In A Manner Of Peking - Impressions of China

---

In A Manner Of Peking - Impressions of China

The majority of my blogs are about places. Places are easy to write about. There are good reasons why descriptions of favourite teddies are where you start your literary exploits at primary school. And then, if you’re me, you add a few obscure references, the odd atrocious pun and some trivial throw-away comments in a vague hope that it will completely disguise the fact that you’re not a proficient enough writer to genuinely do the significance of the places you visit justice.

I therefore fully appreciate that my blogs are no doubt frustratingly impersonal. Whether you read them knowing me or not, they no doubt utterly fail to leave you with an impression of the real, human side of these places. I blame the engineering education. And the fact I just can’t bear to start a blog with what time the train got in... So I thought I’d try to rectify that. I’m half way through my time in China, so I feel it’s time to try and address the question I get asked most frequently, yet find hardest to answer. Namely, “So, what do you think of China?”

Whenever I’m asked this I feel a tangible void in space and time emerge before me, and I know the pressure’s on for me to fill it with interesting and poignant personal impressions of living and working in the fastest-growing country in the world. I always fail. Spectacularly. I panic and say, “oh it’s great, the food is nice and everyone is so friendly”. While true, it’s also utterly lame. I may as well talk about the weather. Which I often do for that matter.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my first four months here. Of course there have been ups and downs; there are times when the intensity of the place has almost got the better of me, but they are fleeting and could be counted on one hand. The rest of the time has been an utter adventure, full of fascinating places and engaging people. So here are my thoughts. I’ve only been here four months, so I have no pretenses of being an expert or having gained any real understanding of where I am, and I’m sure my impressions will change in the coming months. But here goes.

The follow up question to what I think of China is normally why I came to China. So perhaps this is where I should start.

I essentially came to China because it wasn’t Cheltenham or Chorley. Not that I did it to escape England as such; after all you can’t get a pint of Tickler in the Feathers anywhere else. But England is easy. I know how to get a “SuperSaver” train ticket. I know which kind of bread in Sainsbury’s stays freshest the longest. Daily life happens on autopilot. Without family and friends there’d be nothing of any excitement at all. There is no fun in easy.

So here’s a starting reason for enjoying China - daily tasks are that much harder, that much more noteworthy. And this makes them so much more rewarding. I’ll illustrate with a slightly silly example. In China to buy a razor from a supermarket requires an intricate system of carbon-copied receipts, stamps, payment locations, collection locations and numerous members of staff in between. The first time you do it you have to use all your nous to fathom what’s going on. You have those moments where you smile at the assistant writing out your three receipts and she smiles back. You’re both aware of the predicament, but it unites you, and gives you a certain connection that you never get when you hand over £3.79 to the woman in Boots. And when you successfully bumble your way through the system (having been politely pointed from place to place) you leave, with a skip in your stride, bizarrely chuffed with yourself. And what have you done? You’ve bought a cheaply-made razor that will be blunt by Tuesday.

Now imagine the sheer ecstasy when you successfully buy a train ticket.

So why China in particular? Actually there was no particular reason. Thanks to AIESEC I pretty much had the choice of anywhere in the world (kid in a sweet shop time). I looked through the list of possible destinations, and placed them into yes, no and maybe categories. On what basis? Simple prejudices, based on no real knowledge just what I’d read or seen on TV. How can a few words on a page, ever give you a proper impression of a country? The smells, the noises, the cultural ticks, everything it is to be submersed somewhere. And actually for that reason I couldn’t be happier that I ended up in Beijing. Not only is it the spark and driving force that is causing China to explode, but it is the epitome of those places that you read all about, yet always know that without actually being there you’ll never have a proper idea of what it’s like. Now I’m here of course I still don’t understand the majority of it, but I couldn’t think of a more interesting place to spend a few months.

I love the people I meet here in particular - not least because they make me giggle. I love their wit, and the twinkle they have in their eyes - especially when they suggest you look like Harry Potter. They always have time for you, and couldn’t be easier to talk to. They are happy to share their country with you, and keen to find out about yours in return. They’re even understanding and patient with your attempts at the language.

And it’s not just the people I meet that make me smile, it’s the ones I don’t meet, just observe. I genuinely respect their complete lack of self-consciousness when they’re skipping and clapping their way, on their own, down a street, or singing to themselves, or even having a steaming argument in the middle of the road.

I enjoy their debatable fashion sense - it’s all oranges with reds, lens-less glasses and obtusely meaningless English slogans. I saw a girl yesterday with a T-shirt that said “45RPM” above a picture of a bunny rabbit. Uh? Was it some obscure reference to the Wallace and Gromit film? Or just random nonsense generated from the OED? I’m also not convinced her boyfriend truly appreciated the connotations behind his “sex hunter” T-shirt either.

