01.30.07

Dispatches from the Bamboo Curtain – Introduction

Posted in China at 6:36 pm by Sulla

24 years ago, I moved from Los Angeles to Seoul, South Korea, where I lived for 18 months. It was my first visit outside the continental US, and a revelation – although there were many obvious differences, much was also the same, or similar enough to help minimize my culture shock. That changed as I later ventured into the smaller towns and villages. But cities, I guessed, were largely the same, wherever they may be.

My experience in China was much the same. I never left the airport in Beijing, which looked like every major airport I’ve been in: huge, noisy, overflowing with shops and cafes, and crowded with sweaty impatient people all eager to be somewhere else. The traffic in the city of Xi’an was insane, but not much worse than I’d seen in parts of Boston. And Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province? West L.A. mashed up with Chinatown, only not so Chinese.

In Korea, the younger me needed the familiarity of the city. In China, I couldn’t wait to escape the cities and get into the countryside. Even when there was interesting stuff to see in the cities – and there was – we had to fight through standard city crud to get to it.

We spent our first week in Xi’an, a city with thousands of years of history but whose attention to its ancient roots is relatively new, starting in 1976 when a farmer uncovered the first of the terra cotta warriors from the Qin dynasty of 200BC. Now it’s a mix of dozens of universities, and dozens of historical sites. But beyond the sites of interest, we found it cold, polluted, chaotic, and not that interesting.

So when we flew to Guilin in south-central China, I learned a new word: karst. Here’s an example:

In the Guilin area, these suckers grow like weeds, and attract mist like magnets. We spent a few hours on the Li River, where views like this were inescapable.

This was the China I came to see, and for the latter half of our trip, we stayed mostly in countryside, small towns, and where possible, the “old towns” of cities. That decision, while often uncomfortable, was also what made the trip most memorable.

More to come.