Postcard from China

Stopping in Delhi for three days prior to flying to China turned out to be a tad unfortunate. On arriving in China, my brain unwittingly but continuously made comparisons between pre-Commonwealth Games New Delhi and post-Olympic Games Beijing. In whose favour the scales must have tipped heavily, is not much of a mystery. Beijing (and the rest of China), functionally as well as in matters of appearance, has swiftly and even mercilessly been stepped up to ‘world-class’ standards. If you ignore the fact that all signs are also written in Chinese, it might be impossible to guess which developed nation you were in. It seemed as though the façade for each building had been pre-approved by the government, because no building seemed incongruous next to another. Over five days, I understood some aspects of why such formidable abilities are difficult to display in India, and several aspects of how ‘Hindi-Cheeni bhai bhai’ was not so absurd a slogan.

In order to formulate opinions about the Chinese and their North (Bei) Capital (jing), I recommend you spend a day with a tour guide, a day walking alone as an obviously foreign tourist, another with a young Chinese person, some time observing middle-aged Chinese people, some obsessing over little chubby Chinese children and some nights staring at people who pass you by on the street. That’s what I ended up doing and here’s what I discovered. The dragon is the Chinese symbol of power and it’s stamped everywhere on everything any emperor ever owned in the ancient times and now liberally everywhere else. The industries of jade, silk and tea are central to Chinese culture. Chinese women tend to wear jade bangles on their left hand for luck and Chinese tea is not so bad. A restaurant served us a flower tea and when we asked what flower, so eager they were to tell us, that a waiter brought us a Chinese-English dictionary. So we knew we had tasted chrysanthemum tea. Chinese children are unbelievably cute and wear trousers that are slit open at their bums (to facilitate bathroom emergencies, presumably). My profuse apologies to the old Chinese who might turn in their graves but, old Chinese architecture becomes sadly predictable after you see two rooftops. There are only so many ways you can shoot these buildings and make a pretty postcard, and even fewer ways of doing that if you want to ensure that everyone can tell which building it is. Of course, this is also a testimonial of my unfortunate photography skills. The dearth of variety in architecture styles however, is more than compensated for in the pronunciation rules of their immensely complicated language. Every single syllable can be said in four identical-sounding tones and if you say the wrong one, you might insult their booming world-class city of 18 million, by calling it ‘Baby Capital’. Beijing became the capital because a Feng shui master told a king in the Ming Dynasty that this city will provide harmony – the ultimate goal of all Chinese endeavours (including census data collection) – because it had the mountains on one side and water on the other: yin-yang. The Great Wall was built along the northern mountains of this country because the ancient Chinese believed all enemies came from the North: the wind, the cold and the Mongolians. Makes sense. But not everything does. Like placing big-mouthed, small-butted jade dragons face the windows in their homes to get more money in and less out, and building six inch high barriers at all thresholds because evil is short and can’t jump very high. Buying this and the logic of harmony between good and evil, life and afterlife, we stepped over the threshold as we left the Soul Tower (where the emperor’s soul maintains a residence post his demise) at the Ming Tombs chanting ‘wha wey lai la’. This meant that we willingly left the evils of afterlife behind and entered our lives again. Much like Indian superstition? Read on.

Although Chinese emperors had only one empress at a time, they had thousands of concubines, some who were chosen to die when he did, which was considered a great honour, much like sati. If you’ve seen Bada baag in Jaisalmer or Akbar’s tomb at Sikandara, then the layout of the Ming Tombs will not strike you as unusual – neither the memorial for the concubines nor the excessive grandeur, for a dead king. When I walked out of the Forbidden City after having stared at acres of land that the royal families had inhabited, I pondered over the universal nature of the excesses all rulers – Indian and Chinese - have indulged in. And suddenly, I was accosted by yet another similarity. Chinese men selling ridiculously expensive travel books and offering ridiculously expensive rickshaw rides surrounded me in hoards. Turns out, the Chinese love to fool their tourists too. They also, like some men in Calcutta, have a strange habit of lifting their shirts to their chests to be comfortable in the heat. They also, like so many of us in India, only pretend to wear seat belts to avoid a fine. And a large percentage of the Chinese population lives in higgledy-piggledy parts of towns, some even in arrangements similar to chawls, along winding old streets called hutongs. The lotus in China is considered a symbol of purity, just like it is here, because it rises from the mud. And from my conversations, I also gathered that the average Chinese is only gradually broadening his views on higher education for girls, on inter-community marriages and on homosexuality, just like us. But the most reassuring observation for me was the familiar sight of crowds. Swarming, thronging, endless, streams of people. Ah, the joy of being in a foreign country that is as overloaded as the home turf.

Of course, what looked nothing like the home turf was the Olympic Village. And because of the pain it caused me to realise how far behind Delhi is, I will describe it no further. Beijing was also full of hoardings which said ‘Census benefits all’, urging the common man to actively participate in the 2011 Census for the benefit of the nation; something I cannot imagine would be in the capacity of an average Indian to understand. But at the same time, there is a certain dissimilarity between the two countries that makes me proud. The feisty, chaotic democracy in India that is absent in China. And I don’t just mean the political one. Indians tend to speak out, argue, debate openly and loudly, largely irrespective of their audience. The Chinese are careful with their words and cautious in their manner according to their position in academic, social or political hierarchy. This may make life more orderly, but less free. And chaos is infinitely more appealing to me than captivity, even if it prevents Delhi from becoming ‘world-class’ overnight.

An aspect where China may be considered mid-way between India and the West is its tourism. In some ways, I feel that in the transition from history to tourism, history loses a lot of its truth. Which is why the unkemptness of so many historical sites in India often appeals to me. The Chinese have managed to maintain their sites well, much like the Westerners. Yet, something makes them inescapably closer to our country. Their past. Workers who died while building The Wall were buried in it. The Chinese believe it is made not just of stone but of their blood and tears. Once you have been told this, it is impossible to climb another step without thinking about the stories surrounding, attached to and engraved in The Wall (whereas, if you visit Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, its tragic story doesn’t fill your heart so much).

And that is the one recurring thought that has stayed with me, now that am back home. That in both India and China, the lands and lives are steeped in history. Real, unadulterated history and not the airbrushed variety available in the United States. History in the ancient uneven stone steps of The Wall and in the winds that blow in the valley around it; in the old, broken houses that are now shops along hutongs and in the Drum Tower that no longer makes thundering announcements, but speaks quiet tales.