I admire their optimism, especially in the face of potential personal risk. The HSE has yet to make an impact on China. The idea that such things as free climbing 30m scaffolding, giving fireworks to small children or not wearing seat belts could be dangerous has yet to take hold.

I love the contrast when they elbow their way through scrimmaging crowds to get a seat on the bus, only to give it up immediately when an old person gets on.

I’m even beginning to tolerate the incessant spitting on the streets.

The speed of change here has really impressed me - simply how quickly things can get done. Of course, unless the correct decisions are made, this can often result in disastrous outcomes, which the western media rightly never fails to emphasise. But the western media also tends to overlook the speed and ability of China to make positive changes. In 1978 China’s economy was the same size as Belgium’s, this year it is due to become the second largest in the world. And along the way they’ve dragged hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and suffering. Sure it’s not all good, but they also have the ability to implement rectifying changes quickly (some would say rashly at times). For instance Northern China’s problems with pollution and desertification are obvious and well documented, but it’s also embarking on the biggest tree planting scheme the world has ever seen - a journey through Northern China reveals seemingly endless expanses of recently planted trees, perfectly aligned in serried ranks.

I like the craziness of the place, from pea-flavoured ice-lollies to 50% Baijiu liquor served in a plastic bottle with a sports top (and you think Lucozade gives you a kick). In addition to inherent bizarrities the rate change here is so quick it often trips up over itself. A trip to any provincial toilet will reveal this. On one hand China is home to the world’s fastest inter-city train, is the world’s 2nd largest consumer of luxury cars, and a trip to a city shopping mall will give you the opportunity to spend £7 on a can of Reebok deodorant or the equivalent of several months of the average Chinese wage on a pair of shoes, before popping next door for a KFC. Yet donkeys are still relatively common place and toilets here often involve nothing more than ditch, without so much as a cubicle for privacy. Not an ideal environment for those newly bought stilettos.

And does it match my preconceptions and expectations before I came? Well actually one thing that has surprised me, is not how different it is, but actually the exact opposite. It seems to me that cultural differences, though of course very much real and interesting, are actually surprisingly minor. Just tweaks here and there. Straight stick or pronged stick. I’m only comparing the Europe and China here, and I know plenty of people who would strongly disagree with me - I suppose it’s very much a subjective observation that depends on your personal expectations. People say Chinese morals carry different values to Western morals, but I just haven’t seen that first hand - sure they put different emphasises on different things but I think the core values are the same. If nothing else there are definitely many similarities between the English and the Chinese.

For example, I have a friend here from Xinjiang province in Western China, it’s thousands of miles from my home in England (or even Beijing), it’s sparsely populated and covered by desert and mountains. It takes her 3 ½ hours on a plane and 12 on a bus to get home (in a race I could get home quicker). Xinjiang often hits the news for tensions between the Muslim, Uighur population and the Han Chinese. The only tensions in my hometown concern whether Doreen from number 52 should be allowed to drive her mobility scooter again after her cataract operation. In Xinjiang all but government websites are blocked there and they only restored text messaging a few weeks ago. Even the local cobbler at home has a Java-enabled interactive website. In essence she should be utterly different to me, and in many ways is. Yet communication (beyond just language) couldn’t be easier, we can laugh and joke and share experiences and feelings; non-verbal communication is no different. After a big meal the other day she turned to me, rubbing her stomach, and said “In Xinjiang, we have a saying that if you’ve eaten a lot of food you have a 3-month food baby”. No matter Xinjiang, they say the same in Swindon.

However there’s also a big distinction to be made between Beijing and China. Beijing is very much the China China wants foreigners to see. It’s developed, heavily-policed and even relatively tidy. For instance in the great Olympics cleanup they removed all the stray dogs and beggars. It’s China with blusher and a dab of mascara. And it attracts a certain kind of modern Chinese person. Beijingers and Beijing as a place are by no means representative of China. Which is part of the reason I love leaving the city and heading into deeper China.

As a kid, when I should’ve been breaking bones BMXing with friends, I instead spent an unhealthy amount of time staring at atlases. For all the exotic place names - Montevideo, Manila or Madras, you can find out where they are, what country they belonged to, even the proportional of their income derived from primary industries. But an Atlas can never answer that most fundamental of questions: what’s it actually like? Many of the highlights of my time here have been visits to these places in China which you can never find out about in any other way. Places, even, that have no particular qualities. Taiyuan, the city with 3 million people, yet nothing of interest. Datong, the dirty, ugly metropolis deep in coal mining country. Harbin, a Chinese city with a faint Russian whiff to it, stuck in the frozen north-east yet every year home to incredible beauty in the form of a frankly ridiculous ice festival. These are places that you would never go on your honeymoon, yet capture the imagination completely in being so unexpected. Unexpected for the simple reason that there is no way of having expectations and preconceptions before you arrive.

So expect normal place-based services to be resumed for the next few blogs. Next trip Hangzhou.

---