Last Post in China--July 20, 2006

Since my last post (which was awhile ago, I know) I decided to stay in Shanghai as my life there was more comfortable than ever and that I would rather invest my resources into exploring other countries than to extend my stay in China. It worked out quite well as the second half of my year was by far the best. I ended up getting several part-time jobs instead of one boring full-time jobs and had various interesting gigs. One of these was teaching children once a week, which taught me that I absolutely love children... in small doses. In every one of my classes I found kids that reminded me of myself and I was constantly finding myself in situations that my teachers no doubt found themselves in, and it was definitely empowering to gain a sort of objectivity of my own childhood in this way.
Another part-time gig I had was teaching Grade 8 science, which is something that could only happen in China as science was my worst subject in high school by far, and yet here I was teaching photosynthesis and the chemical properties of the water cycle and burning. I wanted to do the job not because it paid well or was with a reliable and organized company (there was a ton of preparation required, and the company was the worst organized I'd ever seen) but I just wanted to be able to say that I'd done something completely removed from my experience.

After spending Chinese New Year's Eve with the family of one of my old student's, where I discovered the joy of lighting fireworks, I went on a trip to the Anhui province to the town where the famous mountain Huangshan is located and also saw some of the villages that surround it. The mountain is famous for being covered in fog (I believe it's the mountain that Zhang Ziyi disappears into at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and I could definitely see how someone could get lost in it) and the day I went was no exception. I really enjoyed the surrounding villages (at least when I wasn't being hassled to buy things) as it was the closest I was ever going to get to "rural China" where people live lives that aren't too far removed from how they lived a hundred years ago, with live chickens, pigs and cows everywhere.

I enjoyed that trip so much that I decided to take up another student's offer to visit her and her family in the so-called small town of Wuxi one weekend. However, upon arriving, I noticed that Wuxi was significantly bigger than I expected: when I asked what the population was, she said that it was around 5 million! (It's therefore one of the top 50 biggest cities in China.) Her family there didn't seem too far removed from modern society and even asked me if I watched "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives." However, it was at least a novelty at the restaurant we were at to have a foreigner, so the owner of the place came to personally greet me, informing me that with the exception of Japanese, all foreigners were welcome at his restaurant.

After I finished teaching in June, I went to Beijing for a few days, knowing that no trip to China would be complete without it. I had kind of had some reservations about going there at all, thinking that seeing landmarks along with thousands of other tourists isn't incredibly exciting, with kind of a sense of "wow, okay, it looks pretty much the same as it does in pictures and The Last Emperor." I kind of felt that this was true for places like the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City (although Tiananmen Square was kind of interesting seeing how incredibly patrolled Tiananmen Square is, with the guards marching as the red sun sets in the background), but I really liked Beijing as a city overall, with much more grandeur than Shanghai and interesting districts with traditional buildings. I also went to the art district, where I saw the first (and only!) reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 (the English-language TV station in China only acknowledges that that year even existed when in reference to the "highly successful" Sino-Soviet Pact that any history book will tell you was completely overshadowed by the protest) as well as the Cultural Revolution. There was an old converted warehouse with Maoist slogans that hadn't been erased, and I saw an art exhibit by an artist who chopped off one of his fingers in protest to the massacre and photographed his hand holding old pictures.

The best part of Beijing, of course, was the part that is still worth going to despite tourism, and I was fortunate enough to stay in a hostel that arranged tours to a "secret" part of the Great Wall, which was completely unrestored and unpopulated by other tourists. I attached some pictures which probably do no justice but the experience was very humbling and yet empowering to see what people are capable of.

I'm back in Vancouver now, but only temporarily before I do more travelling! Right now I'm kind of in the honeymoon stage of being home where the home-cooked western food still tastes great, I'm relieved to be away from all of the things that annoyed me in China and people aren't sick of seeing me yet. Still, I think that now I can better understand the old cliche of appreciating where you come from after travelling, and I'm much more grateful now to live in such a clean, democratic, tolerant, quiet country.