Friday, August 25, 2000
Dear All,
China may be a developing country but it's developing fast! There are internet access points in all kinds of places -- although I still think the most incongruous one was the cafe in Lhasa across the square from the most holy temple in Tibet.
This message comes to you from Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province (not to be confused with Shaanxi province just to the west), a place where I didn't expect to find high speed lines and Pentium III machines. I'd be delighted to have such good connections from my home in Colorado Springs.
Modernization is happening rapidly, from the teaching of English in every middle school in China (by whom and how well is an open question) to entrepreneurial activity all over. This may be a socialist country, but Deng Xiao Ping's admonition "To get rich is glorious" has been taken to heart by a lot of Chinese individuals. We see lots of well dressed people, and I don't think they are all tourists from Taiwan. Another small sign of affluence is overweight people, something I don't remember seeing on previous visits. I'm particularly struck by how often we've seen fat elementary school boys. But there are store clerks and bus drivers and other ordinary people who could stand a dose of Weight Watchers, too.
Jane and I just returned from several days in Pingyao, one of only two walled cities remaining in China. Apparently many towns used to have walls for defensive purposes, but most were torn down in the 1950s in an effort to be more modern--and possibly for other reasons as well. I wish I could speak Chinese and try to find out why Pingyao resisted the trend. Anyway, being "backwards" fifty years ago has become an advantage now, since the town inside the city walls is filled with Ming and Qing dynasty buildings. In 1997 Pingyao was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an honor that is certainly well deserved. A walk down the streets resembles what a Chinese city must have looked like a century or more ago. The pleasant contrast to some US historical sites, however, is that this is a living city, not a museum. The population inside the city walls is about 20,000 people who cook breakfast and go to work every day.
Pingyao and Shanxi province are not on the major tourist itineraries. In fact, I only know about Pingyao because of an article in the New York Times travel section several years ago. But if you are interested in seeing this fascinating place, go soon. Just walking the streets we could see the growth in tourism. More and more storefronts are being turned into restaurants and souvenir shops. I didn't see any "Mom and Dad went to Pingyao and all they brought me was this lousy tee shirt" clothing, or if it exists it was all in Chinese. I'm sure that a decade from now there will be a McDonald's behind a Ming dynasty facade. You can't blame the people for wanting the affluence and foreign currency that comes with tourism, but I regret the commodification of Chinese culture that comes along. I wonder if young Chinese people will think of their own history as something more like a theme park than the real thing.
It's particularly poignant in Pingyao since the place is authentic, not a recreation or restoration. I can understand why the Japanese didn't ravage Shanxi province (it's too poor to be interesting to invaders) but I am truly puzzled by the lack of destruction during the Cultural Revolution. I've asked questions but either our guide doesn't know or doesn't want to enter into a potentially difficult conversation about the Cultural Revolution. A huge proportion of the oldest buildings still standing in China exist in Shanxi province. I wish I knew more about Chinese architecture since I could appreciate this even more. Our guide is very knowledgeable about history and traditional culture, however, so he is an invaluable resource is getting beyond the "isn't that pretty!" stage.
Another topic: Jane caught a cold and went to see the doctor on the boat on the Yangzi River. A Chinese man, Dr. Ma spoke a bit of English, mostly the nouns for body parts and the verbs for basic medical conditions such as "hurt" as in "head hurt?" Jane had visited Dr. Ma the day before and found communication to be quite limited so she asked me to come with her for the second consultation. Armed with my Berlitz basic phrase book, I headed off with her.
On the first visit, Dr. Ma had given Jane two days worth of antibiotics and some Chinese herbs. Jane wanted more so that she would be suitably armed for our 16-hour train ride to Shanxi. Before we left our cabin, I memorized the Chinese for "She wants some more of this medicine for tomorrow and the next day." We enter the dispensary, I say, "Mingtian he houtian ta xiang yao duo xie zhege." Dr. Ma says, "You feel better?"
