(A special thanks to Adam Nelson, some of whose phrases I ably stole and reiterated in the case to make my point on China.)
One
of my best friends and I have known each other for almost 21 years now.
Growing up, we were inseparable. One of our favorite pastimes was to
visit her grandparents, who lived between us, only two or three blocks
away from each of us. I remember evenings with her family there - her
grandmother would cook spaghetti and invite me to stay for dinner.
Gladly I would do so, not thinking that I would ever get older, that
things would change.
It
had been a long time since I had seen Pap-pap. A few months ago, him
looking pretty much the same as ever, I approached him and hugged him,
surprised that he seemed to remember me, despite the fact that I was
taller, thinner, and my hair was 12 inches shorter.
My
friend has been updating me on him since, telling me when he asks about
me and the funny things that he says. When my friend reminded him that I
had studied abroad in China and was studying China as an academic
subject, he frankly asked,
"What the hell is it she likes about China?!"
Thanks, Pap-pap.
Little did he know that I had absolutely no answer for that question.
It's
been almost three years now since I returned from Beijing. When I was
about to leave, I couldn't wait. I was excited to return home and vowed
that, while I might visit, I would never again spend 6 months in China.
I hated it. My expectations were nothing akin to what it was that I
truly experienced. I had expected wise men wandering the streets, full
of advice for anyone who would listen, middle-aged men sitting on the
street playing Chinese chess, temples, Confucianism, and the Great Wall.
I had expected to see the nation with the world's strongest maritime
fleets in history, that "discovered" America before Columbus, that
invented gunpowder, fireworks, paper, and the compass, and whose history
dates back over four thousand years.
All
these things I found, but not in the way that I had expected. Mere
glimpses of this particular past are all that remain, in most cases.
Since then, I have worked a full-time job, been in a committed
relationship, and am looking forward to graduate school. And now, I
can't wait to return to China.
When other students travel to Spain or Germany or Japan and they are faced with the question, "How was (insert name of country here)?"
the response I often hear is, "It was awesome!" When I am faced with
the question, "How was China?" I often find that I haven't any idea what
to say.
Since
returning, I have had career crises, identity crises, you name it. As a
performer, always having been involved in acting, singing and dancing,
seeing China's lack of interest in the arts was particularly difficult
for me to bear. There was a period of about a month when I thought I had
ruined my life by studying China and wished I had chosen Japan instead,
the font of cultural creativity.
In my quest to find just exactly what the hell is was that
I liked about China, I started reading many books, watching
documentaries, and talking to people about their interest in the
country. And I became hooked. I have heard it said that "what you
realize, being abroad, are all the things you love and miss when they’re
gone. What you realize, coming back, are all the things you’ve left
behind." Nothing could be truer.
To
this day, I can't tell you what it is that fascinates me about this
place. Maybe I never will be able to articulate it. It is a crazy place,
unlike anything you've ever seen or experienced - a country caught
between tradition and modernization, both of which they simultaneously
reject and embrace. A nation still on the birth of what we Westerners
deem as "modernization", one leg rooted firmly in the past and one just
barely crossing the line into the here and now. It is a country with
ideals and theories fraught with contradictions.
Simultaneously,
this country is a font of natural beauty not to be found anywhere else
on the planet. A typical mountain scene painted in the traditional
Chinese style of brush painting leads many people to believe that these
natural scenes of astounding beauty are a thing from the past, that
existed in another lifetime far removed from today’s day and age. I can
tell you they are not. They still exist. You simply have to seek them
out. The grandeur will astonish you.
I can't tell you anything about China. I can't even speak about it.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, then dreamt of in your philosophy.
You simply have to see it to believe it.
