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Published: January 31st 2015
As the train rolled out of Guangzhou Railway Station, I was lulled by the calming sway of the railcar as it smoothly coasted out of the city centre at a steady 155 kilometres an hour.
While I contemplated reading my current book, I could not turn away from the landscape thinking to myself, ‘one and a half
billion people lie outside the windows of this train’. This idea is constantly playing in my mind. The cities never end and I often wonder how so many people can live amongst each other and how so much was ever built to begin with. For the entire two hour train ride – with the odd exception of a tiny plot of lingering farm land – there is never a break from the sea of concrete that meets the tracks and spreads out across the horizon.
One and a half
billion people…
I often reflect at the urban sprawl of Canada, where we feel suffocated by towns of a hundred thousand, and I realize that a hundred thousand people in China is the equivalent of a city block. The Chinese laugh at us when we tell them that Canada has a population
of thirty-five million.
“In one city?” they often ask. “No,” we reply, “in
all of Canada.”
I stare out at the hard landscape passing by and think, ‘so many mouths to feed’. Every space within the city is utilized, every alley filled with someone trying to survive. Sidewalks are lined with the poor trying to sell their goods: fresh vegetables from tiny home gardens, cheap clothes, knock-off CDs and videos, key chains, computer adapters, birds, dogs and cats – both for food and as pets – fresh meat butchered right there on the side of the road, tiny plants, lucky charms… the list is endless.
Every person represents another dot on the landscape; every person a burden to the next…
Click, clack… click clack…
Smoke rises from between the buildings: Either someone is cooking or burning their trash… or cooking over their burning trash; one can never be sure.
Nothing goes to waste, for this truly is the land where one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. When resources have been stretched to the limit, everything has value, for everything has its use.
I watch as we pass by a small farm. A
dozen or so men and women are on their knees reaping and sowing; there are no machines here to do the work and entire families will often work sixteen hours a day just so they can eat one small meal.
Keep it simple, keep it real has been our theme, yet there is a part of me that realizes that I have no idea what that means. It is all relative I suppose. We sold the houses, the cars, the stuff in order to do more, but most people in China will never know what a house is, will never be driven in a car and will never understand what it means to have stuff; for them, less is all they know and simple is not a choice.
On one of our visits to a village outside of Guangzhou, we passed by an ancestral home, the place where extended families congregate for special occasions. As it so happened, the head of the household was standing in the doorway of the two hundred year old walled compound and insisted that we come in. As he took us through his home, we passed through the dining area where multiple generations of his family sat eating and laughing and talking across a table twenty feet long.
We went from room to room as he pointed out the treasures that he and his family had collected over the years. In one large cabinet he showed us small glass figurines, an old camera and shards of broken pottery. In the kitchen he proudly showed us a shelf lined with empty bottles – an old whiskey bottle, a porcelain tumbler, an old Coke bottle. From the kitchen he led us to a small, inconspicuous room hidden at the back of the house…
Unlocking the solid wood door, he excitedly ushered us into the windowless room eager for us to explore a great secret. He closed the door behind him. The room was bare except for a heavy table, a single chair and a large solid cabinet on the back wall.
He went to the cabinet and carefully pulled open the exterior doors. Then pulling a tiny key from his pocket, he inserted it into the brass cylinder and slowly opened the drawer, as if afraid that its contents would vanish if opened too fast.
Carefully he removed one item at a time, caringly lining them on a soft cloth placed on the table.
He showed us each item. Few words were said. Few words were needed.
He opened a fragile book, an accounting log from someone in the early 1900s that recording personal business transactions. Spices, teas, Chinaware… amounts owed, expected shipping dates. He opened another book: it was a journal from a Chinese merchant trying to learn English in order to trade with the British, the fine writing a testament to an art long lost. He pulled out another item, placing it so gingerly on the cloth: A Canadian coast-to-coast train ticket from CN Rail; the date, 1926.
We spent a half hour in the tiny room as the man proudly displayed his treasures – things that we would see as junk – and in those moments, I understood the value of those things, for as simple as they are, they are a symbol of a world beyond our reach.
Click clack… click clack…
As we approach the end of our journey, I again take in the landscape and I wonder: ‘What are we becoming when we forget that it is the tiny treasures and the food on our plate that matters the most? What are we becoming when people are seen as burdens to our survival and our resources spread so thin that an empty tin can becomes a symbol of hope?’
These thoughts linger with me as we step off the train. I look up and strain my neck to see the tops of the hundred story buildings surrounding us and think to myself…
‘One and a half
billion…’
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Angela
non-member comment
Finding life's truth at the speed of light!
It is with interest that I read your words......words that show you have at a very tender young age discovered one of life's greatest truths! I came to this understanding around age 50 when suddenly I found myself angered by "gifts"..I tried to explain to family and friends that I needed NOTHING... The truth dismayed and surprised even me...but I found the clutter and material minutia were driving me to a stress laden nightmare....for the first time I realized that I had spent the first half of my life accumulating "Stuff" and one day I realized I could not bear another moment surrounded by things I do not use and did not need........so the second half of my life became an epic journey to rid myself of as much as possible. I threatened all friends and all family that if they gave me things I did not want and could not use....they would go to the Goodwill or Salvation Army...it must be a consumable item or a meal out!! this became my mantra...and so I too realized that living with less and collecting good friends........not material possession is the key to true happiness. I still have too much of everything but it took me twice the years to figure that out; you have discovered the happiness that comes with a simple life not anchored by unnecessary spending...The Chinese people are a happy example of how less is truly MORE!