After a somewhat elongated gap, this blog now continues from the ancient English town of Thetford, snuggled comfortably amongst the extensive forests of North Suffolk and South Norfolk. At one time, the town of Thetford had the honour of being the sixth largest in England but ... that was long, long ago, back in the times of the Angles and the Saxons. One can still find a motte and bailey castle here, built by William of Normandy no less, the bastard King who took over England in 1066 and imposed the archaic system of monarchy and lords that still besets this benighted land to this day. Basically, the system was designed to take as much of the land as possible from the natives and put it in the hands of their Norman conquerors. Oddly, many people who consider themselves patriotic Englishmen will vehemently defend these ancient injustices, apparently unaware that they are not English in the first place, but simply a system imposed by those who vanquished their forefathers in 1066.
For my part, I am very much looking forward to resuming my travels in the coming months. The first port of call is likely to be Dongguan, in Guangdong province, which holds a place in British history as the scene of much of the fighting in the Opium Wars of the mid 19th century. As bringers of culture and civilisation to the rest of the planet, the British sought to insist that the Chinese take opium from Turkey and India in payment for that much sought after commodity, in Britain at least, tea. At the time, due to the social problems that we are only all too well aware of in this day, the use of opium had been made illegal in China. The British, in their beneficence, believed that the importation of this drug was a necessity to improve the rather one sided balance of payment deficit with China.
The problem for the British was that, despite the industrial revolution, the Chinese felt that they had little to offer China and displayed a somewhat high-handed disdain for the baubles that the UK produced. This attitude was not overly welcome to the British, as they had a need of the tea which was produced in such an abundance in China. When the Chinese refused their entreaties, the British started illegally importing opium into China. When challenged, they organised an incident which led to the opium war, a hopelessly one sided affair whereby a relatively backward Chinese military was easily defeated by the far more 'advanced' forces of the West (the US and the French also felt a need to back the importation of opium into China).
Interestingly, for those who enjoy the history of such matters, this is how the British came by Hong Kong. It was part of the settlement agreed (read 'imposed') on the Chinese at the conclusion of the First Opium War, as part of the treaty of Nanking. I was in the UK at the time the Brits handed back Hong Kong, yet oddly much of this history remained unreported. I wonder why?
The journey to China is a long one, something like eleven hours to Beijing, followed by another three to four hours down to Guangzhou. Such gargantuan expeditions have to be approached in a very relaxed frame of mind to make them bearable. The avoidance of rushing and a healthy disdain for the ongoing sense of urgency that queuing in airports tends to engender, is more or less obligatory if one wishes to arrive in a relatively unstressed state of mind.
This will be my fifth visit to China; each time there seems to be some improvement in the less pleasant aspects. From a purely subjective point of view, the aspects that I have found particularly challenging have been firstly the pollution levels, which can be unbelievably bad by Western standards: the casual expectorating in the streets; and the chaotic traffic which seem to obey just the two rules: Rule one - there are no rules. Rule two - see rule one.
To be fair though, it has been noticeable that in each of my visits some level of improvement was apparent in each of these problems. The pollution, whilst still bad, seems to be getting better. Xi Jin Ping and his government seem to have made something of a priority out of that issue and the effects of this attitude are readily apparent. It is no Garden of Eden as yet, but every year it seems somewhat better than the previous.
The expectorating, likewise, seems to improve each time. Maybe it is just me, but the experience of dining al fresco in one of the many excellent restaurants of Chang An was often rendered somewhat less than pleasant by the sound of, or even the sight of, folks indulgently gobbing in the immediate vicinity. Such actions were by no means limited by age or sex. Sometimes one would observe apparently young and healthy females quite unashamedly sharing the content of their bronchial tubes with all and sundry. Last year, the occurrences of such reprehensible anti-social behaviour were much less than in 2013. I am sincerely hoping that this a similar improvement will be observed ...
Finally, driving. What can one say above driving in China that hasn't been said many, many times before? It has to be seen to be believed. The sheer callousness of the Chinese motorists to all others that share the road and, in particular, to pedestrians is hard to appreciate unless one has actually experienced it directly. They are, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely awful. Now, as with the other problems, they do seem to be improving, but it is only a relative improvement; they still have a long, long way to go before they reach anything approaching a sensible standard.
Having said all that, the positives generally outweigh the negatives, and so I find myself looking forward with some anticipation to finding myself in the Middle Country once again (Zhong Guo, as China is known to the Chinese, literally means the middle or central country. This is because, in ancient times, the Chinese considered themselves to be at the very centre of civilization. Oddly, this same irrational belief in the relative importance of one's own land and culture seems to affect almost every nationality around the globe. Something to do with education, I am guessing).
China has an ancient and venerable culture, many aspects of which one can still see and experience to this day. Tis true that in the rush to 'modernize' much has been laid waste or buried under a mountain of concrete, but ideas, philosophies and cultures often take more eradicating than the clumsy implementation of five year plans can manage, though if persisted in long enough, such short-termism can, eventually, destroy even the most venerable of systems.
For now though, and in the next few days, there are many odds and sods to tidy up before the re-commencement of my travels. For the last five months this nomadic flanneur has not been particularly nomadic, apart from a brief sojourn to Madrid to visit a friend and one or two trips within the UK. So it is with a tinge of excitement that I find myself once more to be in a position to resume nomadic activities and indulge in the finer flanneurial arts once again.
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