China

Entry 15.

After a long hiatus, it has taken a return to train travel to get me back to updating my blog. I am currently on a train from ZhengZhou going to Beijing. Never heard of the first one? It’s a city bigger than New York.

After not being able to sleep on the 14 hour flight from Houston to Tokyo, we took another five hour flight to Hong Kong, where we took a taxi to the hotel and promptly fell asleep. The next morning we were picked up at the hotel and driven to the border control checkpoint with China. It felt like a huge waste going through Hong Kong without seeing any of it, but that was just one of many things that was different about traveling on a business trip than as a backpacker; we had stayed in a four star hotel the night before and had breakfast delivered to our room. On our way to the Shenzhen converter station, we passed the Foxconn complex, where Apple produces most of their products. The windows were barred and the buildings surrounded by nettings to prevent suicides. Our guide said that the entire city had sprung up around the complex to supply the 400,000 people that worked there. Despite not understanding any of the technical language of the tour, one striking thing was the fact that all the engineers there were very young and were in charge of running the power station that was supplying a city of 10 million. We all got back into the car and went to the Ghenzgou converter station that was absolutely immense, and despite being only a few years old, was filthy because of all the pollution in the air. After eating a horrible meal at the Bamboo Café at the airport, we took a flight from Ghenzgou to Shanghai. Still jet-lagged, I was asleep before the plane took off and was only awoken by the tires slamming into the ground. Traveling by plane is quite an ordeal in China, the plane was packed with more seats than a Ryan air flight and the seat backs are a foot shorter than normal ones so the head rests were level with my shoulders. As soon as the plane comes to a stop, before waiting for the unfasten seat belts sign to go off, everyone stands up at once and make a mad dash towards the exit. The next morning my dad, Deral and I went for a run around Shanghai and it was shocking to be running down a 6 lane highway and turn off of it and be in a narrow alley with 2 story decrepitate buildings and feral dogs everywhere. All in the shadow of an immense skyscraper under construction. It was apparent that that neighborhood was not going to last long. The government was soon going to come in and knock down all the buildings, and build a few skyscrapers in their place and to hell to the people who refused to leave their homes. During the run, everyone stared at us like they’d never seen a white person before. After two more boring electrical transmission related tours, we went out to dinner with one of my dad’s friend who lived in the French Legion. We then walked along the Bund, which almost rivaled New York in terms of the amount of buildings light up. At 10 o’clock though, all the lights shut off in order to preserve energy and the whole place suddenly got very eerie. The next morning we took a tour of the city and despite driving 40 minutes of relatively little traffic, the endless sea of apartments and skyscrapers did not end. We then went to the Urban Planning Museum with a mind blowing model of the downtown area of the city, a 110km² area (inside 610 is 250km²) with 10 million people. We then went to “the gardens” which turned out to be the tourist shopping area, which I thought would be swarming with fat, annoying Americans but I hardly saw any white people, and most of the tourists looked to be from inside China or neighboring Asian countries. We then drove to airport were instead of getting on an airplane we got on the Maglev train back into the middle of the city. Probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. My dad and I had been talking about riding it for years, but I honestly didn’t think I would ever ride it. It’s the only fast maglev train in the world, and at 430 km/hr it’s also the fastest train in the world. The ride was a quick seven minutes, but it seemed like even less. We drove back to the airport and took a plane to ZhengZhou and drove the 90 km to an adjacent city of just 4 million. We checked into a very nice five star hotel that was a mere 40 dollars a night and wandered downstairs to check out the gym. As soon as the stepped out of the elevator, five people suddenly looked up as if they hadn’t seen anyone come down there, ever. And they seemed doubly surprised to see a bunch of white people. After an awkward attempt to explain that we were just wandering around and didn’t want a massage or anything, we got to the pool were there were three lifeguards supervising an empty pool. That night we went to what I guess is a traditional fancy Chinese dinner. Of the twenty or so plates that we all shared, not one of them was remotely appetizing, not even the sea cucumber soup.

                The next morning we went to a wind turbine factory that didn’t seem to actually making anything. While we were there, the workers were just moving things back and forth with no real purpose. No one was assembling anything or even had any tools in hand. It seemed quite possible that they had all been called in that day just to make it look to us that they were busy. The site manager explained that they were running at about 5% of their total manufacturing output. Driving from the factory to another factory, we drove on brand new 8 land highways with perfectly manicured gardens lining the entire road and a small army of people sweeping leaves off the road, but literally no other cars but us. The roadside was filled with massive apartment building complexes that were completely empty. It looked like a scene from Inception when Leonardo DiCaprio walks through his perfectly designed city with no one else in it and rows of empty buildings as far as the eye can see. The whole place seemed like a Potemkin Village. We arrived at the second factory were everything seemed rather out of place as well, there were a large amount of people just standing around doing idle work or nothing at all. In a corner of the factory there was a group of people hunched over computers programing, but when I looked closer, a fair number of them didn’t even have a computer in front of them. They were just staring ahead at empty space.

                After thanking our guide and host, we drove through the deserted streets and past the empty apartment complexes and on to ZhengZhou where we finally saw some the throngs of people that we had begun to wonder if even existed. Pulling up to the train station, we stopped in the middle of the intersection and cars just flowed around us as if it was completely normal. We got out and walked across a plaza to the train station entrance and were stared down by just about everyone. It was pretty obvious that they had either never seen a foreigner before or they were very very rare occasions. The train station was straight out of an India movie, with throngs of people everywhere. I put my bag through the x-ray machine and then walked through the metal detector. The metal detector went off, and I the people who were supposed to be reading the x ray machine were talking to each other and not even looking at their screens. I picked up my bag and walked past a group of 5 or so people with metal detector wands who didn’t even budge to wave me down.  After a series of awkward, failed conversations we finally found our waiting room where I went past another pathetic security check consisting of a wave of a metal detector across the belly.  Twenty minutes later I was settling into my seat on the train, just like old times. But this time in first class.

                In Beijing we finally got in our tourist stuff, visiting The Great Wall, The Forbidden Palace, going to a tea house, and among other things, visiting the “old” part of town. We did a rickshaw tour a hutong district of the city where we rode through the narrow streets of the town. At one point, my dad and I got off and went to the bathroom and when I walked in, I found 3 very old Chinese men squatting over some squatter toilets with no dividers and only a few inches between them. They all glared at me in what was possibly the most awkward exchange of my life, and I went to the urinal and managed to contain my laughter until walking outside of the bathroom. We then went to a family’s home where they were preparing a typical meal for us. As we walked in, I was struck at how small it was. There was a main room with a table and a bed (for the only child), a bedroom, and a kitchen. There were communal bathrooms in the courtyard. The meal was one of the best I’ve ever had, and after eating all sorts of weird, exotic foods at fancy meals, it was oddly reminiscent of Chinese food in America; lots of stir fry, rice and dumplings. Despite living in such a poor part of town, the family had a flatscreen TV, highspeed internet, computer, AC, central heating, hot water, and a telephone.

                Overall the trip was like walking into a different world. For me, the term cheaper labor used to just mean cheap stuff in America for me. But it’s incredible to see roads improvements being built that would be unimaginable in America just because you can have an army of workers working on it for two dollars a day. Even crazier is the fact that they are content with that; it’s better “digging for worms in the countryside” as one middle class mom told us she remembered she used to do as a child.