China: Why It Mattered

"Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey."--Pat Conroy

Isn't that the truth?  I have pondered my trip from the distance of a few months and an election.  Some trips you take to relax; this trip gave me a new vantage point to examine my beliefs, in particular my beliefs about America.  I love my country.  I believe her ideals, her birth in liberty, her rugged individualism make us the best country in the world.  The best.  I believe that to the core of my being.  I believe that God had a hand in our founding--that we were intentionally founded in a way that gives us freer access to our Creator than anywhere else, and freer access to be who God would have us to be.

Further, I believe that anyone in the world can be an American.  Anyone.  And something happened in Beijing to confirm that, less than thirty seconds really, that I can't quit thinking about.

We were in the train station in Beijing, waiting to board the train to Shanghai.  It was a long line.  As we approached the gate, the attendant was asking some people for their passports.  She was asking the foreigners, but she didn't ask one single Chinese person.  So of course she asked Bill and me...but she didn't ask Jean and Charlie.  Jean and Charlie, who hold United States passports, voted for the first time in 2012, and are proud American citizens.  The gate attendant assumed she knew that Charlie and Jean were Chinese because they looked Chinese.  And two things hit me right then:  first, no matter if I became a citizen, I could never truly be Chinese, no matter how much I wanted to be, because I wasn't born here to Asian parents; second (and more important), anyone in the world can be an American, because it isn't how you look on the outside, it is what is written on your heart that matters here.

Do you love liberty?  Do you hold "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" dear?  Do you believe you should just be left alone to pursue all the wonderful things that God has laid out for you to try and see and do in your life?  Can you dream?  Can you build big things so that your children's lives will be better than yours?  Then come!  We want you!  You are already American in your heart--you just need your passport to match.

Think of that.  We are the only country in the world where you can't guess, based on appearance, if someone is "one of us" or not. Where it is the heart that matters, a person's beliefs, and not their skin color, hair color, accent, or even where they were born.  Being American is a choice.

I used to write a lot about politics.  I still follow it, but frankly the election was enormously painful for me.  This is why:  for the first time, far more than ever before, how you looked on the outside was a reliable predictor of who you voted for.  Think of that.  Something is wrong when that is true.  And yes, it is easy to point out that I am a textbook Romney voter--white, upper-middle-class, married woman.  (Heck, I would have voted for Romney because Ann's a rider!)  I don't know what to say to that.  But when an entire campaign is focused on telling people that they must vote for a candidate because it is who they are--we are headed somewhere that I don't even understand.

America is about our heart and head, but not the things you see on the outside.  I think I glimpsed a fundamental truth about America when I was halfway around the world.  But the people who are spreading lies--and they are truly lies--about identity and belief and politics, those people are out to destroy who we are as Americans.

First we have to recognize it.  I hope it isn't too late.

Last Day in China

We took the train back from Beijing to Shanghai in the dark--nothing to see!  We rested to be ready for one last push in Shanghai:  Bill and I booked a one-day shopping tour with the appropriately-named "Shopping Tours Shanghai."  Charlie and Jean, doubting there was much to shop for in Shanghai (no, seriously) left us on our own for this day.

I don't want to do a play-by-play of our day (you can read lots of wonderful TripAdvisor reviews), but let's just say there is a TON of shopping to do in Shanghai.  Bill and I both had cashmere winter coats made to order ($125 each), and we bought some beautiful pottery at this shop.  We had lunch at a great restaurant, dumplings on the street Shanghai-style, and lots and lots of Starbucks.  Our little group of five intrepid shoppers ended the day at the Pearl Market, where I scored some gorgeous cashmere scarves as well as actual pearls!

We also got to meet Benny Peng, who makes beautiful silk-covered objects, everything from notebooks to jewelry boxes.  His items are all handmade and sold in department stores around the world.  We got to meet him and (of course) pick up a bunch of items.  One of my favorite was a little business card holder.  In Shanghai, the world runs on business cards.  Every time we visited a restaurant or shop I saved their business card.  I put all of the cards from this trip in one business card book, and now Bill knows exactly where to go when he goes out shopping or dining in Shanghai.

Bill with Benny.  We just loved meeting him!

In a food market.  This lady makes noodles of all kinds--check out the bags of flour in the background!

Also in the food market.  Eggs as far as you can see.

One stop in particular was fascinating:  the silk factory.  We saw silkworms, the cocoons, how they are spun into thread, and finally woven.  We also saw how they make silk duvets, by wetting and stretching each individual cocoon, and then pulling it out to the size of a queen-sized bed.  One cocoon.  Amazing.  (And the duvets are also amazing, by the way.  Soft, light, warm, and hypoallergenic!)

Silkworms on mulberry leaves.

Silk cocoons in water, being unraveled and twisted into thread.

