We Are the Attraction

7/19/2013 - Beijing, China

The Forbidden City was packed with tourists. Most of them were Chinese, and many of them hadn't seen Westerners before. Some of them took photos of our tour group, as if we were more of a tourist attraction than Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (our tour guide called it "holy ground," reminding me of an excellent viewpoint I read about visiting China).

In a way, the Chinese tourists helped us get a scale of how many people live in China. The day we visited was just a random hot Friday, but there were still many Chinese who had never seen Westerners before. It must be like that every day. One of our tour group said, "Have you ever even seen this many people before in one place? This place is huge, and it's packed." I tried to think. At the Olympics? Maybe at Lollapalooza, or SummerFest? 

Pictured: Trying to get as far away from the tourists as I can while sitting in the Forbidden City

Greatest Wall

7/18/2013 - Beijing, China

Our tour through Beijing was full of superlatives and comparisons. "China is the world's largest country!" "Oldest history!" "The Great Wall is longer than the length of the United States!" "Biggest wooden structure in the world!" I was afraid our tour guide would pound his chest about China's superiority throughout the entire tour.

Once we got to the top of the Great Wall, it spoke for itself. It exceeded my high expectations. As I walked from one hill to the other, I saw more and more Great Wall through the mountains.

We joked about the name "Great Wall" throughout the day, at once saying, "This Great Wall is sure better than that other wall." Compared to all the superlatives we had heard, "Great Wall" really is an understatement.

Pictured: View from the Great Wall of China (Mutianyu section)

Failing to Find Enlightenment

7/17/2013 - Beijing, China

I was in a bad mood all day today. It was hot. Everywhere I went, there were countless Chinese tourists. I must have climbed 1000 stairs between the Summer Palace and Beihai Park. I tried to contemplate the ancient Buddhas, but tour guides walked by, shouting Chinese into megaphones at crowds that didn't pay attention. The city smelled atrocious. I couldn't find any safe food to eat, so I resigned myself to eating lunch at KFC. A Chinese security guard told me I couldn't take photos of the river, and I had no idea why.

I had one brief respite where I felt ok. I sat under the shade of bamboos trees in Beihai Park. I had given up on appreciating the buddhas, so I tried to appreciate the sheer amount of humanity pouring through the park. I put my emergency headphones into my iPhone to escape their noise, drank an entire bottle of water, and resigned myself to just having a bad day. Not every day can be a winner.

Pictured: Tourists climb the stairs of the Summer Palace in Beijing

The Future

7/16/2013 - Beijing, China

I stayed at the Bookworm store to hear a panel of two local authors. They spoke about their recently published science fiction stories, and how they do and don't use the genre to comment on contemporary China.  

I was particularly struck by how one author praised science fiction for being "pure," meaning that it is free from complications associated with writing about reality. She used the same word "pure" that described the tech nerd music in San Francisco. As if to drive the point home, the other author, a Google employee, quoted Steve Jobs' speech about "connecting the dots." 

I connected the dots to San Francisco. Beijing made San Francisco look like even more of a paradise: the nerds I met there were totally optimistic about technology. Their music is just for fun. Hearing the writers in Beijing speak about cloning, they seemed much more anxious about the future.

Pictured: The audience for "The Future," a discussion about the latest issue of Pathlight 

Bookquest: Beijing, China

7/16/2013 - The Bookworm

I Love Dollars, by Zhu Wen

I Love Dollars is a collection of stories about materialism in contemporary China. I think that's the biggest trend among the elite Chinese that are my age, so I wanted to pick up a good satire about their lifestyle. 

The Bookworm was very impressive, and I recommend that anyone who goes to Beijing try to talk to some of the locals there. I heard very frank descriptions of China.

City of Chinese Immigrants

7/23/2013 - Shanghai, China

Shanghai, our tour guide informed us, is "only two hundred years old." That's young compared to Beijing, Xi'an, and Suzhou (the last two well over 1000 years old). Our tour guide compared Shanghai to New York: "everyone who lives in Shanghai is from somewhere else." He meant they are from other parts of China. 

We walked through the market, we ate, we saw Chinese acrobats, and we went out for karaoke. It was only a brief taste of Shanghai, but I enjoyed it. I felt it was an exciting city looking to mature its identity.

Pictured: View of a new skyscraper from the market.

Bookquest: Shanghai, China

7/23/2013 - Shanghai Foreign Languages Bookstore

China Cuckoo by Mark Kitto

Mark Kitto's China Cuckoo is about the author's experience after trying to start a business in Shanghai. His company is seized by the Chinese government, so he gives up and travels to the interior of China looking for a different kind of self-realization. 

It was the only book I could find about contemporary Shanghai. Most of the store's books about Shanghai took place in the 1910s-1940s. When I asked a staff member about "no old Shanghai, new Shanghai," they told me, "No new Shanghai books. New Shanghai, pictures." She pointed me to a book containing photos of all the construction in the city over the last 20 years.

Compared to Beijing, the selection was uncontroversial. The few books about current world politics all assumed that China would be the major world power within my lifetime. The big question the books answered was: would that be good for the rest of the world, or great for the rest of the world?