Censored in China

But still writing strong despite it. I can't actually access my own blog site from here since it has been blocked by the government - blogs are a popular form of dissent in repressed countries these days, so I guess they figure they can't be too careful. But I'm pretty sure my first blog was posted even though I can't see it, so I'll post this one and hope that you can see it. Please let me know if it worked! I'm still receiving messages posted on the blogsite in my Inbox, so you can let me know that way. Yeesh!

Jan 23, 2006

I have been in China for two days now, and it is one of the more interesting experiences I have had. It's not your typical escape holiday - there are no sparkling beaches, no room service, no cocktails served with juicy red cherries. Although there are palm trees, there is no languishing, bikini-clad, in their warm shadows. It is, instead, the kind of experience that allows you to take a glimpse into a world literally and figuratively foreign to your own.

Nanning is in the far south of China, bordering with Vietnam, and is a very poor city of about three million - relatively small for China. It is not an industrial city, but is important for its services, being home to a number of hospitals and universities, including the one my Dad works for - Guangxi University. I somewhat expected that being a foreigner in China would not be as noticeable or outstanding a trait as it had been in my previous two visits to South Korea. However, even in Hong Kong, with its abundance ofAmerican pop culture (which I lapped up greedily, starved as I am in Scotland for it, which feeds only a few trashy US series', the rest of the time filling the airwaves with bad British soap operas and even worse comedies if such they can even be named), I was nonetheless apparently quite the anomaly. Although as a word out of context an anomaly seems like a cool thing to be, in practice it is not as fun and perky a thing as it semiotically appears (I think that is not a word). In Hong Kong, and trebly so in Nanning, people stare at anomalies. Heads turn, boys whisper - you could not be a wallflower if you tried. And as a traveller, a visitor to a new place, one out of their element, I would prefer to blend in as much as possible. I want to be an anonymous observer; the one behind the lens and behind the words. But in this place my hair, my eyes and my skin colour will not allow me to entertain that desire even briefly. Here, walking the streets past merchants with stalls of alien fruit and stepping clear of a cart being pulled down the city sidewalk by a small horse - here, I am the main attraction. To them, I am rich - you can buy a full meal for $2.00 Canadian. Also I am likely one of the few white people they've seen outside of TV, although there are quite a few foreign teachers here.

But I, of course, find the inhabitants of Nanning just as interesting as they find me. Being a poor city, and close to the country, it has a very rural feel. The main mode of transportation is the bicycle, which they ride in all four lanes of traffic, often dragging carts behind loaded to the max with wood or seed or some other product, with a second rider standing on the back to keep it in place. There seems to be little order to the city, and little rush as well.

A merchant hacks the bark off a sugarcane stalk and hands it to a little boy, who absentmindedly chews it, swallowing its sweet juices and getting his hands all sticky in the process. In a park, a group of three mothers play London bridge (although I’m sure they use different lyrics!) with their young daughters, while grandma watches from under the shade of a banana tree. The drivers of the pedicabs – bicycles dragging a makeshift buggy cart with two benches inside, a much cheaper option than taxis – sit waiting for their customers in the shade, shouting “hello” to any foreigner who may pass. The air is warm and there is an atmosphere of rest which can likely in part be attributed to the fact that it is holiday time, being the week of the Lunar New Year.

The plants here are lush and huge, as we saw today at the traditional medicine garden we visited, part of the Nanning Chinese Traditional Medical University. There we found acres of landscaped plants and herbs, huge twisting vines, towering palms trees, bright pink orchids lifting themselves to the sun and considering their beauty in the reflective waters beneath. The fig trees spread their branches far out and far up, then dropped more trunks from their branches straight down to the ground again in a concerted effort to take up as much room as possible. A magpie flickered black and white amid the massive foliage of ferns and leaves.

What I find most interesting is to watch people at work and play, and to see how easy it is to come down to a level of complete comfort in such a foreign setting and to feel that this is neither different nor strange, but only the daily life of these particular people in this particular part of the world. To them the interesting Chinese characters plastered in every open space are not unique or decorous as I consider them to be, but are merely giving information: “For Sale”, “Reduced Price”, “Have Your Shoes Polished Here”. The dialogue which to my ears is a wall of unfamiliar sound to them is idle banter: “Buy some corn”, “Which bus do I take”, “How much for that watch”.

This is not a place many people would choose to visit during their vacation, but I think the very fact that it is off the tourist maps, and quite poor, and slightly country, make it all that much more valuable a place to visit. It’s not a vacation so much as a trip to a place that will provide yet another perspective on what this world is all about, really. Which is exactly what I want to find out.

