Ruth’s Reveries

(Beware - long post! Pictures to come soon)

Finally back home! Boy does it feel good. We had a wonderful trip, bringing with us lots of experiences - both familiar and new. It was our first time doing a tour - and boy was that an experience in itself. We’re the type of vacationers that like to sleep in, take it easy, and certainly don’t want to cram every little touristy event in our day. In fact, we prefer to limit the touristy stuff, and if we’re in a foreign country, we’re mostly interested in local food, history, culture, language, and what life is like for a local. Obviously the tour experience was very different - they packed us in from morning til night, with all-day excursions every day, with an average of 3 major sights each day. Here’s a sample of what we did:

July 23rd (Beijing)
Hotel Breakfast
Summer Palace
Pearl Market/Lunch
Forbidden City
Tiananman Square
Dinner
Back to hotel

July 24th (Beijing)
Hotel Breakfast
Ming Tombs
Lunch/Friendship Store
Great Wall
Dinner
Chinese Opera
Back to hotel

So we were in Beijing for a couple days, then Xian, then Chongqing. Chongqing is where we embarked on our Yangtze River cruise. The cruise took a couple days, going downstream (with local excursions along the way), and disembarked in YiChang, where we boarded a plane and flew to Shanghai. A couple days in Shanghai, and the tour ended. But we booked a couple extra days on our own in Shanghai so we could have some time for ourselves. Tiring, but lots of fun! We love history and culture, and this trip really felt like a huge crash course in ancient Chinese history. And if you know Chinese history, it is LONG. But hugely facinating. =)

First of all, being on a tour was interesting. It’s like you’re on vacation with a group of strangers, and they are with you throughout the entire thing (2 weeks for our particular tour). It’s fun for awhile, meeting people from all over the world, but after awhile, we just wanted our space to do our own thing (we’re pretty independent travellers). Plus, a few of the tour members were quite demanding, which put a damper on parts of our trip. But for the most part, it was really fun getting to know different personalities and individuals from all over the world.

If you’ve never been to China, it’s quite an experience. Like other Asian countries on that part of the globe, it’s hugely humid and very hot. It’s my 3rd time there, (but first time at all of the tour locations we went to) so some parts were familiar, but even as a Chinese-American, China has always been a foreign country to me. It takes a great deal of effort to understand why people do the things they do, why they act the way they do, etc. Although I am ethnically Chinese, and even though the local Chinese call me their own (they call me an “overseas Chinese” and am happy when their “overseas” fellowmen come back to their “mother country”), I am truely a stranger in this country. (This topic I can write entire essays or even a novel, so maybe I’ll save that for another post some day.)

There is certainly a lack of personal space (I felt this way in Nepal as well), where people will not give you the 3 feet of space you personally need. People are everywhere, crowding around you, openly staring at you (one guy openly stared at me and he was only 4 feet in front of me), shoving, etc. It IS still a developing country, and even though Beijing has an open ban against public spitting, it still exists everywhere else. People openly pissing on the streets (little kids have a crotch opening in their pants so parents can hold them out while they do their business through their pants), openly picking/digging up noses, and other things considered disgusting in western standards. (One time I was wearing flipflops in the streets, and I stepped into a puddle of unknown substance, and while Wayne was laughing, I was VERY unhappy.)

The last time we were both in China was 7 years ago (Hong Kong doesn’t count). It seems a bit more open now, and a tad more modernized. Our tour guides openly talked about once-taboo topics such as the events of Tiananmen Square and the Cultural Revolution. (We weren’t sure whether this was a “front” they put up for the foreigners on this tour - this is a possibility as they did their very best to make our stay as comfortable as possible. We suspect that even our food wasn’t representative of what the locals ate everyday, among other things.) And although they claim they are now more of a Socialistic country, as compared to a formerly Communist country, we were a bit hesitant to believe them. They still have yet to have a welfare system at all, but the ideal is for them to grow into a Socialistic country. We personally feel that China is actually more capitalistic - markets are opening up, privatization is growing, and there really is this sense of people struggling and striving to make a buck and climb that invisible corporate ladder. People really do work SO hard to make it “big” (whatever your definition of that is), so much more than just our measley “American Dream” (whatever that is, also). Maybe this is just me, but the love of money is so much more stronger here and feels like it permeates much more deeply here. Perhaps its because this country still has a huge poverty rate? (Actually, in urban settings I think this rate is getting alot smaller - we were surprised to actual start seeing a middle class emerging). But I do know that with an overall sense of people here fending and fighting for themselves, there is an absense of an altruistic atmosphere. Which is understandable, if you start a country off from the brink of bankruptcy and poverty, how else will people fight to survive? Survival first.

And another thing - one tour guide even admited that although he is a member of the Communist Party, no one really believes in Communism anymore. I was skeptical at his remark because of his motives behind it (trying to get foreigners to warm up to his country?) but I do believe that the Communist party has changed in their ideals and goals in the past couple decades. And I’m guessing that the younger generations feel very differently than those of the past (most of the tour guides we had are my age).

I have a million other thoughts and opinions on culture, history, and the social/political feel I tasted when I was there, but I’ll stop here. If you’ve even read this far down, I’m hugely flattered. Again, these are just my personal opinions, and if you have other differing opinions on these topics, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion. These were just my personal feelings/opinions that I experienced while I was there.

Pictures to come next! =)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 12:12 am and is filed under Places, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.