China is frightening - it is so dynamic, so purposeful, so efficient - that I think it is inevitable it will take over the world economically and dictate to the world how to live. Anyone under 40 had better beware and be prepared (hint - learn Mandarin). When I think about the way the Western world operates - its pace; its priorities; its attitudes - I cannot imagine how it can withstand the Chinese juggernaut. The only possible escape from this fate, a fanciful thought, is that the Chinese become like the West - work less, spend more, become wasteful and self indulgent. I do not think this will happen in the near future. In China everything seems to work. In our 2 week trip, we travelled by car, bus, plane, ship and rickshaw; we checked in and out of numerous hotels; we ate at many different types of restaurants; we visited innumerable sites, we rambled about many markets and we toured many cities - both large and small. In all these activities, I cannot think of significant examples of inefficiency, neglect, or bureaucratic high handedness/stupidity. Perhaps because we were tourists we did not get to see the real China, but I think what we saw quite a bit of the real China and it was formidable.
Some overall highlights:
The national bird of China is the crane - not the one with a beak and wings, but a p
ower operated cantilever, high above a construction site. There were literally thousand to them, in every city and all over the country side; building high rise apartment and office complexes; building high speed rail lines, monorails, six lane highways and bridges. It was a staggering sight to see the magnitude of work being done on the infrastructure. As we flew into Beijing I noticed that the terminal had about 20 stalls and only a few of them had planes in them. My immediate reaction was that this was a waste of capacity, to be seemingly confirmed by an very sparsely used airport. Sometime along our trip I got it - China is building not for today's needs but for the future (and to cover overloads), so it will not have to continuously patch its existing infrastructure or rebuild every decade!China is clean and its people keep it so. Everywhere there are waste bins and persons sweeping public areas. Even small towns appeared to have sewage. There is an abundance of water. No one litters. And this condition applies to their toilets too. We toured the old city of Shanghai where there must have been thousands of tourists and locals and we visited the toilets and found them spotless!
Language is a problem and communicating is a problem; but the general person in the street/shop/restaurant is helpful and patient. I did not see much evidence of any form of worship or religion - churches, pagodas, temples were few and far between. There is an easy intermingling of the sexes and everywhere men/women seem to associate casually and romantically. The Chinese are generally slim, well dressed and on the move. The women were very attractive in their above the knee dresses, showing off well formed legs. Men were also well built. Children were so attractive - a chinese baby is irresistible. China still has the one child restriction (with some exceptions) and it is enforced, so one senses there are some heavy control elements in its society. I was informed that men were preferred to women, but I saw no evidence of that in any of the sites or areas we visited. Lastly I saw many instances, particularly among seniors, where an attempt was being made to be in harmony with nature - tai chi, park dancing, playing and scoping a ball etc.
Two aspects of Chinese culture bothered me: they are loud and they are aggressive in getting around (we were quite often pushed out of the way) and this includes their road manners which were scary at times
Next blog will detail our activities starting with Beijing
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