Somehow, and I’m not quite sure how yet, there’s an innate difference between when the kid sitting next to you on your flight is screaming in a language you know or in a foreign one.  It has something to do with empathy, guilt, and recognizing where he’s coming from, that in a foreign language just isn’t there.  At least not at first.  But then he smiles and looks outside the window, distracted by the endless clouds, or brushes his fingers against your arm hair, because his curiosity overcame the common etiquette his father had taught him. 

Cross cultural communication begins at that exact moment, when curiosity overcomes the taboos, when the desire to fully encounter the other overcomes the do’s and don’ts that you were taught.  Its when you can finally see beyond the mumble of unrecognizable words and sounds.  It’s when you recognize something so basic, an observation that transcends the simplicity of conversing and allows you see who the person in front of you is.

But that moment of innate humanity and empathy that you had worked on so hard in order to see through that mumble of incoherence, is also limited in its scope.  It can’t overwhelm you into endless conversations about the world, it can’t reach the other person to the depths of their souls, and it can’t even tell you that what you see is wrong.  Because it’s only about what you see, and not about what the other person tries to tell you.

Somehow, and I’m not quite sure how yet, this is how I feel about my month and a half in China and Laos.  It had more to do with what I was able to see and experience, than about the people themselves.  It had more to do with my desire to explore, than my desire to change. 

And at the end of the day, I’m ok with that.  There’s a time and place for everything, and maybe I should save change for places that I can really make a difference.

 

I’m heading home now for a healthy dose of reality, something I haven’t had in three months. 

Happy Birthday to me.

Where the old and the new collide

Beijing. Bei mothafuckin’ jing. Where the streets don’t smell like sewage and the subway has English just below those gibrishy characters I can’t understand.  Where the streets are filled with the flashy and familiar KFC and Micky D’s signs, where Chinese bakeries put ketchup on a croissant and Smoothie stores sell grapefruit sense ice tea, where both noodles and rice are a constant staple, and where baozi and mantou are sold from every street corner. And grilled scorpion on a skewer, of course (which apparently is not really a Chinese dish, but rather something you sell to stupid Orientalist foreigners who think that’s what Chinese eat). Sichuan, Yunan, or Tibeten, Jamaican, Korean or German food are all just around the corner.  You name it, it’s here.  Where the skyscrapers collide with the Houtongs, and the cranes are no longer a looming presence upon us, reminding us that everywhere in the west is still growing and growing but Beijing has hit its development peak. Coming back to the east coast after a month in the western Chinese frontier, I can finally see what the west will look like in the near future, only the western version is, as Daft Punk would put it - harder better faster stronger. 

In Beijing, the first thing we did was shopping, of course.  The students had longed for a stint of plain western consumerism from the moment we landed in Guangzhou, on our first day in China.  Reluctantly, we allowed for it to happen at the grandiose Silk Market, which is definitely not silky and not really a market.  They went bargaining for western knock-offs for ridiculous prices, while I enjoyed a nice cold beer in the ally below.  We continued for a night in the touristy night market, where they sell kitschy touristy bullshit for outrageous prices selling you a Chinese experience that is probably foreign to most Chinese people.  But it’s a staple in Beijing, so we gots to do, what we gots to do. The high rises ceased to be the kind of hastily built, monotonous, buildings we had seen out west, but rather the skyscrapers in Beijing merged together into a cohesive assortment of well zoned areas and buildings.  The order of the buildings made sense, the roads were wide, the sidewalks existed and the shopping malls weren’t shoved vicariously underground, but rather placed with some intention to promote the pure essence of the area – consumerism. 

The next day I had the chance to wander off by myself again.  The area we are in is the older part of Beijing with many Houtongs, which are small, narrow alley ways.  The zoning restrictions declared the area to be of historical value, and forbade the building of high rises here.  Every other alley has a public bathroom because they don’t have running water in their houses.  Twenty minutes away from that center of grotesque lavishness, there was also an appreciation towards a historical way of living.  Whether that’s good or not is irrelevant (at least for this post), but that a city with such history cherishes not only the emperors’ palaces and gardens, but the lowers classes current lifestyles was something I had not seen until now.

The development in Western China we had seen for the past three weeks was beyond colossal.  I wish I had counted the amount of cranes I had seen on this trip, but the statistics I had seen stated that around 45,000 skyscrapers will be built in China by 2025. Beijing seems to be beyond that point.  With a western GDP per capita, and infinite amounts of consumer choices, but also a deep sense of history and antiquity it allows the deeper tensions we had experienced in the western regions to dissipate.  The Han vs. Tibetan and Hui, the modernity vs. tradition, the individualism vs, collectivism, all of which we struggled with to find balance between no longer exist in Beijing.  Here one side has been declared victorious already, and we can just enjoy the ride from here on out. 

And maybe it’s because of the Israeli blood that runs through my veins, but I sure do love them tensions.  And although I love the city, and the consumerism and the comfort, I would choose the west of China over the east in a heartbeat.  I’d take a vivid, clashing contrast of a dynamic frontier over a placid, decadent, flat lined city. Any day.