Our trip to Beijing was wonderful and exhausting.
Over the past few weeks I've been listening to a series of lectures about the history of China over the course of 19th and 20th centuries and was pleased to find out the hotel we were staying at had a bit of history behind it. Supposedly it was built at the location where Edgar Snow wrote "Red Star Over China" based on interviews with Mao and other Chinese communists during the communist revolution. One of the hotel's lobbies had a documentary about Edgar Snow running continuously that I enjoyed watching in the morning for a few minutes before taking off each day.
The first full day in Beijing we visited the Forbidden City. Following that, I spent a few hours wandering around Beijing looking for a store that sold imported toiletries before meeting up with the rest of IRES gang for dinner.
The second day started with a tour of the Great Wall in the rain. The previous day was blisteringly hot so the cool air that came with the rain provided some welcome relief though it made climbing the steep slopes of the Great wall and the adjacent walking paths more treacherous. In the afternoon we checked out the Summer Palace and wrapped things up with burgers for dinner.
These first two days were all about visiting some of the greatest sites constructed by pre-modern China. One of the most affecting aspects of these visits was their enormous scope. Individually the Great Wall, Summer Palace, and the Forbidden City were awesome but taking them as a collection makes them even more impressive. Because the People's Republic of China is relatively young (we're approaching the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC) and has had such a difficult time modernizing, it's a little strange to remember that for centuries China was ruled by powerful and prosperous empires. It's one thing to know on an intellectual level that China was once rich and powerful but experiencing those locations in person illustrates makes that fact much more real. I was also left with sense that China has changed drastically over the last 100 years. Imperial China and modern China seem so totally different from one another culturally, politically, and economically that I find it very difficult to see any link uniting them at all, but I suspect that this apparent discontinuity is primarily the result of my ignorance. Once I finish the audio lectures about modern China I think I'd like to learn more about China's imperial period.
Our final day in Beijing I went off on my own to visit the National Museum. The museum was absolutely massive and it had a number of exhibits some of which were more artistic in nature while others had more of a historical focus. I was primarily interested in the two permanent exhibits which were both historical in nature: one covered pre-history to the end of Imperial China the other covered Chinese "rejuvenation" over the last 100-200 years. The exhibit on ancient China started off with a plaque explaining that it would focus on several themes including the "historical course of building a multi-ethnic society". Given events in Tibet and Xinjiang I was curious to see how China's ethnic diversity would be discussed. The overall message was a very optimistic one about the ways in which the different ethnic groups had interacted and exchanged cultures over the centuries of Chinese history. China was presented as being more powerful when united and diverse ethnic groups working together and exchanging culture seemed to be embraced as a core part of China's history. I'm not sure how representative the attitudes expressed in the exhibit are of the views of ordinary people or government officials, but since visiting the exhibit I've thought a lot about how this nice sounding rhetoric relates to China's inhumane treatment of ethnic minorities. Unity and cultural mixing are good but I'm afraid that the cultural genocide in Xinjiang is what those values can look like when misapplied.
The next exhibit I visited was one focused on the history of modern China. One thing that stuck out to me was how much the socialist aspects of Mao's revolution were emphasized. When I walk around major Chinese cities and luxury cars juxtaposed against beggars I'm left with the distinct impression that what they call "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is just capitalism with less democratic control of the government. Given the drastic changes to the Chinese economy that have taken places since the late 70's it would make sense to me if the socialist aspects of the revolution were minimized. Does China's authoritarian government really want overworked Chinese workers learning about a violent revolution to end economic exploitation? Another exhibit currently at the national museum is showcase of sculptures by a Chinese artist many of which depicted prominent communists including Marx, Engels, and Mao. This tension between a communist government ruling a de facto capitalist society has been one of the more striking characteristics of my trip to China. As an aside, the downsides of China's turn to capitalism and the West are explored in the films of a Chinese director Jia Zhangke. I've watched a couple of his films since coming to China and feel like they offer an interesting perspective on Chinese society.
After visiting the museum I visited the Temple of Earth while enjoying a light rain. That evening I met up with a few other students for dinner and loaded up on souvenirs.
So far my trip to China has been fascinating. I came to China with lots of questions about Chinese values, politics, and its relationship with the rest of the world. I think I'll leave China with few answers but lots of material for reflection.
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