Reflections on China

Leaving from China put it all in perspective, made me contemplate it. I met Western people with all kinds of views on China. I met an Italian guy who hated Chinese food and was afraid to eat anything. I met Canadian brother and sister, and the brother said he hated everything about China - traffic, people, rudeness, politics, language, everything... except being on holiday there. I met an American girl who teaches English, and she had a love/hate relationship with China. And there was me, not having a single negative thought about the it. (Ignoring the politics here.)

I enjoyed the experience a lot. I enjoyed that people stared, that people were occasionally pushy in the ques, that the language was very blunt, that people just did what they were meant to do. It all just reflected their life - sheltered, crowded, functional, obedient. I just took it all as an experience. This is the life the Chinese live, this is the mentality that adapts them to the environment. I found it immensely exciting. Whereas the Canadian guy would say that it's just all awful and they should learn manners and how to be Western.

The one thing that took me completely by surprise is the cleanliness of the streets. They might get a little dirty every now and then, but it was obvious that the cleaning was effectively externalized. There were no official cleaners as such, but normal looking individuals who would collect trash and carry it away with their little motorized tricycles. Also I learned that the empty plastic bottles carried a very small deposit, so the poorer people collected them very efficiently. We saw about thousand wonders of logistics, not unlike this picture, and this was how things were delivered in the little hutong alleyways where cars, let alone lorries, could not easily fit in. And speaking of Chinese wonders and hutongs: I saw a hutong house next to my hostel being torn down, the rubble taken away, new bricks brought in, bricks laid, walls plastered, roof made, and the family moving back in... within a week.

On the last days in Beijing I went to see the view of whole Beijing from the TV tower. It reminded me of the film Baraka, maybe because it was an intermediate between the views of poverty stricken apartment blocks and the views of New York traffic from above. I have to say that Beijing is huuuuge. Mahoosive even! And the views were great! I've noticed that the weirdest little things remind me of snippets of my life together with my boyfriend. Eating a roll with butter in the airplane. Sitting outside the Bird's Nest, watching the sky darken. And all of the memories that they bring back are happy ones.

I also ended up in the Military Museum, partially because it was free, and I ended up appreciating the fact that I could see the viewpoint of the Chinese to some of the wars of last century. A lot of it was in Chinese, but the English captions also told a neat story.

I have so much to say and so little time... as it happens I've got my welcome dinner here at the Philippines in ten minutes. Tomorrow is a local holiday and I'm joining some of my coworkers to an overnight trip to Puerto Galeira! It will be the first time on this trip that I get to wear my bikini and go to the beach - wohoo!