Cars, especially in Russia were shaking us sometimes to all sides but living 42 hours on a big boat made me walk the Japanese soil for two more days moving unnecessarily from left to right and feeling a bit dizzy. I was surprised how such a big boat can be so much influenced by the waves. Surrounded by sea and after exploring all corners of the ship Carina and I had lots of time to talk and have tea. Probably we could have spent even more time like this: running around, bathing in a big bathroom with a huge warm bath and 10 showers or just watching the sea and wonder. The time to reflect and read our diaries to one another was a beautiful gift before we would arrive to the land of the Rising Sun and live a different life then the past two months. Many people asked me about our companionship. We lived 24 hours together for two months, sharing food from one plate and sleeping sometimes really close to each other. Something I have never done with anybody before. But our companionship was truly great and with a lot of joy. When in September 2006 we said: `next year we will go together` it was a deep feeling in me that told me Carina was the right person to travel with. The joy of sharing experiences with somebody is indescribable as well is having really a lot of time to get to know somebody very valuable.
When entering China I had a Lonely Planet with at least 80 pages of compact history, written from a Western perspective, in my backpack. But when moving towards Japan I consciously had not searched for any information or travel guide. I must admit that long time ago I developed this prejudice of not liking Japan at all. It did not say me anything; I did not feel like visiting this island. I don’t know why or when this prejudice was formed but I am grateful for Carina who dragged me along to the East. Especially during this travel I have been thinking a lot about how my prejudices came into being and how they proved to be incorrect. My idea of not liking Japan was very much out of place. I liked this country from the moment I was stepping on its soil. I am also extremely happy to experience this place, its culture and nature like a child, without any previous knowledge. So actually I also want to say to those readers who would like to travel like this and enjoy the joy of amazement and discovering, maybe you should not continue. The first things about Japan I learned on the boat. Carina and I are standing on the upper deck when she says: `that guy is Japanese`. I ask `how do you know`. `By the way he walks` she says. I laugh. She explains that this `way` results from sitting on the knees. Second thing I learn are that slippers are very important and that walking with shoes in certain places is simply NOT done! The third thing I learnt was the Japanese way of bathing. The bath is shared. My host mother would later say: `We Japanese, we don’t make the water dirty`. You shower and wash and only then you go into the bath, a small hot swimming pool. We would be sitting there in the middle of the night and would be cleaner then ever.
But what is maybe one of the very present and visible characteristics of Japanese people became visible straight after passing the Chinese border in Qingdao port. A sign told me the ethics of the staff of the port. Things like not to discriminate, be polite, don’t say unfriendly words etc.; which we in Europe of course also expect from staff were just clearly stated. So far I also haven’t seen any Japanese neglecting those rules of courtesy. Sometimes this friendliness would really surprise us, like when we sneaked into the cafeteria of the boat and ate our own food at the table in the corner and the staff, who were preparing the place to open it, would say `Thank you very much` to us.
And so step by step I learn about Japan. I look with my eyes wide open. I received a stamp in my passport stating I am a temporary visitor who has the right to stay till the 2nd of December. Never since the start of our journey had I felt so much freedom. We reached Japan in time for Carina to start her research at the Japanese Foundation for which she got a scholarship. No more `have to be somewhere`s` and for the first time my passport gives me the right to stay in one country for more then 30 days! Japan would be very different for us. Carina`s life would be certain for four months. She has a roof for every night, she has a clear task to accomplish, and she has money and food. I entered Japan without any knowledge, except from the map of Japan I got from Carina in Qingdao, and without any plan. I felt so free and was filled with indescribable joy. Carina could not help it to worry about me or feel guilty that she is walking towards a luxurious life and that I did not know where to go. And of course a certain feeling of sadness was coming over us. Reaching Japan meant we would separate soon. We did not feel tired of traveling together at all.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Many feelings about China
For the first time I had time to read my previous post. Mmm, so little I have written. It feels almost unjust to give China so few words. My mind has been a bit uneasy about this overload of impressions and stories which remained untold. But what to do? Life was too interesting to look into the past or like I did not want to close my eyes when travelling. So much to wonder about! But now I take some time to catch up a bit with China!
