Travel essay, China, Khabar, January 2013
Source: http://www.khabar.com/magazine/features/travel_vignettes_from_china
Source: http://www.khabar.com/magazine/features/travel_vignettes_from_china
Travelers to India and China alike will detect a palpable buzz in the air... of good times, great jobs, free-flowing wealth, general optimism and bonhomie. Shopping malls, luxury brands, and flashy new cars signal changing times in India, but on a much larger scale in China.
A huge billboard outside the international airport in Kunming, Yunnan Province, greets travelers as they enter and exit the airport. It sports a quote from Warren Buffett. His name is spelled out in English, but the actual quote is in Mandarin. Surely, this can’t be a quote by Buffett extolling communism, I think to myself. Nobody quotes Buffett on communism or the ills of capitalism. Even I, with my truncated knowledge of stocks and shares could tell you that Mr. Buffett is exhorting you to make money, albeit in Mandarin. That’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics”— a phrase you hear quite often in China.
I was in China for two weeks, to participate in two training workshops offered by my employer to their Chinese counterparts. Having traveled mostly within the Romance language parts of the world, I knew that the only thing that I could do to prepare for my trip was to arm myself with inane factoids about China such as this one: did you know that three out of four tall building cranes in the world can be found in China? It felt like I must have encountered all but one of those cranes during my travels in China. Try this other factoid on for size: the Chinese communist party anointed a small town in the southwestern Yunnan Province as Shangri-La? Yes, Joseph Hilton’s fictional Shangri-La is now an actual Chinese town. Or this: the largest peaceful migration of humans in modern times occurs when over 300 million Chinese workers hop on trains to visit their hometowns during the Chinese New Year holidays. Imagine if the entire population of the United States were to pack their bags and head off to various destinations. And this: a city in China is considered mid-sized if its population is only around 5 million.
I look back on my two weeks in China and search vainly for one word to capture my impressions. The words I find are all prefixed with “awe”—awe-inspiring, awestruck, and with a little stretch, awe-ful (and awe-mazing). My mind’s eye is peppered with images of broad highways snaking through anonymous exurbia peppered with gleaming new skyscrapers, and cranes stretching far into the horizon.
For two weeks, I visited Nanjing (the erstwhile Nanking), Shanghai and Kunming. I learned and unlearned many things about its peoples, its culture, and its cuisine. As an Indian living in the United States and visiting China for the first time, I was weighed down by the self-imposed burden of having to make insightful commentary and observations on comparative socio-political economics. I know now that you can’t explain China in pithy one-liners just as you can’t explain India or even the United States.
Travelers to India and China alike will detect a palpable buzz in the air-of good times, great jobs, free-flowing wealth, general optimism and bonhomie. Shopping malls, luxury brands, and flashy new cars signal changing times in India, but on a much larger scale in China.
