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Yes I am leaving China, it has been fun, but it has been enough as well and I am looking forward to something new. And yes this blog will be about my last week in this country, with a few thoughts about it, and my trip and time here, and a few thoughts totally disconnected from China and my leaving it. As such it might seem a bit incoherent but, ah well, at least it is a tad different. Coherency is over-rated anyway!

Lets start with my feelings on leaving China. To be honest I am happy to be leaving. I like China, don't get me wrong, but I have been coming back to this country three times in the last year and a half and I have been roaming it for a total of seven months. Seven months in a country where I don't speak the language and where very few speak any language that I understand. Seven months in a country which it seems to me less diverse than it makes itself out to be. Sure you have the Tibetans and the Uighur and a hundred plus other minorities, but in the sea of Han Chinese they count for very little.

As a whole I have discovered the country is quite uniform in attitude, architecture and people. A city in the west of China looks the same as one in the east, a temple in Harbin isn't that different from one in Kunming, a palace in Beijing is very similar to a palatial mansion down south, a Confucian school/temple, a Taoist temple or a Buddhist one they all look similar throughout the country, the traditional houses and villages all have upturned eaves, a spirit wall and cobbled stone streets, the differences are small.

The people in Kunming could in a way be transplanted to any other random city. They want the same thing, they sell the same things and they talk about the same things. This isn't so strange, since a lot of people have moved from one part of the country to another. Of course this is a gross over-generalization, there are differences I am sure, but since I haven't been here long enough to discover them, I can only talk about the superficiality. And superficially at least there seems to be not much difference between a youngster in Beijing and a youngster in lets say Chengdu. Same hair-cut, same clothing, and if I get in a conversation with them, the same attitude.

So what happens when you are in a country for that long and you feel that really there isn't much difference around the place? Well you get nonchalant about it, you don't care that much about seeing yet another traditional village, or going to yet another temple. You try to find the things that are different and sometimes if you are lucky you do, but often you don't and despair sets in. The fact that you can't even talk with the locals makes things that much worse and so I have come the place and time that I can't stay here any longer. It is all the same to me now and when that happens you should call it a day.

My impressions have been that of a country going through tremendous change, but at the same time seeming a bit lost. The old culture has been replaced by unbridled capitalism. In fact this is the most capitalist country I have ever been to, by comparison the U.S.A. seem like a socialist paradise. Even amongst the populace there are votes going up to change the name of the communist party from the China Communist Party to China Capitalist Party, and this is from a CCTV news channel I saw! Capitalism might be good for the wallet, but it doesn't nourish the soul much, and the loss of the moorings and traditions of the past has left a lot of people looking for something else.

From the few conversations I have had with what is inevitably the middle-class (Chinese students and such), I have understood that there is a lot of anger at the corruption within the government. There have been hints thrown out to me that reform is needed, even democracy perhaps. And if reform does come, my guess is that it will indeed come from the pressure put on the party by this growing middle-class. They have the money, they have the means and they won't stay quiet for ever. Interesting times ahead, that is for sure.

Now on a totally unrelated matter. I am leaving China via Xishuangbanna and I have been here for some five days. Xishuangbanna is renowned for its ethnic minorities and so I did a short trek and went to a market only to discover that, well basically that I was unimpressed. But that isn't what I was going to talk about. It is about my photo's. You see I felt that there should have been at least a few photo's of the minorities that I encountered here, and I have encountered a few even if they weren't that impressively dressed. But what gives? No photo's! Why? Because of a problem I have always had and always will have, which is that I am terrible at shooting photo's of people!

It is the most frustrating side of my character and I have been trying hard to overcome the awkwardness and shyness that sets in when I think about taking a photo of a person. But alas, to no avail, actually I think it is becoming worse with age. A little self-analyses has revealed to me that it might have to do with stage-fright. It isn't the camera that is the problem, it is that I don't want to stick out in a crowd and as it is I stick out all the time when I am travelling. That I can just about handle, my love of travelling is bigger than my fear of sticking out.

The camera however is probably just that one step too far for me. Standing in a market as the only blond haired and blued eyed foreigner is one thing, standing in a market with a big camera pointed at various people puts the spot-light on me even more. In other words I feel that when I take out the camera I am on stage, and I hate being on stage! So I simply don't take out the camera and get frustrated with myself. Or I get it out and get all sweaty about it.

Here in Xishuangbanna I didn't or couldn't bring myself to take it out. If I had seen some really interesting characters with elaborate head-dresses and costumes I would have probably taken some photo's, no matter the fear that would be running through me as I did so, but there weren't. And so I end up being just a little frustrated at myself again for not overcoming this irrational fear. So no minority shots I am afraid, my apologies.

As a last aside, I think there must actually be markets out here that are more interesting then the one I went to, but I didn't do any research on this place and so I didn't find them. I have seen the blogs of EdVallance on this region though and he, as always, did discover the hidden gems here. He has got the nose for such things and I suggest you look at this blog, Tribes of Lao Zhai market, of his to see what you might find if you are a little more intrepid then me. I have a big nose, but it isn't much use in sniffing out authentic markets!

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