China was hot, so hot that the sweat sticks to the skin like a layer of Vaseline. And there was no escape. We would often say `Banya-effect gone`, referring to the clean feeling we had after Russian Banya followed by sweating again and feeling dirty like before. But compared to sauna’s where you can escape into cold water, snow or just fresh air, the Chinese weather was there just to bare it. And so we did. I realise that by now I don’t mind the heat anymore. One friend told me about how you can get used to things or create new habits when you hold on for 21 days. Maybe it is true because just to mention some I got used to chopsticks, heat, uncertainty, mosquito bites and a 20 kilo backpack. The same by the way holds true when you want to get rid of bad habits like being angry, jealous or when you complain a lot.
China was not a developing country if I would make a mathematical conclusion of the China I saw. But of course I saw only a little.
China is soooo big. A population of 1.3 billion living on an area of 9.6 million sq km. Some comparisons: Mongolia has only 2.5 million people on an area of 1.5 million sq km and Russia has 144.5 million people on 17 million sq km. China also clearly has more roads and is not like Siberia. But how to grasp these feelings you get about population density. For example I remember that Tuva republic in Russia has 300 thousand inhabitants but over two million of cattle are running around. To me China did feel `full` after Russia and Mongolia. Maybe this feeling was strengthened by some words of Russian drivers about a forthcoming war in 2008 between China and Russia on land issues. In China this was sometimes confirmed or replied with `Oh, this war is already going on`. And Russia indeed has many unsettled border agreements. China is developing so quickly that indeed it’s need for land, water and energy are increasing rapidly. The population is still growing despite the `one child policy` that was introduced in the end of the seventies. It remains a point of discussion if this policy has helped or not. We were of course curious and found out that this policy is not as simple as it seems. In many areas like the country side where workforce is hardly needed to remain self sufficient more children are allowed. In the urban areas you can buy more children, meaning you pay a lot of money and then you are allowed to have more! Other options to circumvent this policy are giving birth abroad (also costly) or abandon your child. We did not get any precise information on a relation between the policy and the number of orphans.
But back to China’s state as a developing country. Of course I saw poverty, I saw many people living with basics, sharing a toilet with several alleys of the hutongs, sleeping on the streets, collecting bottles or living in a house made of some fabric and a bicycle. Almost one fourth of Beijing’s citizens live in old dwellings in the hutongs and I do not know if I can really say so, but I was lucky to see them. In the center (tourist) area of Beijing there are only a few left. Beijing (who that really is I do not know, some city officials maybe, some businessmen?) wants to be a modern city and as such the hutongs, which feel to me like the real China, are swept aside. Some of them to be rebuild on Beijing’s outskirts. With an area of 16.800 sq km (more than half of Belgium) and a population of 12 million you can start to imagine how far away people are forced to live from their `home`. Every year some 10.000 dwellings are ruthlessly bulldozed and with the Olympics coming in 2008 they might almost completely disappear. Of course I ask: `aren’t there any protest movements?` The answer: `what can you do when you get murdered when you protest!` I wonder if this is the China that I like. How can it be so stupid and sad. What is it to live in a country where you have to be silent? I also think about us as foreigners, what can we do? This feeling of wanting to do something leaves me quickly,... too late, too big enemy to fight ...? But the sad feeling that arose from observing such money-minded inhuman projects remains for a long time with me.
Though from the outside China might look modern, we definitely got a glimpse on some issues like the vast hold Chinese leaders have on the people and the country not being free. The Olympics are all over China. People trying to sell shirts to us: `Souvenir, souvenir, different colours, buy, buy`, many flyers, flags and big advertisements. Many food-products carry the logo while slogans and newspapers proudly announce that with the Olympics China will show its rich culture for the first time to the world. All Chinese are called to be part of it (in a socialist Mao-manner). The concrete marathon and modernisation speed are too visible and hurt my eye. I wonder who wants to see this modern China and what about the experience of so many other countries organising the Olympics and going bankrupt?
But again back to `development`. China is doing very well in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is maybe even the world leader in poverty alleviation. From 490 million people living below poverty line in 1990 it counted only 88 million in 2001. These figures still make me so dizzy, especially when I think of the richness I saw. We traveled for example in amazingly luxurious cars and saw many fancy shops. Unfortunately China is also the country known for the biggest gap between rich and poor. Further away from Beijing and many times when being on the road I did see real poverty and it made me feel very confused to see this from windows of expensive cars, driving on very good roads. In an article of the China Daily I read about how the new UNDP head for China tries to develop a plan to reach the MDGs aligned with the XiaoKang Vision that promotes a society in which people are moderately well off and middle class. At first sight it seems a long way to go! More info on XiaoKang: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaokang.
