The Road to Hangzhou
We took a jaunt to Hangzhou last weekend, to enable Master Tian to see relatives he hadn't see in years. He was born there, his father Tian Zhaolin having a large house by the lake's edge. A huge character representing "Tian" hung over the entrance. It was, no doubt,t he kind of classical Chinese house with circular doorways and inner courtyards that feautured in Crouching Tiger and that still spurs me to build a centre like it one day. Of that house, paid for by money earned from teaching, nothing remains.The government confiscated it and had it demolished after the Revolution.
Hangzhou is one of the pearls of Chinese tourism. However, our dawn journey there was instructive, shocking and deeply disturbing. With one eye on the rickety bus avoiding death multiple times a minute, we stared in disbelief out the window. The 300 or so miles resembled, in the grey morning mist, a vast Auschwitz-Birkenau; endless grey concrete bunkers squatting under a glowering sky, full of Dead Souls, worker ants harnessed for the factories which are powering the economy, the subject of all the news and paper headlines. The human misery is ignored. The factory flats are surrounded by pale green cabbage fields flecked with plastic flotsam, and punctuated at distressing frequency by fetid cesspits of hellish fluid, where children scamper. Not one tree pauses the sickly monologue, no colour gladdens the scene. Cadmium spills are common, potent carcinogens in the drinking water. All the water here stinks. Toxic sludge oozes from every pipe and every human pore.
When we arrived at the even greyer bus depot, wreathed in diesel fumes, we were sick in our souls. Humans shouldn't live like this. We weren't made for this. Even when we went up to the tea plantation, which was pleasant, we were told the ground water was contaminated. The lake itself was pretty, but so what? Like Irish tourism,a consensus on national treasures leads to sequestration for the generation of cash. Our hosts appreciation of beauty extended to pointed requests for validation of China's greatness. I have heard this in Dublin pubs all too often. A vague unsettlement and insecurity in one's land seeks Mandate By Compliment. The road to leisure is an anaesthetic. You are uglynumbed, so when the beauty spot hoves into view, your reaction is in proportion to the horror you have passed through. Some countries are better than others. France takes pride in its country lanes, every village has a mayor. Bouisse (Pop 45), where I'll be doing my summer retreats, has a full-time gardener looking after the plants and shrubbery. Many Mediterranean countries only preserve their beauty spots after some tourist has pointed it out to them. It is no different with the arts. Bestial humans have played Bach.The icon of the age is a grove dear to Goethe lovingly preserved in a death camp.
China is losing its culture to the Tourist industry, just like in Paddywhack Ireland. Beijing airport gave me the best and only Qin ( kind of sitar) performance I have seen here. The culture is for sale. The Olympics will try to tell you otherwise, but don't believe it. I am Indiana Jones, plucking a rare treasure from the crumbling temple. There have been hiccups here, issues of Confucian "Face" I have little patience for. All is for sale. Old Yang tai chi will wither and die here, slowly asphyxiating in the anoxia of indifference under a leaden-white, cadmium sky.