Making a duvet by stretching a couple of cocoons to the size of a queen-size mattress.

A great way to see Shanghai!  One fun part is seeing the city through the eyes of a Westerner.  Our guide, Clare, was from the U.S. but had lived in Shanghai for three years.  She was really good at giving us insight into living in Shanghai as a Westerner, what she loved, what she missed.  While it would have been better to have done this trip at the beginning of the week (our finished goods could have been delivered rather than shipped), spending some quality time shopping in Shanghai was a delight.  And yes, we did enjoy sharing with Charlie and Jean all the awesome places we had found to shop!  They were shocked.

The next morning we were up early to board the plane and return to real life.  If you can bear it, I have just one more China post coming up.

North to Beijing

I suppose if I am ever going to write again on my blog, Beijing is a good place to begin.  When I last wrote, I left things hanging in the banlieue of Shanghai.  Thanks to my notes, which were much better than I remembered, I can share actual details of my trip.  My problem is that I have an overwhelming memory of Beijing that now colors my view of the city...more on that later.

We took the high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing.  Let me just say--it is AWESOME.  Amazingly clean station, beautiful train, easy trip.  At 300 km/hr, the trip takes about five hours.  We got the benefit of watching the countryside roll past as we spent the morning on the train.  I think I will quote from my notebook here:

"Past unbelievable number of cities, cranes everywhere, building.  Every place has 8+ cranes, never just one.  Complexes of apartments, not single buildings, but...

"Where does the food come from?  The construction materials?  Where do they work?

"Also passed thousands of acres of fields--rice paddies in the south, corn further north.  All hand-harvested.  We saw one (ox? yak?) farm animal, a herd of goats in a field, one dairy farm with no apparent pasture.

Over Charlie's shoulder you can see the speed:  304 km/h!

"The scale is mind-boggling.  Enormous poverty, dirt roads, brand new multi-lane highways that seem to lead to nowhere [and, I might note, were completely empty].  A country out of thin air, made of instant cities."

So there you have it.  We didn't see small towns, or even big towns.  Just irregular, hand-tended fields or enormous cities that you have never heard of.

Once we arrived in Beijing, I finally had that "A HA!  I'm in China" feeling I missed in Shanghai.  It was only accentuated when we walked down Wangfujing Street, a main shopping district that happened to be right around the corner from our hotel.  Check out what one of the street vendors was selling:

Not exactly McDonald's...

We ate lunch nearby, but had dumplings instead of seahorses and starfish in a pretty typical dumpling shop:

Not exactly McDonald's, either...

Then we walked a couple of blocks to perhaps the most famous place in all of China:

Can you find all the security cameras?

This is Tiananmen, the heart of communist China.  I have many thoughts about this place, but for now, I will share what I wrote that night:

"Walked through [a] city park (Jinshan) and around through park to entrance to Forbidden City, walked through Tiananmen.  Awful--in that it feels oppressive, just being there.  Cops, soldiers, plainclothes officers everywhere, and cameras.  Charlie [Bill's business partner] was visibly uncomfortable.  The disconnect with American freedom is profound.  The worst place I've ever been."

This is the entrance to the Forbidden City.  Mao's picture faces Tiananmen and his mausoleum.  The two buildings that flank Tiananmen Square are the People's Congress and the Museum of the People's History.

One of the People's Buildings.  They look exactly alike.

Mao's mausoleum, which stands directly opposite Mao's portrait at the Forbidden City.

We ate dinner in a mall that night, steps from Mao's portrait. The mall was glittering, clean, and full of shoppers.  We could have been anywhere in the world.

Shanghai

I didn't mean to go so long without a post.  I just realized that it has been an entire month since we got back!

The first couple of days in China were spent in Shanghai.  My lingering impressions of Shanghai are the hustle and the enormity of it.  Shanghai was bigger than anything I have ever seen.  Masses of people everywhere, and businesses operating in every nook and cranny.

For the most part we took taxis in Shanghai.  Traffic is very, very bad in Shanghai, but taxis are pretty easy to get.  One advantage is that you can give the taxi driver the business card of the place you are going and--presto!--there you are.  Our first sight-seeing day was spent in taxis criscrossing the city.

Bill in the Bund.

We started in the Bund, right along the Huangpu (Yellow River).  The Bund is the Western colonial area; Shanghai was host to French and British colonies at different periods in its history.  You can see the Western influence in the buildings right along the west side (Puxi) of the Yellow River.

The famous Pearl Tower in Pudong.

We walked along the River, taking pictures of Pudong and marveling at the size of everything. Pudong literally means "East of the River," and twenty years ago it was rice paddies and farms.  Now this is Pudong:

More of Pudong.  This is looking south (to the right) of the picture above.

