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| Forbidden City, Beijing |
STORIES
STORIES ADVENTURES IN CHINA STORIES STORIES
My
summer holidays
This summer on my way back to Malaysia where my family lives, I decided to
first spend 2 weeks visiting my sister in Shanghai
and take the opportunity to do some further sightseeing in Beijing and Xian.
It’s also partly about reconnecting with the language
and my Chinese heritage and perhaps getting to see how the Chinese live their
daily lives. Are the jokes and stories they tell, the values and wisdoms they
cherish or the customs and traditions they practise, in tune with that of
generations of Chinese who emigrated and now live in southeast Asia?
It has always been a big surprise to me to discover
that China celebrates all the same major festivals as we, Malaysian Chinese do,
such as the Spring Festival or Chinese Lunar Year, QingMing to honour our dead
ancestors, Dumpling festival or Dragon Boat festival and the Mid Autumn
festival, all of which are occasions surrounded by rich legends, folkloric
tales and accompanied by unique features and celebration forms.
Shanghai
I had previously visited Guangdong
and Shanghai
many years ago. This time around, I can see that the skyline of Shanghai has changed
dramatically. The days of opium dens and trading
houses on the Bund have been replaced with a modern, supersized metropolis
whose skyline reaches higher every day.
There are hundreds of new skyscrapers everywhere with
25+ story apartments or office blocks containing new malls, clubs, boutiques,
offices and new ones are sprouting up all the time. It feels like Hong Kong all over, (at least three times more), what
with a population of 23 million people, of whom 90 percent live in officially
defined urban areas. The rising population density makes Shanghai now one of the
most crowded megacities in the world.
Shanghai is
China’s financial and
cultural powerhouse, and being located where the Yangtze Kiang flows into the
sea, has made it an important trading and commercial port for Great Britain, France,
US and Germany
since the 19th century. This frontier and commercial spirit is still
alive and attracts people to live and work in this vibrant, ever-expanding
megalopolis.
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| The picturesques Bund, Shanghai |
Efforts have been made to protect ancient historical
parts of Shanghai
such as Zhujiajiao, Xintiandi and Tianzifang so as to preserve the charm of the
old city. However the city is generally vast and dense and open, green space is
becoming a premium.
The historic city of Hangzhou, a popular summer residence for emperors, is a popular weekend getaway only 45 minutes
from Shanghai
on the high-speed train. The area near the city’s famous West Lake
was made a Unesco World Heritage site in June.
Escaping the smog and urban
stress of Shanghai,
we spent a nice and relaxing afternoon there, against the backdrop of a gorgeous lake ringed by lazy willows and bamboos, surrounded by gardens laid
out in imperial grandeur interrupted by shady pavilions and pagodas.
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| Imperial Gardens, Hangzhou |
Shanghai didn’t make it into the Top 50 cities in the Mercer
Quality of Living Study 2012. The city is struggling with problems typical of
life in other Chinese megacities such as that of Beijing (popn: 18 mil.) and
Xian (popn: 8.5 mil.): smog & haze (40 times the limit deemed safe by WHO),
acid rain, water pollution, noise, housing shortage, exploding real estate
prices and gridlocked traffic most times of the day in spite of an extensive
public transport network.
Additionally, there is much
public anxiety over food safety and environmental pollution which are chronic
problems in China.
In March, 20,000 dead pigs were found floating in the Huangpu river, a source
of drinking water for Shanghai.
Days later, thousands of dead ducks were washed up on the Nanhe riverbank in Sichuan. Then in May,
authorities arrested 900 people on suspicion of spicing up and selling rat, fox
and mink meat as fake lamb rolls at markets in Shanghai that are frequented by
tourists.
China’s
food-safety problems highlight both the collapse of the country’s business
ethics and the failure of government regulators to keep pace with the expanding
market economy. Yet an excessive focus on poor government oversight often means
that the much graver problem of disintegrating civic morality is neglected.
Confucianism
and Communism acted as restraints on commercial dealings in the past and served
as a moral check on people’s behavior. Researchers suggest this has now been
replaced by materialism, a consequence of the Cultural Revolution on the former
and the effects of the Reform Era on the latter. The revival of capitalism
ushered in by Deng Xiao Ping has been driven entirely by the unrelenting
pursuit of wealth and even led to short-term interest in profiteering at the
expense of community welfare. (Never mind, what Geert Hofstede says about China being top
of the list for longterm orientation) This single-minded pursuit of material
interests in the absence of a well-developed regulatory framework and the rule
of law, is now threatening China’s
moral baseline. In a recent online survey, more than half the respondents said
that they did not think that complying with ethical standards was a necessary
condition for success.
Icons of Chinese civilization,
Beijing
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| Great Wall Pagodas and courtyard |
Climbing
the Great Wall of China was an extraordinary experience when you consider that
this bastion of defense has stayed intact in many places since it was built
around 250 BC and stretches over 5,600 km. However it did not succeed in
keeping out the Mongols and the Manchus from the north in the 13th
and 17th centuries. Unfortunately it was a foggy morning and the
wall quickly disappeared in a shroud of thick mist by mid-day, denying us the
much vaunted panoramic view for miles around.
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| A misty morning at the Great Wall, JuYongGuan Pass |
The
Forbidden City with its cluster of ancient
buildings and 10,000 rooms containing priceless furniture and works of art is
another sight to behold, representing the largest and best-preserved imperial
residences of the Ming and Qing dynasties between 1368 – 1911.
Across
from the Forbidden City, we walked over to TianAnMen
Square,
a vast desert of paving stones at the heart of Beijing and a poignant epitaph to China’s hapless democracy movement
of 1989.
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| MaoZeDong Mausoleum at TianAnMen Square |
Terracotta
army, Xian
Known as the eighth wonder of the world, this Qin Shi
Huang Mausoleum is located at Mount
Li, Lintong District,
Xian. The emperor having united China
for the first time wanted to distinguish himself from his ancestors and so
singled out his tomb and ordered all of his belongings to be buried with him.
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| Stepping 2300 years back in time |
The relics in the mausoleum, with over 7000 warriors, horses and 90 bronze
chariots, are estimated to be 78 times the size of the Forbidden
City and represent the finest aspects of the Qin civilization as
well as the largest collection of its kind in the world.
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| Sights & Sounds of Tang Dynasty |
Given the chance to grab a snapshot amongst these
soldiers dating from the late 3rd Century BC, I could not resist.
The momentary feeling of walking back several centuries in time and imagining
various epic battle scenes, is as overwhelming as viewing the Pyramids of Egypt
or the Valley of the Kings and Queens.
Challenges of urbanization
From Shanghai
to Beijing to Kuala Lumpur
and Penang, our cities are becoming
increasingly urbanized and being transformed to concrete jungles, compared to
20 or 30 years ago.
The rapid process of
urbanization brings with it different ecological, economical and social
problems and risks. These impacts cause challenges for urban policies and urban
planning strategies to manage the development in a sustainable way, when
populations double every 10 to 15 years as in many Asian cities.
Studies predict that by 2025,
our Asian cities which presently house a quarter of the world’s population and
around half its urban population, would contain around a third of the world’s
total population. The increase in the number of automobiles has made the
simplest and shortest of trips by car, a stressful and time-consuming journey
wherever we go, it seems.
Like a lot of people, I
wonder if the mad race to catch up with the rest of the developed world in
terms of economic prosperity and modern lifestyle isn’t exacting a huge price
on our resources, quality of life and our ability to achieve sustainable
growth. Will it be possible to reverse course and favor a saner approach to
planning and growing before it’s too late?
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