The real China – I’m Lovin’ It!

From Xi-Chang to Xi'an, Chengdu, and Kunming by bus and train, May 14-28, 2009

Cigarettes and cell phones, the air thick with smoke and Chin-chat, loud. There is no other volume.  Cities redolent of urine, shit, vomit and garbage. Eau de Chine.  No fragrant incense here to mask the rude odours of the great unwashed; the smoke from raw Chinese cigarettes a poor but often welcome screen.

 

So many people everywhere. And so noisy.  Nonstop talking. Loud, shrill, insistent voices hammering home their points at one another.  The China din starts well before six am, and carries on, a constant cacophony until well after midnight. When the dogs start barking.

 

Cities so Western – concrete, glass and steel.  Cars, buses, trucks everywhere –even on the sidewalks.  This could be Chicago, New York, Vancouver. No oriental flavour here to savour.  

 

But the language survives, thrives – no English here – nary a word or sign: no catering to foreign tourists.  There is no need: so many Chinese tourists, spending spending spending. Big Yuan.

 

Communism well replaced (and replaced well?) with Consumerism, writ large. Unbridled Capitalism.  All the big name brands – Nike Converse KFC Starbucks Hilton Holiday Inn Toyota Honda – are here.  And all the most exclusive, most expensive brands are here too – Mercedes BMW Gucci Hugo Boss Ralph Lauren Dior Dunhill Luis Vuitton – and doing well.

 

But is that bag a Gucci?  Is that watch a Rolex?  Is that belt real leather?  There are no regulations here, and even if there were, no one would heed them, no one enforce them. Anything and everything goes.  China is the counterfeit capital of the world: buyer beware!

 

The Chinese who have money – and there are plenty who do – have lots of it. And like to spend it. Like to buy things that make them look good.  It's all about face. Appearances. China's about face: from stringent Communism to rampant Capitalism in just a few short years: Where to next?

 

Women in cocktail dresses, baby-doll pajamas, poofy-hemmed curtain dresses, tight mini-skirts.  Like Disney dolls, in Minnie Mouse and Betty Boop outfits. Big buttons and bows, knock-off Gucci purses, and always high heels, strappy high heels, clattering down cobble-stone streets, tip-toeing through mud puddles and seas of litter.

 

Little girls in fairy dresses and party shoes, pink and white princesses.  

Babies with great gaping holes in the bums of their pants – crotch coolers? - being held out over the sidewalk by squatting parents, whispering shh, shh, shh...  

Puddles of piss, baby and otherwise, all along the street.

 

And globs of phlegmy goo. Hoiking and spitting a national pass-time.  More dangerous and disgusting than the globs underfoot the flying globs – spat out the windows of passing cars and buses.

 

Walkers vie for space in the streets with buses, trucks and cars.  They stand, like rocks in a fast-flowing river, the stream of traffic momentarily separating to go around them, but never stopping – there is no stopping!

 

With luck, a critical mass of pedestrians builds up, enough to coax first one car, then another, to slow down or even – wow! - stop, for just a second.  Pedestrians dash across, watching out in all directions: nowhere is one completely safe, not even on the sidewalk.

 

Motorcycles in particular may come from anywhere – they obey no traffic rules at all – don't stop for red lights, ride on the sidewalk, sail the wrong way up one-way streets, and even highways... but then so do cars and buses.

 

China's finest, street-corner cops, sheltering under Coca-cola and Macdonald's umbrellas: I'm lovin' it!  Particularly fitting as no one pays these, or any, authority figures the least attention: regulations abound, enforcement's non-existent.

 

If you have a problem, don't call the police. They're busy drinking coffee, having a smoke, reading a paper, playing a game of checkers, sleeping, smiling. Or riding around on their dinky blue and white scooters with their fellow police persons. 

 

We have yet to see a police person doing anything remotely like 'policing.' Perhaps there is no need here. Certainly we have seen no crime – no one even misbehaving. No punks on the street, no graffiti, no reckless driving (well, that's relative...). 

 

If I lived in China I'd like to be a police person: nice uniforms, cushy job and a free scooter! Yes!

