Travelers' Tales - excerpts
Trip Start
Jul 20, 2004
1
95
156
Trip End
Jul 20, 2012
Beijing,
China
Friday, December 1, 2006
Is by his wise preceptors taught
To have no dealings with the Truth,
In fact romancing is his "forte."
In juggling words he takes the prize,
By the sheer beauty of his lies.
- Harry Graham (1905)
When Mao walked through Chengdu on the Long March in the 1940s, he made a promise to liberate workers from dire poverty, starvation, the feudal practices of landlords, penury, and unfair taxation, galvanizing the peasants into a prodigious political force
At Lilian's house - art work
. Utopian dreams were crushed and the peasants were eventually stripped of everything, even something to eat. The resulting famine that gripped China from 1958 to 1961 brought about 30 million deaths. Mao called himself heshang dasan - an outlaw. Everything he did conspired to make the political elite as well as the masses directly dependent on him and him alone. The Chinese people didn't know the details of Mao's private life until recently, but the lucky ones, the wily ones, did learn how to survive: by keeping a low profile; expecting betrayals from everyone and giving all their time, concern and loyalty to the Chairman and no one else. "He had humble beginnings and he got lost in all his power. It was like an orchard for a starving man. Too much fruit. he ate until he was sick and then he spread that sickness everywhere."
Mao died in 1976. Ehen deng Xiaoping was returned to power in 1978, he declared: "To get rich is glorious." Since Tiananmen Square, people only want to make money, because money equals freedom. They aren't sure of what will happen next. Chinese people don't think about the future; they are only concerned with the present. For the time being, party bosses rule; corruption involving complicity between the communist government and the Chinese mafia is common knowledge
At Lilian's house - enjoying good company
. It's the only way to get ahead. After all, China is still a dictatorship and the people have few democratic rights: no freedom of speech, no free press, no freedom of assembly or travel, and no court of justice to represent them.Nature reserves were established in China in 1958, and the first panda reserve in 1963. After the Cultural Revolution, only 1100 pandas were counted in the six mountain areas were they lived. How we treat our animals is a mirror of how we think of ourselves. How could one expect a leader who humiliated and enslaved his followers to trat animals well?
- Gretel Ehrlich
On the rails in China, there is no privacy. You must interact. The atmosphere in a Chinese train, as paul Theroux observed in his book, Riding the Iron Rooster , is that of a traveling living room. For the Chinese, a long train ride is an event, and they make themselves at home in order to enjoy it: people roam the aisles in their pajamas, drink themselves into oblivion, play cards, eat lavish banquets, and generally annex vast sections of the train as their own. It's perhaps the best way to enter a Chinese home without actually being invited into one.
- Jeff Vize
