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.