a tea festival, where you are then charged an extortionate amount for tea - usually $100s - before you are allowed to leave. Fortunately there are warnings everywhere for travellers about this scam so I escaped). The owner felt very negatively about the state of Chinese society, lamenting that no one helps one another any more, everyone is interested only in him or herself, which led us to the stereotype of the "Tiger Mother", a natural consequence of such a competitive society where most people have only one child.

Xiamen has one of the most graphic war memorials I have ever seen, in tribute to the Communist struggle. It is in it's own park and consists of a number of sculpted bronze figures running towards the victorious summit of a hill, carrying weapons, many mid-shot or mid-death.

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