China Part 2: Thoughts on the Chinese

China is a funny place to me because there’s so much going on, and people seem to have a lot of conflicting thoughts about its growing influence and people. In America, we frequently hear about China’s rise to prominence but I didn’t see what people meant until I went to Shanghai for the first time in 2013. The city, like much of China’s new infrastructure, is absolutely amazing. From the lights, to the subway, to the towers, Shanghai is a an awe to see. A lot of China is an awe to see. China, like most other East Asian countries, emerged out of the shadows of systemic poverty and they are quite ready to show it off. However, after being visiting China so many times, I believe I’m finally able to understand the phrase “rich country, poor people” and how it affects the Chinese within China, and Chinese tourists that I’ve seen throughout Asia.

Last fall was my fourth time in China, and my first time there alone. I’d been twice through my time in college, and once through a serendipitous trip with a coworker. With each passing trip, my visits got less and less planned and I began to see China for what it is - a country full of people just trying to improve themselves and their place in the world. This isn’t to say that I think the Chinese are altruistic, this couldn’t be further from the truth, but rather I think they are human and have every bit of triumph and flaws as the rest of us.

Traveling through China you see the effects of its rapid economic growth over the past 40 years, and not just the fancy new towers and airports, but rather the large scale polluted cities, the staggering income inequality, but also a vast reduction of absolute poverty. The thing is, I can’t tell if the people are happy. The citizens are obviously happy that they are no longer starving, have constant power, access to clean water, but the difference between the haves and the have nots is staggering, and people will do anything to appear as if they are a part of the haves. Then again, every culture does this, and perhaps I’m just being overly cynical because I actually can afford to shop at H&M and I don’t need to walk around with an empty shopping back to prove it.

One thing that I’ve learned to gleam on this trip is the ability to separate historical culture from contemporary culture. In many ways I feel that the United States and China are complete opposites in this respect. Being only about 250 years old, the U.S. does not have as much historical culture as many other countries, but we have an ever growing contemporary culture that I believe outshines that of the rest of the world, combined. That being said, I’ve noticed that China has very little unique contemporary culture, but a large amount of historical culture and historical pride to draw on (by unique contemporary culture I mean culture that has sprung up out of China significantly independent of the West). This is not to say that a country can not have a contemporary culture without being strictly attached to Western institutions, but rather, in China’s case, due to China’s wish to close itself off from the world following the rise of Mao’s Communism, China never got to experience the culture boom that its counterparts had following mass industrialization because China has just industrialized within the past 40 years, and still many of its people haven’t felt the economic leisure that industrialization can bring. Likewise, China also lacks many physical representations of its historical past due to a concentrated effort to purge itself during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s. This has precluded many Chinese from having context of appreciating historical cultures when traveling abroad (read the Chinese tourist). How can someone know to respect a museum or tomb if they’ve never been to a museum and many of their countries tombs and burial sites have been destroyed? Consequently this has left many Chinese with very little to strive for besides status elevation at the cost of all other aspects of life. (Status elevation includes: starving one’s self for name brands, traveling abroad simply to see China’s economic reach, and bleaching one’s skin while looking down on those darker ). To many the Chinese can come off as vapid, but I don’t think they are any more vapid than anyone else, albeit a bit culturally and moralistically unprepared for the world much of its population has been thrust into.

At the end of the day, China is still an one party, authoritarian dictatorship, and dictators tend to enjoy staying in power. While China may use more heavy handed methods to quell dissent, a happy populous also tends to not start revolutions. China is a fifth of humanity and a fifth of humanity living in quality conditions should be lauded, even if I don’t agree with the methods (ie The Chinese using Africa as a way of making the Chinese populous feel racially superior in the aftermath of European imperialism). I don’t see myself returning to China for a very long time, but when I do I know it won’t be the same as my last visit and I can’t help but to be a bit curious about what they do next.