It goes on and on and on, massive skyscrapers and apartments.  We didn't explore much in Pudong, mostly because the interesting older things are in Shanghai Puxi.  But look at that and try to imagine the quantities of steel and concrete, drywall and glass that had to be brought to that small area of the world.  I heard that at one point most of the world's supply of drywall was headed to Pudong.  I can believe it.

 From the Bund we walked to the FangBang Temple district, really a bunch of little shops surrounding an old temple. The temple wasn't a very big deal--we didn't even see it!  We did see masses of people in the shops and restaurants.  This looked like a good place to buy souvenirs, but I hadn't decided to spend money yet, so I didn't really buy anything here.




Shanghai is built on the Yellow River delta--you see canals everywhere.  In the FangBang area most of the shops are built around bridges and over water.  It isn't particularly lovely but it is a respite from the high-rises that loom over you in most areas.

Our next stop was the Xingye Road area.  This is still part of the French Concession, I think, and the buildings reflect the European influence.  These days there are Western-style cafes and shops, but in the 1920s this was a residential area full of traditional Shanghai homes called "long-tangs."  They are two- or three-story homes built around a courtyard.  The entrance to the courtyard is over a high stone threshold and has a large wooden door.  All of the shops and restaurants try to preserve these entries, because they are so particular to Shanghai.  Each long-tang had three or four bedrooms, including a tiny back bedroom that was usually rented out to a student.

One of my favorite facts about this part of town is that Mao had an apartment at 76 Xingye Road.  Chinese communism was born in this little neighborhood where many radicals rented out the tiny bedroom.  So the home to one of the twentieth-century's biggest mass murderers and haters of all things free and capitalist has become a thoroughly gentrified, Western, capitalist neighborhood.

I don't even think you can see how crowded it was here.

A third neighborhood we visited that day was called TianZiFang.  This was an artists' colony, chock-a-block with tiny shops.  We were shoulder-to-shoulder with other shoppers here in the narrow streets.  This would be a great place to film a spy movie--it is wildly disorienting because there are no big cross streets, no grid and often...no outlet!  Think corn maze but with four-story brick and tons of Chinese people. 

Finally, that evening we took a walk near our hotel to get a bite to eat.  This is the exterior of the largest shopping mall in Asia.  Wow!  Some very familiar shops, some less so, but pretty busy for a Sunday evening.  In hindsight, the lights and shops reminds me of Las Vegas.  This is yet another side of Shanghai, I suppose, all modern and Western-oriented.  The big names over there are just what you might expect:  Hermes, Chanel, Burberry...  And no bargains here!  Prices are pretty similar to what you would find at home.

So that is four neighborhoods in Shanghai, pretty different from one another, some with MUCH cleaner bathrooms.  I hope you can feel how disorienting it was--sometimes Shanghai felt a long way from home, but more of the time it felt like it just wasn't that different from anywhere I'd been before.  For my next post I hope to share a little more of what we saw in Shanghai, including apartments and the suburbs.

China, part 1

Time to get back to writing.

Bill and I went to China a couple of weeks ago.  I know, CHINA!  It is literally half a world away, the longest plane ride I've ever taken.  We took this trip without the kids, partly out of caution and partly because plane tickets to Shanghai are unbelievably expensive (and we never have miles for anything like that).  But now that I've been, I'd take the kids in a second.  For now, though, I just want to share what I saw and a little of what we experienced.

First, why on earth did we go?  My husband has factories in China, and it was time for me to see them.  Way, way back (more than twenty years ago now), Bill and a couple of guys in graduate school started selling American equipment to Chinese factories.  It was a great sideline as he pursued his Ph.D.  The catch was that they couldn't get most of their money out of China.  BIG catch.  In order to get their money out of China, they had to import things--and that led to the idea of building a plant that could manufacture goods to sell in the West.  So that was how he came to have these factories.  It has been a long time now, and many, many improvements to the plants.  After we got married, we always talked about my going.  But pregnancies, babies, and life in general just got in the way.

Sometimes you just have to say, "Now." That is what we finally did this fall.

The next few posts are just my travelogue from my trip.  I like to keep notes in my super-cute and trendy Moleskine as I travel.  Since we've gotten back (two weeks ago now) I've also had some other impressions percolating, and I'll share those, too.  China can't fail to make an impression on you--it's just so darn big.  Not Texas wide-open big, more like suffocating, sit-on-you big.  Anyway, I'll share some of that.  Really, there were too many things going on for just one post.

Since I am admittedly out of the habit of posting, I will just say that I will try to post the whole trip over the next few days.  I have so many pictures.  And while it was not fun, it was interesting, and sometimes that is even better.  I am really looking forward to sharing this trip with the two or three people who read the blog.  (And your arrival at my little blog is much appreciated.)

And for the technical, in-and-out details of my trip, I like to post reviews on TripAdvisor.  You can find me there as "PeachtreeMom4."