China is so enormous, so complex and mysterious. My time there was an incentive for further investigation. Maybe its history is more attractive to me then its future. I also liked it more to watch a movie like `To Live` (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_live) in an apartment in Beijing on the 21st floor with some real Chinese food then to visit the Summer palace as a tourist. I enjoyed to read sayings of Lao Tse and to get a silk skirt made by a lady on the streets. Observing communism today, its consequences, ruins and deeply rooted structures in very different places like Russia, Mongolia and China gave me lot of `food` for thinking. Reading the book Animal Farm of George Orwell for example while sleeping in the meeting hall of a Chinese police station with `watching` portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are just too different from reading the same book in Antwerp. And maybe just to be clear, we did not do anything wrong to get into that police station near Jining (Shangdong province). We kindly asked to put our tent n their garden but got a meeting hall and a dinner instead. The next morning they arranged a ride for us with a bus to Qingdao (a six hour ride for free). That was maybe also a not too usual ride!
With our initial difficulties of hitchhiking in our mind and after flipping a coin we travelled from Beijing to Xi-an (one of the seven `once capital` cities of China) by train. Also an experience! Frightened by people’s reactions and stories we were prepared for the worst. We bought the cheapest tickets, which means `standing tickets` for 150 Yuan. Already in the bus to the train, standing for one hour was painful, we were about to `stand` for 12 hours! Then it happened to us that we spent 1.5 hour in a Chinese post office to send some packages home and as such we missed our train by 10 minutes. Aaarghhh we think again of worst case scenarios and wait the long ticket line for new ones. Before we realize it we have a ticket for the train two hours later without paying anything. Amazingly easy and our luck does not stop! Standing did not mean to be squeezed like pigs in a wagon without windows; we were simply put in between the seats. I was even more lucky and got on an empty seat. Carina was sitting on her backpack and except from standing up for passengers and food carriages every 5 minutes during the first hours the ride was quite comfortable. Maybe even too comfortable. After our reflections and doubts about this way of traveling, because we also ended up in a youth hostel in Xi-an, we decide to hit the road again. And it went very well, we slept again somewhere in the field/forest along the road and discover the quality of Chinese highway restaurants and facilities. The communication with the drivers goes well enough and two times we end up in a local bus, once when a family takes us with good intentions into the center of Lankou and once when for almost one hour we are surrounded by 60 curious people in the center of Heze where we tried to hitchhike. Places like this where almost no foreigners come were very nice experiences. Also here for example you can eat for 3 Yuan and see true Chinese life. After five people telling us to take a bus we check out how to go to Jining from Heze. 20 Yuan people on the street told us, so we are surprised when the lady at the counter says 75. We say it is too much and leave to check the city map. Before we understand what is happening the lady talks to the bus driver and gives us two tickets for 20 Yuan each. A half-hitchhiked bus? That day was so full, I smiled and enjoyed the views along local small roads.
We arrived sooner then expected in Qingdao where we buy our ticket for Japan. And yes, the boat was called UTOPIA 2. The ladies of the Japanese desk of the travel agency (based in an extremely posh hotel) call a very cheap family hostel mentioned but not recommended by Lonely Planet so we also soon had a roof in this very very western (German) city. We stayed several days here due to health problems. Probably it was the air-conditioning or whatever but first Carina got a severe cold and the second day in Qingdao I got ill as well. With high temperature and great help of our host and neighbours I visit the hospital to treat my flu. The lady of our really small hostel continues to take care of us with healthy porridge, tea, massage and kindness. The hospital though is one of the places where you would stamp China as a developing country but the English speaking nurse took great care of me and also Carina became a nurse. One night at 4 am Carina tells me that the date on our tickets is wrong. We knew the ship was leaving on Thursday but the date showed 30th of August and according to us it should be 31st. We try to calculate but we remain uncertain about the date. The next morning we find out that it is Thursday already. We simply would have missed the boat. Instead of packing Carina went to change the tickets to Saturday 1st so I would be healthier. Though we had to be at the port at 15.30 the ship left only at 1.00 am the 2nd of September. It remained a question to us why the people had to board so soon. By entering a Japanese boat we left China behind us, both with a feeling of returning one day. With 70 rides and 4 trains we reached Qingdao, it took us 40 days!