China

Well now I am in China, in Nanning which is a city in Guangxi Province, near Vietnam. It's great! I'll write more later...just seeing if this blog will post. :P

I am just now flying from Berlin to Newcastle. The past two days have been interesting to say the least. January 30 I said goodbye to my mum and sister at the airport. Saying goodbye to my sister was unexpectedly difficult. For me it meant letting go once again of the one person who, despite radically different personalities, completely understands me. Unfortunately her detailed map of Inner Robin includes my many faults - many more than I would like to admit, and many more that are both undeniably and infallibly part of me, even in face of my most ardent denials and vicious mental scrubbing. I hate that she sees those in me and yet, crying into her long brown hair at the end of the nylon gate which would soon seperate us, I know that when she is gone I will miss her as I would miss myself, if that makes any sense. She is my sister and she is my world.

Having sent my mum and sister on their way I leave in search of the Underground - the infamous "tube". The day before the flight, midway toward London, we had discovered that Mum had forgotten the Very Important Piece of Paper. On this I had written my flight confirmation number to Berlin, the flight number and the number of my friend whom I was supposed to meet in London today. Luckily there are Internet terminals that mercilessly overcharge you in the airport, where I had been able to recapture this vital information. I had also learned that I was to take the Piccadilly Circus line to Baron's Court stop in London, where my friend Christine - whom I met when working at Ontario Place two summers ago - and her sister Jocelyn would meet me.

Christine and I have shared some interesting experiences together. Along with Erin and Laurie, the othe two "OP girls", I have been introduced to Bob the Builder and Barney (there are only 7 people in the world who can act as Barney, and I have met two of them - both leud individuals, with the kind of sick sense of humour specific to child entertainers). The summer we met - my first in Toronto - I started the chain reaction of breaking off long-term relationships, ending my four year relationship with Joey which Christine echoed half a year later by breaking off with her 3 year boyfriend, with Erin following suit another half year later by ending her own 3 year relationship. We have all pranced around and kissed babies dressed as oversized monkeys, dinosaurs, octopi and bears. And we were all, save for Laurie, thrown into the lake without a lifejacket when we were suddenly recruited to Day Camp staff with no training, trying to control 9 unruly six year old boys in an amusement park (as impossible a task as it sounds). We also partied many nights away together downtown Toronto, the most memorable for me being the End of the Year OP Boat Cruise, where I had one of the most romantic nights of my life in the arms of a certain James who worked at the Cinesphere. Me leaning on the railing of the boat in my little black dress. He putting his arms around me from behind and commenting absentmindedly on the beauty of the huge orange moon hanging low over the Toronto skyline. The waves. The fireworks.

These are the memories I turn over in my head while riding the oddly circular tube to my next destination. Here, as always when travelling, I try to use my acting skills to emote the presence of a seasoned traveller to those around me. A "seasoned traveller" is one of those fantastical personas I have always admired and wished to become. I've gone through many of these - a graceful, proper dancer; an expressive, working actress (one of the kind who are somehow completely confident in their role as an actor, even against seemingly insurmoutnable odds and a much more lucrative parallel career as a waiter), a competent and organized secretary with an enviously tidy desk and endless array of post-it pads, paper clips, pens and papers organized into meticulously labelled folders; a gracious waitress possessed of an endlessly brilliant smile, flawless dexterity and a mind that processes and acts upon a million thoughts at once, without ever leaving a customer unattended. Also a trapeze artist, air hostess and a mother as utterly perfect as my own. Like most of these personas, however, the well-seasoned traveller always eludes me. Maybe the only role I will ever truthfully play will be that of an actor.

Take, for instance, the fact that my most recent boyfriend, upon breaking up with me, stated as main reason for doing so that he felt I was a "compulsive liar", a term he would later turn into the slightly more insulting "lying bitch". I couldn't help but worry that the former claim was true (I am the sort that can never dispense of the few assaults on my personality I have recieved but instead go back to them again and again as one would to a sore tooth, poking and prodding to make sure it still hurts). Was I a compulsive liar? Or was he somehow tapping into my role-playing? Perhaps I think too much about who I am or the person I think I might like to be, and try to slip into that role, rather than be the person I really am. Instead of acting on my own honest and immediate impulses and desires, I distance myself and create a persona for whom, like a noveslist's character, I can determine the "right" way to act, the "proper" thing to say; the course of action which will bring the plot to an undoubtedly happy and sensible ending. I think that is the romantic in me. Maybe it was this self-deception that Ryan was sensing. One thing I really loved about him was that he was resolutely and unapologetically himself, an attribute I am constantly attracted to most likely because it is one that I doubt I will ever find in myself. Maybe he sensed this lack in me and misplaced his dislike of by creating the illusion of me lying to him. I don't know. Either way, it makes me wonder how convincing my personas truly are, and how dangerous.

We are coming down to land in Newcastle. I love watching the cities approach from above. The way our cities glow golden from the air, how can life in them be anything but perfect?