A Traveler in China - Part One
By
Harriet Vaulkhard
China : the world's fourth biggest economy, home to 1.4 billion people and host to the 2008 Olympics. Yet despite these facts and figures many people are often off with the fairies when they ask me about my time there, and for most of them, I let them keep their rose tinted image. There are also those people who were rich enough to go through top travel agencies, where they were flown from Crowne Plaza to Crowne Plaza and had minders who desperately sheltered them from real China .
I was shocked when I stepped foot on Chinese soil for the first time. Not only was I stared at by every person who passed, who exclaimed “lao wai” (foreigner) in surprised tones, but the huge sprawling city with large Chinese characters all over its walls and the sheer number of people all swarming the roads like worker ants made me feel like an alien. In a desperate search for the China I thought it would be I took up tai chi.
“Before I came to China I imagined modest girls dressed in elegant qipao sitting under sweeping roves, or near dragon like statues,” my teacher said putting pressure on my arm. “I thought I would be practicing near the walls of the shaolin temples, where serene monks wrapped in orange cloth would be meditating under weeping willows.” He suddenly laughed, perhaps because I caught him off balance, or more likely because of the sheer absurdity of his old view.
I too laughed because after almost a year of working for a multinational company in central China I knew better too. China is a country of huge contrasts or lies. Capitalism where there is meant to be communism, materialism where one expects selfless Buddhism and saying yes when they mean no in order to save face; below the seemingly perfect surface that is exposed to the rest of the world lies a swirling haze of uncertainty.
My story starts in the final chapter of my time in China when I went to Beijing to meet a friend from Oxford for a month's traveling. What a wonderful week! It seemed worlds apart from the industrial city where I had spent eleven months. We spent our time exploring the imperial parts of the city in typical tourist fashion. Beihai and Jingshan parks were charming and a whole day was dedicated to exploring all the nooks and crannies of the neighboring communities.
The Forbidden City had to be seen twice, at the Temple of Heaven we conversed with walls and had our voices lifted up to the gods and the Summer Palace was paradise by a lake. The art and culture was breathtaking, with the swirling dragons and brilliant paint work under sweeping roofs, and there was magnificence everywhere we looked. The sheer splendor of it all breathed fire into our souls, yet there was such serenity in watching people practice tai chi under the willows. It was as we all thought China would be.
Part two to follow soon.....
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