Taking it to the street

(I was up until four writing that last post, so missed the sightseeing trip today. Instead, I hung out in our blissfully quiet and cool room and wrote the following.)

A few statistics might help to illustrate the challenge of describing the two metropolises we’ve inhabited. Beijing, pop. 15 million, a sprawling miasma of the very old overlaid with the hyper-new. Shanghai, the same thing, but with more people pressed into a smaller area. Both are growing steadily, both in numbers and in height, as old-style neighborhoods fall to high-rises as the cities strain to provide decent shelter and accommodate the upwardly mobile young.

Micky wrote about the Beijing hutong we visited. This is the traditional urban housing pattern of low, tightly packed dwellings, four of which surround small courtyards and house either extended families or are shared by non-relations as the case might be. They’re accessed through mazes of narrow pathways which somehow serve as streets. The rickshaws were perfectly at home there, yet around every turn there was a parked car or two.

Down the old walls run electric, telephone, and cable lines. TVs are ubiquitous and Internet-connected computers are common. What these old communities seem to lack the most is what our developers call amenities. Communal bathrooms are the rule, and apparently are the most objectionable aspect to younger people. The hutongs have become defacto retirement communities, as the older generation has been left behind by the kids who move skyward into the apartment buildings.

Yet, despite the changes and losses and pressure for land, tradition apparently retains some value beyond symbolism and tourist attraction. We were told the hutong district we visited is now protected and will be preserved. It still houses around one million people. How much interest tradition holds for younger folks is hard to gauge. I suspect it’s a misty concept for people who’ve passed through rolling revolutions political, cultural, technological, and economic. It might be the rural Chinese who retain a better notion of what the past means to the present.

Tradition is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when you set foot in the big city. Except for the Mandarin signs (many of them also in English), you could be in any American metroplex. LA and Atlanta have nothing on the traffic here, except for style. Rules of the road are clearly regarded as guidelines, as drivers and cyclists and pedestrians interact in a split-second, self-organized, spontaneous dance that reminded me of the magnified flow of corpuscles. Moderate speeds help to give a small margin for error. As I’ve grown to hate the control freak nature of American traffic engineering, I find this display of intuition and improvisation reassuring in a way. People can think for themselves. Of course, I might feel differently if I had been hit by that bus.

While I’m on this subject, here’s a factoid from Shanghai that might illustrate how others improve on our practices. Some intersections have traffic lights in which the yellow light is replaced by a numerical count down to green. Very cool. And the walk signals change before the traffic lights do, to give pedestrians a head start.

One thing had me buggin’: the absence of bugs. Where were the roaches? Even at night, I didn’t see one in Beijing. Nor were we hassled by mosquitoes. In a hot, wet, populous city, there should be pests, but not where we were. Weird. Not that I’m complaining. I arrived with a nice tattoo of bites and will return with hardly any.

In fact, Beijing was almost eerily clean and tidy. Thanks to the Olympics, we were told, it’s been on a beautification binge for several years. This at the same time as a building boom and renovation riot. (All right, enough alliteration already.) Gray concrete apartment buildings have been spruced up in pinks and pastels. Roadside plantings of flowers and trees have proliferated, and many freshly sown, young trunks are supported by bamboo trusses. Some of this greenery is of annual varieties, but much will remain past the season. Our guide said that Beijingers are very happy for the improvements the Games have inspired (and no doubt for the jobs they’ve brought, too), but Micky and I do wonder how enduring these benefits will be. Look what happened to poor Sarajevo, though smoldering rubble shouldn’t be an immediate concern for this town.

Our first encounter with China was at the brand-new and gi-normous airport terminal. Woof! Scaled for the influx of 400,000 next month, will it echo with a radio comedy slow water drip sound effect of virtual abandonment afterward? That’s what I thought walking through it, but I hadn’t yet seen that such enormity is the style here. We split town via the railroad station, which was also humongous. Appropriately, as the place was packed on a Monday afternoon. Get this: it was one of three rail stations in the city. An older building, it was still well kept and reasonably clean, reflecting its importance in keeping the society moving. It made me embarrassed to think of our pitiful rail system and our helplessness should the gas go away.

