Leaving on a Jet Plane...

 “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ” 

Lin Yutang

It seems that, after a mere four week break, that my more far-flung flaneurial duties will be once more resumed in the coming weeks with trips to South China and Thailand. It is a tough job, but someone's gotta do it. In the meantime, I spent the weekend preparing the few odds and sods needed for such a trip. This task was not particularly onerous, chiefly consisting of the obtaining of sufficient funds to get by in my first few weeks in China. This is something one needs to arrange before visiting that particular country, unless one enjoys the hour and a half proceedings that tend to occur every time one endeavours to change money in a Chinese bank in any place other than the most obvious of tourist destinations.
If one already has visas and insurance in place, then it is a simple matter to prepare for such a trip, even when that trip is planned over a period of months rather than weeks. I am sometimes asked by friends and relatives how I set about these things. The answer is surprisingly straightforward; once one has completed such technicalities as visas, insurance and funds, it is simply a matter of getting on a train, then a plane, then….well, that's it...really, that is all there is to it. In the interconnected world in which we live today, such travel is no longer that much of a challenge. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the biggest part of the challenge is the ennui of long journeys on aircraft. Personally, I usually find the 'entertainment' on offer through various films and TV shows very dull, the films being almost invariably of the more commercial type, popular but vacuous. Every now and then a little gem somehow sneaks in, but often as not I scarcely bother these days. Thank heavens for the invention of the e-reader! With this in hand I find I can happily wile away many an hour tucking into the delights of Henry Miller or Anais Nin, or any one of about fifty authors that I am currently indulging in, whilst suspended 40,000 feet above the planet's surface.
In retrospect, I think that the return to the UK at this time of year was perhaps not the best notion that every crossed my mind. The pleasurable part has been catching up with various friends. Oddly, it seems to matter little how far one has travelled or what adventures one has indulged in, on return such relationships, after an obligatory handshake or hug, return to much the same as they were before. This is something that I appreciate very much. Time and distance seem to make little difference, the core of such friendships remains essentially unaffected.
The country itself...hmm, let us just say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, whilst confrontation with the reality of its fundamentally parochial nature, its class struggles, its asinine politics and, on a more banal note, just how cold it is this time of year, soon dissipate one's delusions about the place. The UK can be a very beautiful country, from the end of April to the end of September. If one is fortunate, even October can be reasonably pleasant, the rest of the year it is a struggle simply to survive the cold, the wet, the wind, the mud, the ice and the snow. The days themselves are incredibly short at this time of year, seemingly consisting of a sunrise and a sunset, with scarcely anything in between.
The inward-looking nature of the country can also be a tad wearisome, the somewhat dated beliefs as to its significance bearing little relation to today's reality. There was a time, many, many moons ago now, when Britain was indeed very influential on a global scale. Whether this influence was at all beneficial is another matter. Much of what was done in the name of Empire now looks very dubious with the benefit of hindsight. Numerous examples spring to mind: running India as a company, rather than as a country, the Opium War in which we forced the Chinese to import the drug in return for access to their markets (tea, interestingly, in particular), our efforts in Africa (such dubious efforts as the setting up of the first concentration camps by the British in the course of the Boer War – not as fundamentally awful, admittedly, as later iterations, but still very unpleasant), and...well, I could go on, but suffice it to say that much of the British contribution was not exactly positive in nature, mainly consisting of a ruthless exploitation of raw materials and local populations. Much of the 'civilising' influence claimed was something of an afterthought, the very notion betrays a level of smugness that looks remarkably ill-founded given the pecuniary motivation for almost all of the British interventions.
To be fair, almost every country one visits suffers from similar delusions as to its own influence. America seems to be forever wagging a finger at the rest of the World and lecturing about human rights, whilst conveniently ignoring them on their own escapades around the globe. The Japanese to this day remain in denial of the nature of their occupations during World War Two, a subject that causes much friction with its Asian neighbours. The Chinese and the Russians adopt a slightly different approach wherein they portray themselves as forever victims of foreign aggression, conveniently ignoring the fact that their own leaders were responsible for far more suffering than any invading armies ever inflicted.
And so it goes…
Personally, I rather liked the words of the venerable Thomas Paine on nationalism. This old Thetfordian (interestingly, as I write these words, I am a mere few hundred feet from his birthplace) simply stated:
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
I could not argue with such noble sentiments.

