While friends lay sleeping in the west – Theo’s blog

The other night, I was standing on the hotel roof gazing at the moon over Guilin.  I thought back in my mind across the land we’d travelled over, visualising what my friends at work in England were doing at that moment.  That’s when I realised that, although in my imagination the map was flat, my friends were on the sunny side of the same globe, literally beneath my feet.  And now as I’m writing this at 3pm, when the mid-afternoon light brings out the best in our little baby mountain across the street, most of you are still just waking up to start your day.  We’re in opposite worlds.

It’s obvious that these two worlds, although connected, have evolved very separately from each other.  Here the concept of language and how it’s written, the way food is prepared and shared, the approach to building design and public spaces, music, art and beauty, spiritual meaning, national history and what’s expected of a government – are all things for a westerner to learn afresh.  

Thankfully for me, Rosa and Shannon are tackling the language, and we’re hanging out quite a lot with other English speakers, from Spain and Poland and USA.  We manage to pick our way through menus together, identifying the many very affordable veggie dishes, trying something different every night – and none of it really like anything I’ve tasted in English “Chinese Food”, at least not in the regions we’ve visited. It’s interesting to notice that it’s extremely rare to see over-weight people, of any age.  It may be different metabolisms, but I’m pretty sure it’s the virtual absence of sugar from the Chinese diet. I love how communal the food sharing is, and I’ve surprised myself by finally getting the hang of chopsticks, mainly because I had no choice!

I’ve also got used to the sudden flurries of giggling unabashed interest, or plain open-mouthed gawping, that come our way in the street from time to time. Mainly they’re centred on Rosa and the shock of meeting a real-life fair skinned blonde. But they’re never malicious, or creepy, and most people look right through us. It feels like a very live-and-let-live society.  Of course we don’t know what the unwritten codes and undercurrents might be, or how much behaviour is regional.   But I do know there’s some basic underlying co-operative spirit which is a breath of fresh air, especially noticeable as a pedestrian, crossing an intelligent self-policing traffic flow or moving in a large crowd – people are assertive and “personal space” is less sacred, but I’ve found people to be not selfish, unaware or threatening.  

Street Life

As a short term visitor, I can’t comment on the economy or workplace life, but there’s a socialist spirit at street level, and it’s marvellous how much more public and accessible public space is here.  You see people setting up random karaoke early morning and evening, in parks or on walkways, and just singing their hearts out. You come across groups doing various kinds of exercise dance routines, and you just join in.  People are singing Chinese songs by the lake, and passers-by stop to listen or sing along.  In one huge, austere concrete pedestrian subway (no graffiti or fly posting in sight) every evening we find people practising their ball room moves either in pairs or singly with imaginary partners.  And there’s no private security guards or cops to be seen controlling these spaces.

Most heartening of all, elders are out every morning strolling or dancing or using the many public outdoor gym frames, often caring for grandchildren.  Obviously the warm climate helps with the outdoor activity, but it’s really noticeable that the elders are visible, active and equally respected here, and this public respect for citizens needs is reflected I think in the simple fact of plentiful free and accessible public conveniences – provisions which have been disappearing alarmingly from western public space in recent years.   In the same spirit of care, the number of dedicated customer service personnel in train stations, actively seeking out people looking lost or confused and assisting disabled, infirm or elderly passengers to trains (which run seamlessly on time), puts our privatised rail system to shame, (though it was primarily British engineers who designed Chinas first rail networks).

Although it’s sad to me that the old mass-bicycle transport of Maoist days has been displaced by stupidly big and energy-intense cars for the aspiring middle class, the high number of hybrids and EVs, and the hundreds of electric motor scooters, make the streets relatively quiet and the urban air relatively clean. You can pick up a yellow E-motor-scooter with your mobile and ride around town for about 70p an hour.   They all get picked up and recharged at night. 

Footprints

Now I’ve been here, I’m not in a hurry to criticise Chinas ecological footprint. In some ways they’re ahead of us in the west as they are, undoubtedly,in everyday digital tech and smart design, the latter pleasingly co-existing with street food vendors, massively overloaded tricycle trucks, pavement markets, fortune tellers, and teens dressing in stunning shop-hired “ethnic minority” costumes to pose for selfies by riverside pagodas.

The over-packaging and spread of plastic is an ecological nightmare however. Everything in the shop or even the street food stall has its individual plastic bag, every packet contains smaller plastic packets, and if it’s food there are endless single use plastic gloves to handle it. It’s really hard to say how deep the ecological awareness goes here, although the affection for nature and the land, and the pride in “minority” ethnic rural heritage runs deep in the psyche.  I wish I could report the same respect for the welfare of animals, birds and fish, but sadly I can’t.  That’s a revolution yet to occur in China, but they’re hardly alone in that.

Crossing the desert from Urumqi to Chengdu, (and I hadn’t realised before how much of China is just desert), the scale of the effort that’s been put into solar and wind power was mind-boggling.  And I can see that everything here is determined by the intensity and size of the population, existing on a limited amount of habitable and fertile land – and that this has been the defining factor throughout its history.  The effort since “New China” – the Communist Revolution of 1948 – to ensure that every citizen has enough food,shelter and resources, has been the over-riding task of public policy, even though it’s meant mistakes, famine, corrupt abuses and some terrible eco crimes of sickening proportions.  

Feeling The Heat

Apparently,the land and waterways have still a long way to go to recover from the toxic pollution and exploitation of rapid modernisation.  But it’s awesome to see the commitment to resilient cultivation in the strip fields and veg plots tended by small scale producers on every available patch along railway embankments, on the edges of parks, in the shadow of new high rise blocks, or along the riverbanks between the bamboo trees that sing like deep woody wind-chimes where their branches rub together in the breeze.

I never understood before we came that China is predominantly a hot and, apart from the desert, humid country.  I’ve really enjoyed the daytime climate, though it means a heavy reliance on air-con of course, which feeds the vicious circle of carbon emissions and warming.   It also means that here in the south, large numbers of people are likely in line for “wet bulb” heat fatalities in the next few years.  Knowing how prone China is to large scale floods, typhoons and droughts, and bearing in mind the now unavoidable extremities of climate change and resource depletion, I don’t know how much chance they’ve got of meeting their recently announced intention of becoming “the worlds first eco civilisation”.  It may be too late to hope for that anywhere now, but my current impression, (which was not what I had expected before I came) is that if anyone could do it, it would probably be the people of China.

• Theo, October 2023