 

We travel through the countryside by bus and train, passing through mile after mile of agricultural mosaic – rice paddies, wheat fields, corn, garlic, tea, vegetables – carefully tended, all by hand.  In all our travels we've seen just a handful of tractors, one or two rototillers.

 

China's agricultural production is achieved, almost entirely, by peasants with shovels and hoes.  They are out there, from dawn until dusk, backs bent to their labour.  China is literally feeding herself on the backs of her peasants.

 

Fields interspersed with drab, dingy towns; heavy, gray Soviet-style buildings and apartment blocks.  

Piles of brick, rock, sand, dotted everywhere, blocking sidewalks, roadways – what are they all for?  

Acres of rubble, covering up old farmland, old rice paddies – what are they going to do here?

 

We cross over rivers long dry – dammed and damned.  And in the rocky river bed, back-hoes and trucks busy mining sand and gravel, digging great holes, making big piles, hauling the rocks and sand away to build more roads, prepare new lands (most previously agricultural) for housing, factories... . 

No fish in the rivers here – there’s no water and nowhere to hide from the hungry.

We wind through mountains scraped and scarred to make roads, grand double-lane highways, freeways. 

 

But where are the cars?  

We pass by miles and miles of new roads with nary a vehicle. 

Who and what are these roads for?

 

 

Careening through these landscapes, no choice but to listen to endless dreadful screeching music, people screaming on their cell phones, or at one another, all talking at once, talking talking talking.  

The Chinese do not know how to be quiet, do not know quiet.

 

Stopping for a 'nutrition' break – nothing to eat but watery noodle soup, a few green weeds masquerading as vegetables.  Or a mountain of rice and a few pieces of pickled cucumber.  Stale popcorn, undercooked potatoes, tough corn on the cob, warm sodas and soft drinks.

 

In the bigger cities, where western tourists are more plentiful, a few restaurants produce somewhat better food. But still always too oily, and often too hot.  Coffee $3-5 a cup, and tea – Chinese tea! - not much cheaper.  We leave most restaurants disappointed, and often hungry.

 

We ask 'where's that great Chinese food we get in Vancouver (San Francisco, Singapore)?'  'Ah, that's not 'real' Chinese food! That's Americanized, westernized Chinese food!'  No chow mein or chop suey here. No sweet and sour spare ribs. No lettuce wraps.  Few vegetables or fruits.  It's noodles and rice, rice and noodles.

 

We watch the Chinese chowing down on rice with soups of chicken heads and feet, pigs' livers, and unidentifiable innards.  

More often it's just instant noodle soups, the Chinese staple food, eaten on the run.  

Or KFC or Dicos – its Chinese cousin.  

I'm lovin' it!

 

Public toilets are despicable. 

We find the toilets by their stench: 'just follow your nose!'  

Inside no separate cubicles: a long, open, cement or tile trough runs alongside the walls.  

The stink inside is overpowering: you hold your breath.

 

You squat over the trough, in front of or behind someone else.  You do your business, trying not to look at anyone else, although they have no compunction about staring at you – do foreigner's shit like we do?  

You avoid looking down into the trough, try not not to splash.

 

There's no water to flush. Of course no toilet paper.  

No water either to wash your hands; maybe a hose outside where someone's doing their laundry, or washing a fish... . 

Maybe not.

 

In hotels and guest-houses we use clean toilets, gratefully. Still we are instructed not to toss the toilet paper in the toilet.  It goes in the disgusting overflowing bin beside the toilet – or the floor if no bin's provided. 

 

And this a nation where everyone has a cell-phone, where cells work everywhere, where high-speed internet access is accessible everywhere.  

A nation proud of its space program, its medical advances, its advanced education.  

So what's with their toilets? 

Why can't they get their shit together?

 

But wait! Here come the symbols of the ‘real’ China!

 

A young man in pleated pants and a tailored shirt, holding a cell phone against his ear with one hand, and a cigarette with the other; weaving gaily through pedestrians and vehicles on his red motorcycle, helmetless and happy.

 

A young woman in rough peasant clothes, bent over double, a baby on her back, and up to her knees in the muddy water of the rice paddy, planting fistfuls of young rice as night falls, wondering what she will give her family for supper.

 

The 'real' China: I'm lovin' it!