This is a delicate dilemma. If she says yes, Jane doesn't get any more medicine. So she says no, to which Dr. Ma begins to talk about Wuhan (or destination on the boat) and hospital. Jane quickly says "no hospital." I try little phrases in Chinese, like "she feels bad a little bit" but we are limited in the sophistication of medical information we can communicate--in either direction. Dr. Ma listens to Jane's lungs, asks her to cough, and so on. I periodically repeat my sentence "Mingtian he houtian..." which of course Dr. Ma understood just fine the first time. But that seems to be all I can contribute to the conversation.
Every so often Dr. Ma turns to me to tell me (in Chinese of course) what I am supposed to tell Jane about her condition. I nod knowingly and say "dui" (correct) even though I haven't the slightest idea what is going on. Listening comprehension is not one of my strong skills here and he could probably see the dazed look in my eyes. In particular, once Dr. Ma realizes that we are taking a long journey, he acquiesces to more antibiotics even though he tells us in no uncertain terms that they are "bad--liver, kidney." Then he points to the box of Chinese herbs and says "good." Jane takes both.
The most amusing exchange was when he inquired about the state of Jane's throat. He said "throat" in English and then scratched his arm vigorously. Once again, what was the right answer? Was he concerned about an allergic rash--therefore no medicine forthcoming? Or was he concerned about a raspy esophagus? I paged furiously through my phrase book and Jane leafed through the Chinese-English dictionary on his desk. Obviously we were not being successful. Then he started scratching his head. We were pretty sure he wasn't asking about lice so the pantomime was for "scratch." He got very frustrated with our inability to come up with useful words; he finally left the dispensary to find someone better equipped linguistically. He came back with "itch" and Jane agreed that her throat was itchy -- a little bit. The pile of medications was augmented by cough syrup from Hong Kong that included an English description of the benefits of the elixir, promising virtually everything up to making the user more attractive to the opposite sex.
Once we struggled through the medical consultation, Dr. Ma decided that we were nice people who were attempting, however feebly, to communicate. In Asia, it seems that relationships are as important as the business at hand. Usually, I've read, the relationship-building process occurs first before the business, but Dr. Ma had probably become accustomed to brusque Americans who walk in and say, right off the bat, "She wants more medicine..." So Dr. Ma shifts the conversation, still in a goofy mixture of Chinese and English, to more general topics. He tells us he has two sons (one of whom is the fattest boy on the boat) who only takes Chinese medicine. I wondered how he had two children in the face of the government's one-child policy but thought that question was way too difficult for the level of communication we had achieved so far.
He then began to tell us a bit about the Chinese language -- each word has four tones (which of course we knew, especially since I used all four tones in my often-repeated sentence "Mingtian he houtian...") But we nodded and said "dui" quite a bit. Then he told us, and I'm not quite sure how -- or how we understood it, that Chinese men today are not interested in language and poetry any more. He regretted this fact. He kept saying "tangzi" which I dutifully repeated, half to be polite and half to try to figure out what it meant. Suddenly his words became familiar. He was reciting a Tang dynasty poem--the poem that I learned with my classmates for graduation ceremonies from Sunday Chinese classes last spring. Of all the poems in the lexicon that he could have chosen, he picked the one I knew! Sandy Papuga, you would have jumped out of your skin to hear those syllables that we so painfully learned. The poem is one about striving, working hard to achieve one's goals.
Finally, Dr. Ma told me that my accent was beautiful. I discounted much of that compliment as sheer flattery but I have had several other Chinese people say the same thing. Fanny and Haning, thank you for insisting on proper pronunciation, even when it meant going over and over the same phrases. I can't promise that I do it right every time, but at least people understand what I am saying and respond appropriately (although usually with too much explanation). Now I have to defend myself against developing a Sichuan accent, which will not generate the same compliments, I suspect.
Time to sign off and go to bed. The clerk here at the cybercafe is looking very sleepy. Tomorrow we go to Wutaishan, a beautiful mountain resort that is also a Buddhist holy place. I'm learning more about Buddhism than I had ever expected. Thank goodness I have Jane along, who can actually keep all the various manifestations of the Buddha straight in her mind. I nod a lot and say "dui" even when the explanation is in English. I suspect I may be Buddha-ed out before our very enthusiastic guide is ready to stop showing us temples.
I'll be in touch again soon, perhaps with the best karma ever.
Cheers,
Kathryn