China

My first glimpse on this return trip to China was the grey, oily fog stalking the Beijing airport.  Of course I had remembered the choking smoke that fills China’s cities, but experiencing it again, especially 18 hours removed from the breeze and beaches of Tel Aviv, sent a reminder to my nervous system: Ingest nothing!

I flew from Beijing to Chengdu, a city of about 15 million people in Western China, for my research.  Chengdu was much less crowded than Shanghai or Beijing.  I was a little shocked to walk on main boulevards with only a dozen or so pedestrians in sight.  Like many of China’s cities in summer, Chengdu was so hot and humid that I often stayed inside reading.

My hostel in Chengdu organized a bike tour of the city, which I assure you was an adrenaline-pumping and frightening event.  My biking, while functional, has always been highly imperfect and clumsy because I didn’t learn to ride until one boring Saturday when I was 17.  On this occasion I only crashed twice, into other bikers thankfully.

For the second year in a row I enjoyed my birthday in China.  I’ve never been one for holidays or special occasions, so I was perfectly content to just receive a free mojito and buy a ticket for the Chinese opera.  The opera in Chengdu was . . . very Chinese.  The players wore colorful traditional costumes, sometimes including masks that might recall Mexican wrestlers.  In one scene beautiful Chinese dancers with meter-long feathers in their hair playfully bobbled their heads to make the feathers swing back and forth.  Then they grabbed the feather at its base, curled it downward to their faces and put the ends in their mouths--yes, that actually happened.

In a solo performance, a musician played the famous folk dance Czardas on a traditional Chinese violin.  The fast parts were beyond his ability.  The section played in harmonics was out of tune.  I was more distracted, however, by the green steam shooting in from the sides of the stage and the flashing yellow stage lights that accompanied the music.  I’ve never seen a classical performance with less . . . class.  

Finally, during another dance by the Chengdu supermodels, bubbles descended from the ceiling to the audience’s delight.

I appreciate escapism, as opposed to only respecting art of the quiet and depressing persuasion.  Even so, there is something about as wide as the Pacific Ocean that separates my artistic values and the values of the audience in that Chengdu opera house.  I left my chair thinking the performance had been at least redeeming in how entertainingly bad it was when a Chinese girl who spoke English came to me and said excitedly, “Wasn’t that great?”  I told her I enjoyed it.

After a week in Chengdu, upon completion of my last research interview, I boarded a 40-hour train to Qingdao, a beach city on China’s east coast where I would meet my friend, April, who I worked with last summer.  As I did earlier this summer, I greatly enjoyed my lower berth, reading my books and looking out the window.  Although I crossed perhaps 1500 miles of China, the landscape was disappointingly consistent.  Dark green fields of corn and rice for miles.  The bed was the most comfortable I’ve had in China.  I luckily had a berth in the middle of the carriage; the ends of the carriage each smelled too much like the bathrooms, which deserve every nightmare that train lavatories might inspire to the reader.

In Qingdao I felt a little more at home, perhaps because many of the buildings are still in the German architecture of the early 20th century, when Germans ran the city.  In fact, Qingdao beer, the most identifiable brand of brew in China, was started by German ex-pats, a factoid that shocked my Chinese friends.  The beach was nice.  We climbed on rocks and rowed in the ocean.  I almost entirely avoided the beach sand, in keeping with my mortal fear of having sand all over me for days and weeks.

After two days touring the city, April and I flew to Shanghai, where I attended the Expo.  In a sprawling complex that might be about the size of ASU’s campus, almost two hundred countries have pavilions that are meant to communicate two things: We are pretty cool, and we want China to think we’re pretty cool.  I had heard that lines for the best pavilions could take three to six hours, a time-span that is simply unacceptable in Shanghai’s heat.  My strategy was to enter small pavilions during the day, and perhaps late at night find some of the busier ones.

I managed to get into about 15 pavilions, including Mexico, Cuba, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Belarus, New Zealand, Brunei, Spain, Turkey, Nepal, North Korea, Iran, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Israel.  My personal favorites were Spain, Turkey, New Zealand, and Israel.  It was interesting to see how countries branded themselves.  Some, like Oman, were trying to convince tourists that their countries were perfect for investment and vacations.  Others, like Pakistan and Sri Lanka, were simple tourist traps selling cheap souvenirs that were entirely unworthy of their outer facades and the Expo itself.  Turkey and Israel emphasized their historical ties with China.

I’m now leaving China and finishing my circumnavigation in twelve hours.  Since these ten weeks have been an extension of my year of study abroad, I am very excited to finally go home, spend time with family and friends, and not go anywhere for a long time.  My research has been educational and the interviews I’ve collected are enough to make the thesis I have envisioned, assuming I follow all this up with continued diligence.  Ten weeks have brought me to seven countries and one occupied territory.  Most of these are places that the general public has little desire to see, but I’ve enjoyed them a lot.  I assume in the future I’ll look back on this period nostalgically, but for the last few weeks and at this moment, I’m only looking ahead to Tempe, school, friends, and home.