On my first visit to China
this year, these images came alive. The foo dogs grinned everywhere - outside every
restaurant, in every street, at every hotel entrance, in stone, porcelain, wood, every
colour and size.
I heard the click of mah-jong
tiles in the small towns and cities like Dazu, where people take
an evening stroll, a paseo, along the
‘high street’. In the open shops,
like garages with no doors, on the ground floors of blocks of flats, enterprising
residents sell food, run a pharmacy, sew garments for local and tourist trade. In these shops at night, open to the sidewalk,
the men gather, sit at small tables on low chairs, absorbed in mah-jong games, clicking
the ivory tiles as though throwing dice.
Classic
scenes of peasants ploughing a rice field, wooden plough harnessed to a
water buffalo, appear as you drive through the countryside, as timeless as
your imagination remembers. But more often than not, the farmer is wearing
chinos and a sport shirt, although his hat to shade him from the sun is the
age old bamboo ‘coolie’.
Mao’s picture is
everywhere, on souvenir china plates, on posters, on
schoolroom walls. His heroic figure leads a persevering band of courageous peasants on the
Long March, immortalised in a monumental stone sculpture overlooking Beijing’s
Tiananmen Square.
You can read about uprisings in
the newspapers today, but not led by students. The
scattered rebellions are workers’ protests, for better economic conditions
(not democracy) as the new market economy
shuts down state owned enterprises and free health care, pensions, housing provided by the
factories disappear.
There is a spirit of
entrepreneurship that would win the applause of any gung-ho
Western entrepreneur. Cruising the Yangtze
River in a five-star river cruise ship, I talked to the deputy ship director, Vic Lacap. The ship, the MS East King and her sister ship the
MS East Queen, are the products of three young Chinese bankers who recognised a niche in
the Yangtze River cruise market, the need for upscale accommodation. They did their business plan, attracted a major
investment from the internationally- renowned Holiday
Inn Hotel Group, and six years ago launched the two luxury boats, replete with air-
conditioned cabins, en- suite bathrooms, TV, sun decks, and good
Chinese food, better than the gloppy cuisine tolerated in the UK and the US, but not as exquisite as the 20-course
dumpling feast we ate in a huge, bustling restaurant in Xi’An.
A monumental
symbol of the vitality of the new China is the Yangtze’s Three Gorges Dam, which when
completed will be the world’s largest, now the object of vociferous controversy and
worldwide protest. Chinese and Western
visitors alike are moved to formulate an opinion.
Our group spent many hours discussing its pros and cons. The aim is to
make navigable stretches along the river’s 3,964 mile course (the world’s
third longest river next to the Nile and the Amazon); bring hydroelectricity
to millions of homes, and control the floods that for centuries have swept
away countless lives and livelihoods along its lower reaches.
But what of the environmental damage?
Some experts fear that controlling the silt to protect the dam may irretrievably
erode the downstream riverbed.
On the slopes of the towering mountains along the river are the
stone grey villages that will disappear beneath the reservoir. Above them are newly built villages and blocks of
white flats. These will not be sufficient to rehouse all of the 1.4 million who will lose
their homes when the water level of the river
is raised.
If such construction wonders don’t quite do it for you, then
the aesthetic experience of Huang Shan, a mountain range of 36 peaks in the province of
Anhui, will raise your levels of wonder. It
is a painting come to life. Picture yourself
in one of those familiar Chinese landscape scrolls that depict towering peaks rising above
a sea of clouds with grotesque pine trees twisting from the rock pinnacles.
You can stand on top of one of these peaks, having ridden half way in a cable car and then hiked for three hours up
torturing stone steps. Take in a scene that
harks to the time the earth was being formed and the peaks rose until they almost reached
the heavens – as far as the Gods would allow.
The strange rock formations were given names by generations of
pilgrim hikers and Buddhist followers - Three
Large Buddhas, A Monkey Gaping at the Seas, and most spiritual of all, Beginning to
Believe Peak.
Come down from the peaks and sit on the deck of your guest house and
gaze at more vistas while sipping a bowl of “eight treasures tea”, a fragrant
brew of chrysanthemum flowers, exotic seeds and spices.
For the insatiable, there’s a 4:30 am rise in which you hike in darkness to
view the sun rise over these treasured peaks.
You may be pleased to
know that this experience is not just laid on for the
tourists. Thousands of Chinese make the climb
to Huang Shan every year. The hubbub of
Chinese voices adds a curious comfort and reminds that the wonders of the world attract
visitors from near and far, because they are, after all, wonders.
TRAVEL BRIEF
Cruises range from around £2000 for 17 nights, shorter tours from
about £600 - £1000
Kuoni Worldwide: tel 01306 747000.
Hayes and Jarvis: tel
0870 89 89 890
China Direct: tel 020 7538 2840
Asiaworld Travel: tel
08700 799 788
On-line general information:
www.cyberway-to-china.com/index.html
Jeanne
Davis describes for us her recent tour of China when her collage of childhood images came
to life. 