China was hot, so hot that the sweat sticks to the skin like a layer of Vaseline. And there was no escape. We would often say `Banya-effect gone`, referring to the clean feeling we had after Russian Banya followed by sweating again and feeling dirty like before. But compared to sauna’s where you can escape into cold water, snow or just fresh air, the Chinese weather was there just to bare it. And so we did. I realise that by now I don’t mind the heat anymore. One friend told me about how you can get used to things or create new habits when you hold on for 21 days. Maybe it is true because just to mention some I got used to chopsticks, heat, uncertainty, mosquito bites and a 20 kilo backpack. The same by the way holds true when you want to get rid of bad habits like being angry, jealous or when you complain a lot.
China was not a developing country if I would make a mathematical conclusion of the China I saw. But of course I saw only a little.
China is soooo big. A population of 1.3 billion living on an area of 9.6 million sq km. Some comparisons: Mongolia has only 2.5 million people on an area of 1.5 million sq km and Russia has 144.5 million people on 17 million sq km. China also clearly has more roads and is not like Siberia. But how to grasp these feelings you get about population density. For example I remember that Tuva republic in Russia has 300 thousand inhabitants but over two million of cattle are running around. To me China did feel `full` after Russia and Mongolia. Maybe this feeling was strengthened by some words of Russian drivers about a forthcoming war in 2008 between China and Russia on land issues. In China this was sometimes confirmed or replied with `Oh, this war is already going on`. And Russia indeed has many unsettled border agreements. China is developing so quickly that indeed it’s need for land, water and energy are increasing rapidly. The population is still growing despite the `one child policy` that was introduced in the end of the seventies. It remains a point of discussion if this policy has helped or not. We were of course curious and found out that this policy is not as simple as it seems. In many areas like the country side where workforce is hardly needed to remain self sufficient more children are allowed. In the urban areas you can buy more children, meaning you pay a lot of money and then you are allowed to have more! Other options to circumvent this policy are giving birth abroad (also costly) or abandon your child. We did not get any precise information on a relation between the policy and the number of orphans.
But back to China’s state as a developing country. Of course I saw poverty, I saw many people living with basics, sharing a toilet with several alleys of the hutongs, sleeping on the streets, collecting bottles or living in a house made of some fabric and a bicycle. Almost one fourth of Beijing’s citizens live in old dwellings in the hutongs and I do not know if I can really say so, but I was lucky to see them. In the center (tourist) area of Beijing there are only a few left. Beijing (who that really is I do not know, some city officials maybe, some businessmen?) wants to be a modern city and as such the hutongs, which feel to me like the real China, are swept aside. Some of them to be rebuild on Beijing’s outskirts. With an area of 16.800 sq km (more than half of Belgium) and a population of 12 million you can start to imagine how far away people are forced to live from their `home`. Every year some 10.000 dwellings are ruthlessly bulldozed and with the Olympics coming in 2008 they might almost completely disappear. Of course I ask: `aren’t there any protest movements?` The answer: `what can you do when you get murdered when you protest!` I wonder if this is the China that I like. How can it be so stupid and sad. What is it to live in a country where you have to be silent? I also think about us as foreigners, what can we do? This feeling of wanting to do something leaves me quickly,... too late, too big enemy to fight ...? But the sad feeling that arose from observing such money-minded inhuman projects remains for a long time with me.
Though from the outside China might look modern, we definitely got a glimpse on some issues like the vast hold Chinese leaders have on the people and the country not being free. The Olympics are all over China. People trying to sell shirts to us: `Souvenir, souvenir, different colours, buy, buy`, many flyers, flags and big advertisements. Many food-products carry the logo while slogans and newspapers proudly announce that with the Olympics China will show its rich culture for the first time to the world. All Chinese are called to be part of it (in a socialist Mao-manner). The concrete marathon and modernisation speed are too visible and hurt my eye. I wonder who wants to see this modern China and what about the experience of so many other countries organising the Olympics and going bankrupt?
But again back to `development`. China is doing very well in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is maybe even the world leader in poverty alleviation. From 490 million people living below poverty line in 1990 it counted only 88 million in 2001. These figures still make me so dizzy, especially when I think of the richness I saw. We traveled for example in amazingly luxurious cars and saw many fancy shops. Unfortunately China is also the country known for the biggest gap between rich and poor. Further away from Beijing and many times when being on the road I did see real poverty and it made me feel very confused to see this from windows of expensive cars, driving on very good roads. In an article of the China Daily I read about how the new UNDP head for China tries to develop a plan to reach the MDGs aligned with the XiaoKang Vision that promotes a society in which people are moderately well off and middle class. At first sight it seems a long way to go! More info on XiaoKang: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaokang.
China is so enormous, so complex and mysterious. My time there was an incentive for further investigation. Maybe its history is more attractive to me then its future. I also liked it more to watch a movie like `To Live` (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_live) in an apartment in Beijing on the 21st floor with some real Chinese food then to visit the Summer palace as a tourist. I enjoyed to read sayings of Lao Tse and to get a silk skirt made by a lady on the streets. Observing communism today, its consequences, ruins and deeply rooted structures in very different places like Russia, Mongolia and China gave me lot of `food` for thinking. Reading the book Animal Farm of George Orwell for example while sleeping in the meeting hall of a Chinese police station with `watching` portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are just too different from reading the same book in Antwerp. And maybe just to be clear, we did not do anything wrong to get into that police station near Jining (Shangdong province). We kindly asked to put our tent n their garden but got a meeting hall and a dinner instead. The next morning they arranged a ride for us with a bus to Qingdao (a six hour ride for free). That was maybe also a not too usual ride!
With our initial difficulties of hitchhiking in our mind and after flipping a coin we travelled from Beijing to Xi-an (one of the seven `once capital` cities of China) by train. Also an experience! Frightened by people’s reactions and stories we were prepared for the worst. We bought the cheapest tickets, which means `standing tickets` for 150 Yuan. Already in the bus to the train, standing for one hour was painful, we were about to `stand` for 12 hours! Then it happened to us that we spent 1.5 hour in a Chinese post office to send some packages home and as such we missed our train by 10 minutes. Aaarghhh we think again of worst case scenarios and wait the long ticket line for new ones. Before we realize it we have a ticket for the train two hours later without paying anything. Amazingly easy and our luck does not stop! Standing did not mean to be squeezed like pigs in a wagon without windows; we were simply put in between the seats. I was even more lucky and got on an empty seat. Carina was sitting on her backpack and except from standing up for passengers and food carriages every 5 minutes during the first hours the ride was quite comfortable. Maybe even too comfortable. After our reflections and doubts about this way of traveling, because we also ended up in a youth hostel in Xi-an, we decide to hit the road again. And it went very well, we slept again somewhere in the field/forest along the road and discover the quality of Chinese highway restaurants and facilities. The communication with the drivers goes well enough and two times we end up in a local bus, once when a family takes us with good intentions into the center of Lankou and once when for almost one hour we are surrounded by 60 curious people in the center of Heze where we tried to hitchhike. Places like this where almost no foreigners come were very nice experiences. Also here for example you can eat for 3 Yuan and see true Chinese life. After five people telling us to take a bus we check out how to go to Jining from Heze. 20 Yuan people on the street told us, so we are surprised when the lady at the counter says 75. We say it is too much and leave to check the city map. Before we understand what is happening the lady talks to the bus driver and gives us two tickets for 20 Yuan each. A half-hitchhiked bus? That day was so full, I smiled and enjoyed the views along local small roads.
We arrived sooner then expected in Qingdao where we buy our ticket for Japan. And yes, the boat was called UTOPIA 2. The ladies of the Japanese desk of the travel agency (based in an extremely posh hotel) call a very cheap family hostel mentioned but not recommended by Lonely Planet so we also soon had a roof in this very very western (German) city. We stayed several days here due to health problems. Probably it was the air-conditioning or whatever but first Carina got a severe cold and the second day in Qingdao I got ill as well. With high temperature and great help of our host and neighbours I visit the hospital to treat my flu. The lady of our really small hostel continues to take care of us with healthy porridge, tea, massage and kindness. The hospital though is one of the places where you would stamp China as a developing country but the English speaking nurse took great care of me and also Carina became a nurse. One night at 4 am Carina tells me that the date on our tickets is wrong. We knew the ship was leaving on Thursday but the date showed 30th of August and according to us it should be 31st. We try to calculate but we remain uncertain about the date. The next morning we find out that it is Thursday already. We simply would have missed the boat. Instead of packing Carina went to change the tickets to Saturday 1st so I would be healthier. Though we had to be at the port at 15.30 the ship left only at 1.00 am the 2nd of September. It remained a question to us why the people had to board so soon. By entering a Japanese boat we left China behind us, both with a feeling of returning one day. With 70 rides and 4 trains we reached Qingdao, it took us 40 days!
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