An Airport Is Still Around Me

Some Observations About China

 

July 31, 2015

By Rachel

 

So I can pretty much sum up my day in one sentence. We are traveling all day by bullet train and then by airplane to get back to Dalian. I could also include a bunch of details about the travel day (including that our flight got delayed for 3.5 hours and we were practically assaulted by fraudulent taxi drivers trying to trick us into getting into their taxi in Dalian), but that would get boring, so I won’t do that.

 

Here I am working on this blog in the train station in Hong Kong

 

I also don’t want to leave my post as just one sentence. Instead, I am going to talk about what it is like being in China. First though, I will fill in a bit about Hong Kong.

 

It was very interesting being in Hong Kong and visiting the museum about the history of it. Hong Kong is a weird in between place - it isn’t exactly part of China, but it is at the same time. Hong Kong used to be part of China, but then during the Opium Wars, it was taken over by the British. The agreement was that they would return Hong Kong after a certain number of years. In 1997, Hong Kong was returned to China. The Chinese government promised to leave Hong Kong unchanged for 50 years. This causes the awkward in between thing. In Hong Kong, people drive on the left side of the road (like England), websites aren’t blocked (I got to see the blog – thank you for all the comments!), and there is more freedom (for example, missionaries from our church are allowed to be here, but they can’t be in mainland China). They have their own money – Hong Kong dollars. Going to Hong Kong, we had to go through customs and show our passports just like we were going to a new country. Also, the reason we originally wanted to go to Hong Kong was because we had to leave China and re-enter so that our visas wouldn’t expire. Going to Hong Kong qualified as leaving China. It was interesting to visit and see the in between stage, and we loved visiting our old friends.

 

Now for some observations about being in China. Being here in China, has made me question many of the things that I've always assumed to be true about the world. In China parts of life feel like I am living in a different universe. Traditions, the way people behave, and the values are all different than what I am used to. For example, napkins and plates are not actually needed when eating a meal. Dairy is not essential in a diet. Not everyone thinks that eating chicken feet is weird. Not everyone drinks coffee – here they drink a lot of tea instead. Not everyone likes their drinks cold.

 

One thing that I feel like is valued a lot here is being a good host. People go out of their way in order to help their guests be comfortable. Even when we visit ancient homes, we learn that the guest seat at the house was the nicest seat. For hundreds of years, Chinese people have valued being a good host. People are always so nice to us here. They buy us ice cream and presents, put us up in the fanciest hotels, and arrange a driver and guide for us while we’re visiting. The universities hosting my dad to do a lecture paid for all this for our entire family – even extra nights in tourist places that weren’t connected to what he was doing at the university at all. At dinner, they order tons of food – way more than we could ever eat. Even if my mom tries to buy water, someone intervenes and buys it before she can. The graduate student who helped us when we took Sarah Ann to the hospital, insisted on paying for the doctor and the graduate student who went with my mom to the train station to get tickets would not let her pay for the taxi. If it’s raining and we are going to sit down, someone spreads out a rain jacket – their own jacket - on the bench first so we won’t get wet.

 

China is also a place of contrasts. In Guangzhou we stayed at the nicest hotel that I have ever stayed at. While there, we went out to eat at this really nice restaurant. In the bathroom in the restaurant though, there was a window overlooking the poorer part of town. There was a bunch of collapsing buildings. I saw people go into them, so I think people lived there. It made me feel grateful for everything I had. I have seen the grossest bathrooms ever on this trip – concrete holes in the ground with only small one foot walls to divide them. The bathrooms are filthy and stink super bad and there is no toilet paper, water, or soap. I’ve also seen the nicest bathroom I’ve ever seen – at someone’s house there was a bathroom that had a remote control and a heated toilet seat!

 

One of three hotel rooms we had in Guangzhou

 

Piles of trash and dilapidated houses outside the window of a fancy restaurant

 

Another interesting thing is how differently they stand in lines and drive. There isn’t much of a sense of standing in an orderly line. Instead, people push and shove. They will cut in front of you in line if you don’t push and shove back. Driving is a similar idea. There is lots of honking and swerving and speeding. A lot of the cars don’t have seat belts. And often they will put too many people in one car. Crossing the street is almost a nightmare because cars sometimes won’t stop even when someone is walking in front of them. It’s scary.

 

Yet another difference is how they treat children. In the U.S. my mom says she hates taking us to restaurants because people sometimes get frustrated if we aren’t still and quiet. Here though people are much more patient. They are okay with the kids being kids in the restaurant. No one is ever rude to Christian or yells at him – even when he’s being wild.

 

Another huge difference in the education system. I haven’t heard anyone here speak positively of it. High school here is insane. The kids are in school for 15 hours a day and then have homework when they get home. All of it is to prepare to take a single test at the end of their last year that determines what college they can go to. Also they are all ranked. Everyone down to the very last student. Not only are they ranked within their own school, but also within the city. One person I talked to told me repeatedly that high school was way too much pressure.

 

It is also interesting to hear what people think of Mao. We are very curious about this but are nervous to ask people. My mom has asked two people and both of them told her that they believe that Mao was a great leader – a hero - who brought about a new China, but he did make a couple of mistakes. One person said that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake, but even that wasn’t really Mao’s fault. She said that it was really other people in the government who caused it and then they blamed it on Mao. This is very different from what I learned about Mao in school this past year. I learned about him as a crazy dictator who caused thousands of deaths.

 

This post barely scratches the surface of describing life in China. Even after being here for a month I’m still surprised by many things. China has such a rich culture with traditions and stories that are hundreds – some thousands- of years old. It is an amazing experience to be able to be immersed in a culture that is so different from my own.