Advertisement
Published: December 16th 2013
Edit Blog Post
December 16 Last Day in China
I leave tomorrow so of course today was busy. I’m including a couple of details about arriving back in China from Vietnam below and a couple about my last day here.
Crossing the border into China is like travelling between two worlds. And the government of China has no doubt worked hard to solidify this fairly accurate comparison. Travelling to the border from Hanoi on a cold, cloudy day with misty rain falling was a slow affair. The highway was often single lane and often crowded with the usual variety of vehicles, from motorcycles and motorized tricycles to huge tractor-trailers and buses. When you get to the border you disembark your bus and board a ten passenger cart that drives you to Vietnamese customs in a modest building and then, after clearing customs, taking you to the Chinese customs and immigration. In sharp contrast with our midnight railway experience on the train, where both sides were surly and stern, the bus trip’s encounters with officialdom were downright affable. A Vietnamese official chucked the cheeks and the played with a Chinese baby, and the Chinese customs young men practiced their
English to ask my where I was from before they smiled and wished me a happy time in China.
The Chinese have spent a lot of money on a huge border station complete with elaborately landscaped gardens and a new two-lane expressway into Nanning. The weather became worse as we drove on, but as we travelled smoothly along this highway at about 90 km/hr, I was struck by the relative wealth of China. This hit home in particular when we arrived in Nanning with its contemporary city-scape of freeways, high rise buildings, elaborately lit bridges and huge public squares. All built in the last few decades and coalescing into a city quite different from Hanoi, a city which has pockets of stylishly old, and pockets of new development, but not yet even close (in wealth) to what greets you in Nanning.
I want to quickly add that I liked Hanoi a lot and hope to return there. I’m not on the side of freeways and high-rises—just remarking on the relative wealth manifest in the urban development.
The cold, wet conditions here deserve a few remarks. First, after living in Beijing where it gets
very cold, I realize the relative comfort of Beijing in winter. From Wuhan south in China there is, literally, no central heating. So after slogging through some questionable puddles etc yesterday, we returned to Jinyi’s large but freezing apartment. The cold was amplified by her belief that fresh air is good for you: she had most of the windows open and a stiff breeze was blowing from room to room. People wear extra layers here and share her commitment to fresh air. My favourite coffee bar/bakery had both sets of double doors open and I struggled to find a corner seat out of the breeze. I’m wearing long underwear and a toque most of the time!
Today, more rain. Jinyi got the directions a bit confused for a visit to a minority museum where I wanted to do some last minute shopping. So we slogged along a road just outside of Nanning and of course got shoes and socks soaked and pants wet because it was driving rain. In addition to that, the museum was closed and it was up to Jinyi’s powers of persuasion to insist that we’d talked to someone earlier and had been invited
to come in through a back door, another slog around the back of a museum the size of the provincial one in Victoria, where she talked to guards and phone calls were made and finally we got permission to go up to the shops on the second floor. I was feeling wet and cold and questioning the entire enterprise by the time we got there, but we were greeted by a very nice couple of young men who opened the gift shop for me on this one day of the week that they were closed. It was like they’d opened the BC Museum for me to go to the store and see what they had. I was happy to find a couple of gifts that seemed right, and I was struck once again by the kindness and hospitality I’ve met along the way. I know money was made, but there’s something beyond that here in the old sense of treating visitors well.
Later, I bought a small painting from Stephen, the entrepreneur and coffee-shop owner who is closing an exhibit by a Taiwanese artist tomorrow. She’d studied in Italy and has a lovely sense of whimsy. She
also is a writer, so I plan to contact her when I get home. I’m interested in doing translations, working with word-by-word Chinese to produce a new rendering.
So tonight I’m using a hair-dryer to dry my shoes and socks. I will try my best not to step in the puddles I seem to find everywhere here tomorrow morning when I head to the airport. It’s been a good trip: time out to reflect, and time with Jinyi to explore a friendship and get to know her in different ways than you can via Skype.
I so look forward to a big fire in the fireplace at home, and to some warm rooms. I respect the strength of Chinese people down here: they have another couple of months of winter ahead of them now, but I would have trouble living here without at least some heat during this time of year.
Thank you China. Thank you Vietnam. I’ve learned more about you, and I remain impressed by so many things here, starting with your alternatives to our high-energy footprint (solar heating everywhere in China, small on-demand hot-water heaters, low-flush toilets, tiny washing machines with clothesline drying in even the upscale apartments and houses, bus transport, electric scooters and bicycles …), and a different way of being in the world. There are huge social and political problems here, and there are huge tensions re the distribution of wealth, but there is something irrepressible as well, a refusal to get knocked-down and stay down, that drives these economic engines.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.069s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0359s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb