#64: Across the Heart of China: Buy a Mao Statue and Win the Lottery! Part I
October 29, 2002
After a wonderful time in Ningxia, I took an overnight train across the dusty, yellowish loess plains that characterize much of the western part of China’s Yellow River valley. The area in what is today Shaanxi Province is the cradle of the Chinese civilization; hence the Yellow River is also known as the Mother River of China. After two millenniums of glory that ended with the collapse of the Tang Dynasty (the “Renaissance of Chinese history”) in 907 AD, this region became a backwater as the heart of the Chinese state moved southwards.
Today, the Northwest of China (which officially includes the provinces of Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang) is poor and far backward compared to the coastal metropolises like Shanghai and Guangzhou. Poor soil quality, desertification and poor transportation links to external markets have all compounded the problem.
However, the Chinese government has now offered investors tax breaks and incentives for investment in this vast region, in the hope that this long-forgotten region might catch up with the rest of the country. From appearances at least, there is new prosperity in the form of flashy new buildings and shopping malls. Many of the region’s migrant workers have also returned after a stint in the industrial powerhouse of coastal China, and armed with new industrial know-how, to set up companies in their homeland. Maybe this will bring vast changes in this region.
For now at least, the Northwest is still more closely related to the movies of Zhang Yimou, the award-winning Chinese director extraordinaire. Many of his movies, in particular, Red Sorghum, Ji Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, were set in this region, where feudal traditions and poverty have long persisted. The desolation, as well as empty, bleak landscape, has long attracted moviemakers as well as photographers looking for the unusual.
Xian, the capital of Shaanxi Province, is my destination. This city has the distinction of having been China’s first imperial capital, and also capital for the longest period, in fact, one whole millennium. Beijing, made capital only under the Mongols in the 13th century, is a baby compared to Xian.
It was in the now-destroyed city of Xianyang near Xian, that Qin Shihuangdi, China’s first emperor, unifier, and builder of the Great Wall, built his capital more than 2200 years ago. It was also near here where he rested under a gigantic yet-to-be-excavated man-made hill, guarded by an entire army of 6000 life-size terracotta warriors, horses and chariots. The latter was discovered in 1974 in what was one of 20th century’s greatest archaeological discoveries, ranking together with King Tutankhamen’s Treasures in Egypt and Machu Picchu in Peru. It’s an amazing sight: fully armed (with real, sharp swords and archery) warriors, every one with different posture and facial expression.
Qin Shihuangdi was an extraordinary ruler. He came to power while still a teenager, maneuvered through palace intrigue, united all China and then ruled and reformed the country ruthlessly. Countless died in his grand projects (like the Great Wall) and numerous purges against dissidents and scholars. China’s history is full of tyrants like him, many of whom were regarded as great rulers due to their achievements, and also feared or loathed for their tyrannical rule. It is this, as well as the continuing influence of the past that makes Chinese history controversial and interesting at the same time.
Xian – old Chang-an (“Eternal Peace”, as it was then known) – is also the capital of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), the most glorious in Chinese history. Poets and writers sang about this cosmopolitan city, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, where Arab and Central Asian traders dropped by with their exotic wares and goods, and brought highly valued Chinese silk to the Middle East and Europe.
Persian music was the fashion of the day, and Tang ladies impressed their men with the latest Central Asian Turkic dances. Japanese and Korean scholars came to study Chinese statecraft and Buddhist philosophy. Today, the Japanese Imperial Court are the sole practitioners of Tang court protocols long-lost in China and Kyoto, Japan’s old capital, is the text-book model of Tang city planning, and perhaps what old Chang-an once looked like.
I visited the Grand Mosque of Xian, the largest in China, built by Arab traders and settlers during the Tang Dynasty. Today it is the center of Xian’s Hui community. The Hui are Chinese Muslims, product of that great era of international trade and co-existence in Xian.
The mosque was built in traditional Chinese style, i.e., no different from the architecture of Buddhist or Taoist temples, except that you find the Islamic crescent on the traditional Chinese rooftop, complete with dragons and mythological creatures.
Islam in China has blended in well with Chinese traditions and culture, and has adopted all forms of Chinese life except for obvious differences like the prohibition on consumption of pork and alcohol. Therefore it is no surprise that the mosques are built like Chinese Buddhist or Taoist temples. However, across China, in the mad rush of modernization, many of these traditional Chinese style mosques have been torn down and replaced with tall complexes with Arabesque domes. Some are ugly glass towers simply topped with a dome, a feature not associated with local traditions.
I asked a Muslim official and was told that they, too, like the rest of China, want to be “internationalist”. This is a pity. They have lost their heritage along the way. I hope they realize the mistake before it is too late.
The Xian of today, despite its numerous monuments and cultural artifacts, is not a city loved by many visitors. It is terribly polluted. The heavy smog irritated me and I could hardly breathe. I wanted to get out as soon as I had visited the Terracotta Warriors. So, I hopped onto an overnight train to Chongqing.
Chongqing Municipality, China’s newest provincial level administrative unit with 30 million people, is the largest city in China’s Southwest. I was last here in 1995, on business.
It is a huge industrial center with – what’s new – heavy pollution too. Today’s Chongqing, like most of China’s cities, is full of skyscrapers. The rapid economic progress has changed China beyond recognition. Even locals tell me that they can hardly keep pace with the changes, and taxi drivers hardly know the new highways and roads.
On my 1995 visit, I got on a 6 hours’ drive through awful potholed country roads to Dazu, a UNESCO-listed Buddhist grotto complex . Now locals tell me that the journey is a smooth 2 hours’ drive on the motorway. Standard of living has improved for most Chinese. They are traveling in vast numbers within their country, and many are also traveling abroad for the first time. Ugly Stalinist-style buildings are now being replaced with flashy new apartment and office blocks and shopping malls. However, old charming historic districts are also been bulldozed in this mad rush to modernity. This is tragic, for they might turn all Chinese cities into soulless American-style metropolises.
I got on a boat down the Yantze River (Changjiang in Chinese, meaning the “Long River”), through the renowned Three Gorges (“Sanxia“). For a few millennia, the Sanxia, with its high cliffs and fjord-like scenery, has fascinated many Chinese traveling from the central plains to Sichuan, China’s most populous province which is totally separated from the rest of China by tall mountains. Poets have sung about its beauty, and famous painters have made the difficult journey here to immortalize the gorges in their work. Today, hundreds of cruise boats do the journey for modern-day tourists and travelers, all for some cash and sense of romanticism.
The Sanxia entered world headlines during the last decade. The Chinese government has decided to build the world’s largest hydroelectric project by damming the Changjiang near here, thereby submerging some of this spectacular scenery under water forever (although new scenic spots would appear) and forming one of the world’s largest man-made lakes. Millions of people, including whole cities, have to be relocated in the process. The Chinese government argued that the project would help to control floods and generate electricity for China’s fossil fuel-poor inland provinces. Critics complained about the millions of people to be relocated, and the damage to the ecology and environment, as well as archaeological sites along the river.
I dropped by the city of Fengdu, which literally means “Ghost City”. This is an old Chinese city with a hill full of temples and monuments relating to the Taoist-Buddhist vision of the Underworld.
To me it is an ancient Disneyland of sorts, given there are hardly any monks around and there were lots of souvenir stalls and money-grabbing schemes around (e.g., knock the bell for one yuan and that will bring good fortune). The dam project would completely submerge the city under the great lake to be formed.
I witnessed Fengdu’s citizens moving out of their houses and workmen demolishing entire sections of the city already vacated. A new Fengdu is being built on the opposite bank of the river, on higher ground, yes, in that all-so-prevalent-Manhattan skyscraper style which to the Chinese represents “Progress” with a big “P”. The old Fengdu is literally becoming a ghost city. Let’s hope that the Chinese have made the right bet.
We got on a smaller boat to explore the Wushan area and its shallow, narrow gorges, just off the Changjiang. This is one of China’s poorest regions. Local kids, dressed in only underwear, waded in cold running waters, stretching out long poles with a net at the end to tourist boats, begging for money. The China of today is a country with huge regional disparity of income. Anyone traveling in China would notice the vast number of domestic tourists – they tend to outnumber foreign tourists by the ratio of 10 times or more – and they usually come from the prosperous eastern or coastal provinces of Guangdong or Zhejiang, or cities of Shanghai or Beijing where incomes may well be more than 10 times higher than the poorest regions in the country.
My boat is full of well-dressed Guangdong tourists with their expensive cameras and telescopes, throwing stacks of banknotes into the nets of these poor local children and snapping away this heart-breaking scene with their digital cameras and videocams. They could well be Western tourists in Mozambique.