Twelve hours later, the rose-tinted glasses were slapped from my face by the station in Shanghai. Suddenly, we were in a Third World toilet. Or 1980s Manhattan. In fact, that’s what this town reminds me of. The gritty streets, the clutter and garbage, the chaos of continual building, utter poverty bumping against enormous wealth. Is this the universal face of barely-restrained capitalism? Or does this town have no time or need to hide its contradictions? Capitols are required to style themselves to reinforce the ideologies they promote. Commercial centers flaunt their mindsets without thinking about it; perhaps with greater honesty.

Foreigners are not an exceptional sight here, and we don’t get the smiles and waves we received up north. Our dinner companions the first night agreed: this seems much more like NYC, while Beijing felt more like DC. Micky commented that maybe Beijingers have been encouraged to be friendly and hospitable, while the people here haven’t been so motivated. I bet that’s true, if not the whole truth. The average quality of life might just be better there. It certainly is a more pleasant place to be.

That brings me to what I was most curious to find out about here. How do Chinese stand in terms of freedom of thought and freedom of expression? Since I haven’t paid any real attention to the country, I still had images of a grey/green Nixon in China atmosphere, with masses milling about in Mao jackets and PJs. No way, Ling Ling. While most people do dress modestly, kids in punk fashions, boys with elaborate hairdos, and girls with strenuously cute tee shirts are everywhere in the fashionable neighborhoods. Business suits, dresses, and casual wear is more common than traditional dress. It’s fun to see a well-dressed lady riding a bike with another woman in a long white skirt and matching hat riding side-saddle on the bar. People go about their business. There is grumpiness, there is laughter.

My mom was apprehensive when we sprang the news of our trip on her, not just because we were going a long way away, but because we were coming here. “They’re Communist, aren’t they?” she asked. Totally reasonable apprehension, as she remembers the cold war fears of Red China. My father probably fought the Red Army in Korea. Our dear friend Mike suggested we be a little careful talking politics, even in private. Might there be mics hidden in the mantelpiece? Who knows?

Our time and interactions have been way too limited to gauge the state of propaganda or repression here. Several folks have remarked on a certain guardedness, but I don’t know about what. It would be great to read any “fellow travelers” impressions about this. Please use the comments function of the blog.

Most of my impressions of daily life and culture so far come from our tour guide in Beijing, who is a very thoughtful young woman. Though she said the guides are rigorously tested on their knowledge of Chinese history and facts and figures of the cities and the nation, as well as licensed by a state authority, I didn’t get the impression she had a script to follow. Even when a few challenging subjects were raised (one that starts with a ‘T’), her responses were much more nuanced and balanced than a packaged official line.

I thought about how I might respond to queries about comparable matters in the US if I was interpreting our culture to a stranger. How would I defend the decency of common Americans when asked about slavery or segregation or genocide of native peoples or Iraq or health care or stolen elections or attempted world domination? Freedom isn’t free of contradictions or corruption anywhere.

I do have one thing to relate to those who repeated to me the old brainwashing that life just isn’t as important to “those people” as it is to us. The government has sent surgical teams to the earthquake areas to reverse tubal ligations for women who have lost their children - for free. And there has been an out-pouring of individual charity to the victims, with many people traveling to the region to work. I wonder how much the Chinese know about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast disasters, and how the People’s Republic has responded to their Katrina.

On such matters, I’m left with more questions than answers, but the wonder of an experience like this is the questions I never would have thought to ask. To my cynical mind the Olympic slogan, One World One Dream, sounds as creepy as any catch phrase from Stalin’s politburo or the White House press office. But, never mind. If people can embrace that spirit truly and run with it, we’ll all be a little more secure. I feel better knowing at least a little about these people and their nation.