Baby Booming

On a beautifully sunny, even if somewhat breezy, morning in mid-December my nomadic and flaneurial duties have led me to spend some very pleasant time in a branch of Taste Zone, a newly created but very comfortable chain of restaurants in Southern China. This particular outlet has only been open for a few weeks in the town of Chang An (which, as I discovered recently, roughly translates to 'Everlasting Peace') but I have found myself frequenting it on several occasions now. The restaurant /café has rather deep and sumptuous chairs, a relatively good internet connection and a seductively tempting range of breakfast delights at outrageously reasonable prices. Added to this, they allow endless refills of coffee or dou nai (a soya bean based drink), whichever refreshing beverage happens to be more to the customer's tastes. This particular nomadic flaneur feels that he could scarcely wish for more!

          This has become a preferred place for writing as the nearby Cafe de Coral seems to attract a few too many mums who sometimes pop in for a cheap and cheerful breakfast before taking their offspring off to the nearby school. The children are almost invariably well behaved but very energetic, something that I have found throughout my travels in China. Oft times, even the youngest of them seem to enjoy attempting to practice their few words of English on me. Usually this consists of 'Hello' and 'How are you?” followed by a look of total incomprehension when I reply. After that, the normal reaction seems to be to break out in fits of giggles before running back to their smiling mothers.

          This is one feature of Chinese life that is very clear: they love and cherish their children. This may be because of the one child policy followed here, or maybe simply because of the underlying Confucian culture which puts great emphasis on the value of family and relationship. As is usual with so many of these things, the reality probably lies somewhere between the two. The culture values children anyway but the realisation that a family may only ever have one or two children puts even greater value on the children themselves.

          Babies in particular are valued to an extent that is almost fetishistic by European or American standards. Chang An itself has whole streets that seem to be mainly dedicated to baby shops. Whereas the larger main streets of Western cities may have one or, in very exceptional cases, two such outlets, here in China you may see three or four such shops within just a few metres of each other, each apparently doing a roaring trade.

          The one child policy has been much criticised, particularly by those in the West who feel it is a great imposition on personal freedom. To be fair to China though, they are perhaps the only country in the World that has reacted meaningfully to the ominous and looming problems of overpopulation that we all face. At the time it was imposed, once again mainly due to the insight of that most far-sighted and shrewd of politicians, Deng Xiaoping, China's population has already reached a billion. Twenty five years later the population seems to be peaking at around 1.4 billion and to be achieving the levels of stability that were first envisioned all those years ago. It is believed that without Deng's measures there would now have been something like three hundred million additional citizens living in the People's Republic.

          In contrast to this, India's politicians have singularly failed to even address the issue and their population has nearly doubled over the same period of time. If projections are to be believed, India will surpass China as the World's most populace country within the next few years. Given the relative sizes of the two countries, one feels that a sorry fate awaits the Indian sub-continent.

          An interesting graph to look at is that of the planet's population over the last two thousand years. It is remarkably steady at around half a billion all the way up to the industrial revolution. After that it begins to take off, the line of the graph growing ever steeper and steeper as we move into the 21^st century. At the time of writing, the World's population presently exceeds seven billion. Clearly, if the numbers go on increasing at such a rate (and it is hard to see how that could be avoided) we will reach unsustainable levels in the not very distant future.

          Given that, great credit must go to China in this. Most of the brighter folk around the World seem all too well aware of the imminent threat of global warming, even if those given to consuming their information from less reliable sources will be forever in denial. With regards to the population problem though, there is an almost deafening silence.

          China is still a very overcrowded country but they do seem to have a grip on the problem now. Socially the restrictions of the one child policy are likely to have many unforeseen effects but, in the short term at least, one cannot help but be impressed by the individual attitudes of the parents to their children and by the children themselves. They seem to intuit, even the youngest of them, that they are loved, that they are appreciated, that they are cherished. Like children everywhere, the youngest will still throw the occasional tantrum, tears will occasionally flow, but here such unhappiness seems to be short lived and the child will quickly be comforted by their parents, safe and secure in the knowledge that they are wanted, that they are loved. The smiles soon return.

          Back in the café, two hours have passed very pleasantly, apart from the slightly annoying repetitive playing of Christmas carols; I had fervently hoped that I had escaped that particular fate when I left the West in November. Oh well, at least it is not John Lennon, Kirsty McColl and the like; I guess I should be grateful for such small mercies. I consume yet another cup of dou nai, a little too sweet for my tastes but the Chinese seem to like their drinks so.  The sun is shining brightly outside and the day is wearing on. Time to leave now methinks; pleasant as this place is, there is much to do today and I think I may have indulged in the seductive pleasures of blogging a tad too  much for one day already.