DISPENCE

It’s been a great almost eight months here in the Middle Kingdom. Now I hop a plane to Washington DC for my next adventure.

As a side effect of studying in China I got opportunities to visit Thailand, Mongolia, Russia, South Korea, work for Australians, Canadians, Mexicans and Americans at the Olympics, be part of history, and be at the center of the world.

There’s not something or somewhere else I could have done or gone to experience anything like I have in China. Images of the smiling road-side food stand guy, the four foot tall old lady collecting plastic bottles, donkey carts rolling down streets outside shiny office buildings, the orange smoggy sun setting over the mountains will all stay with me.

In a time and place with so much and so little money at the same time, there was celebration. The world came to China for the Olympics and the people were ecstatic. Things went off without a hitch and China and its 1.3 billion people are better for it. This country, with one sixth of the world’s population, is on the verge of becoming the world’s newest superpower.

But my time in China was, at times, far removed from international controversy, from Tibet demonstrations, from One China Policy arguments, from communist questioning.

Sitting in my Chinese class at Tsinghua University I was literally surrounded by the world. In my class of 12 there were students from America, Australia, Colombia, France, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Peru, South Korea and Vietnam. No where else could I have experienced a mix like this. No time else in my life could I have interacted with my peers from around the globe.

We were not concerned with the world around us. Inside the classroom we learned Chinese, studied characters and practiced our pronunciation. On the weekends we would party our brains out forgetting sometimes how lucky we were to be at China’s best University studying among China’s brightest youth.

I had opportunities to interact with young Chinese more over the summer. Translators worked at 7BMC and I got to know several of them. They all dream to travel to America some day. They all take the bus to work and live on campus with no air conditioning. They work 12 hours a day with no complaints while helping us westerners decipher and solve problems.

Chinese students have a drive western kids lack. Lots of pressure sits on a family’s only child and they know it. They value education first and foremost, more so than you’re average westerner not only because they’re the only kid in the family, but because they have hundreds of millions of other people competing for the same job right out of college. Math and science dominate, making these kids extra bright.

But I couldn’t help feel ashamed of my wealth and accomplishments. I was earning in one day what they earn in a week. I’ve traveled the world, they’ve taken the train from their hometown to Beijing.

If nothing else, being in China has forced me to appreciate and not take for granted everything about my life and upbringing. Just the fact that I can drink tap water at home is awesome. I have a thousand more opportunities in American than in China, mostly because of my chosen filed of communications. I have a thousand more freedoms, a thousand more food selections, a thousand more times the ease to travel across the country. I’m lucky to have come to China – everyone who does is. But I’m even luckier to see what I have and experienced what I have because without that I wouldn’t know what this world is really about.

My time in Mongolia was valuable in that way. A professor from Syracuse recently asked me if I’ve seen any real poverty. Well of course I have, but I couldn’t help think of the nomadic families in Mongolia who have no money but don’t need it. Does that make them poor? They don’t need money to live. Instead, they live off the land. To me, they’re the richest people in the world! I would love to have limitless land and huge skies like they do.

But I know nothing about this world around me. Eight months in China may give me a better glimpse in the world’s biggest country but I have barely scratched the surface. I lived in plush dorms and worked for western wages. I am an outsider looking in. This country has more to it than big stadiums and lots of security.

Most people who visited for the Olympics did so for only a few weeks. They came and saw a beautiful Beijing. For them, undoubtedly, China is a grand place with more super-luxury cars than anywhere in the United States. While this may be true, a few weeks in Beijing doesn’t tell China’s whole story.

I don’t claim to know this whole story. Very few people do know it. But perhaps that is the most important thing – that there’s more to China than what meets the eye. There’s something behind the smiling volunteers and flowered sidewalks. There’s something brewing in the storefronts and malls. Capitalism is calling and China is answering. It’s clear that China’s unitary system is going nowhere, but the binds of communism are slowly crumbling to accept a growing class of consumers.

I picked up the phrase “The Land of Almost” from the guys I was working with. They originally used it to describe Seoul, South Korea when it hosted the 1988 Olympics. The same can be said of China.

The buildings are tall and shiny but not made safely. The people are friendly and helpful but don’t know what they are doing and only do as they’re told. The city is spotless, save for kids peeing on sidewalks and people clearing their sinuses on the streets. China has the most internet users on the planet, but they are all blocked by China’s “Great Firewall” (and it’s slow). The students are some of the best in the world, but can’t get jobs. There are thousands of millionaires but millions of poor farmers. The country is thriving economically, but doing so manipulatively. One thousand new cars hit Beijing roads everyday, but not one is a hybrid. There are over 66,000 taxis in Beijing with only a handful of hybrids. China is awesome, but it’s communist.

But really, China has come along way. Remember, it is still in its industrial revolution. Give it a decade or two until things level off and then real reform will come. The Chinese will clean up there act, both politically and environmentally, but it will take time. I guess I’m saying I have faith in China. The rest of the world should too.

Things are different here. The migrant workers, who built Pangu Plaza where I worked, lived in the building. On bare, empty floors the workers built homes for themselves. A small shanty town was on the fourth floor of the building. The workers slept in small tents or made beds and rooms out of left over construction material. The only thing missing was bathrooms. Instead of finding pluming to relieve themselves, these workers would go into dark corners to poop. While pulling cables around this area we had to avoid the dirty areas. One day, less than 12 hours after we laid the cable, we found a fresh pie not inches from our cable.

Overall, I’ve found that nothing surprises me anymore and that’s why I like this place so much. It’s entertaining.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 3:02 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.