I’m sorry for my absence.
A lot has happened in the past month and I was mostly in China for it, but for some reason I wasn’t able to get onto WordPress, so I’m sitting here typing my thoughts out now, at 1:47am, Feb 17.
I’m unable to sleep. My body is still stuck in China time, and I’m not due to sleep for about another 3 hours at least. My house is silent. It’s quite peaceful actually… 🙂 So here I begin my journey!
I’m planning to upload a big FB album of all my photos in chronological order, so I won’t go into details of exactly what I did each day in China. I have a few points that stood out to me during this trip though.
1. Family is so precious
I haven’t seen my grandpa, aunties, uncles, little cousins and big cousins in YEARS, but the warmth they project out to me is so heartwarming. I spent CNY with my extended family in Southern China, and I can definitely say it was one of the highlights of my trip. I didn’t need an expensive house, or expensive food to keep me happy. My fondest memory with them is when one day, we went up a snowy mountain and it was absolutely beautiful. Grandpa said that it hadn’t snowed like this in years, and I think we were really lucky to have stumbled upon it 🙂 The snow was just thick enough to play with, but not too thick so that it became a hazard.
The snowfight started when my big cousin was like, “Sunny come over here quickly!” and me, being the innocent girl, ran over to him and he kicked a tree as I did that; all the snow on the tree fell on my head. Enraged, the war started. I got back at him, and then an aunty joined in (she is usually really well behaved and lovely) which meant it got SERIOUS. Eventually, my parents, my dad’s 3 younger brothers and their wives, 2 big cousins, my brother, and 3 little cousins were all involved as we tried to hit each other and duck etc. You could trust no one. It was really sweet 🙂 Everyone’s hands were frozen until they were swollen and red and then later on really hot, but we still kept playing because it was such an amazing family time.
My big cousin threw snow down my back and I couldn’t get it out; I could only painfully wait as it melted against hot skin. I got back at him by throwing it down HIS top haha.
Then, at night, me, cousins and aunties and uncles would play cards together while watching tv, and sitting with the fire. Sometimes they games would get intense and they’d gamble money (1 dollar, 2 dollars) but I’d never haha. We’d play game after game, day after day, night after night. We’d shout, we’d be gleeful, we’d be like “I’m sitting in a bad fengshui seat” etc etc.
Every night, there’d be a HUGE table (with the rolling thingys so everyone can reach the plates of food) and there’d often be two tables; one for adults and one for children. Every night was like CNY eve and everyday we had so much fun together. Of course, all things must come to an end, and it was so hard to say goodbye to the people that have made me so happy, feel so loved and welcomed and comfortable. On the car trip to the train station, I cried a lot. I missed them, but most of all, I think I was just incredibly touched by their genuine nature.
When we left, my grandpa, who is so so so tough, had tears in his eyes as he said goodbye to us. That made me cry even more. I love my family. They are so precious, and I am so lucky to have them.
2. Many people are money hungry, and it is brutal.
This happens in many places in China, but the one example I have is in Shanghai. On the last full day of Shanghai, we wanted to buy a camera from a digital devices mall (since our one in NZ disappeared). So, we go inside the place that sells cameras, and the first shop introduces many different kinds of cameras to my dad, paying special attention to Nikon Coolpix, saying that it was good for this, and that, etc. It got to the point where she was about to pack the camera up for us to buy, including a free tripod, USB thingy, this, and that, and a price much lower than the stated one, but my mum said that we were gonna look around other shops in the floor and compare prices and come back. So.. we look around and we nearly got back to the same shop, when another shop owner stopped us and was like Nikon Coolpix. For a significantly lesser price than what the first shop owner told us. (Cuz he overheard what the first shop owner said to us) And we were like woaahh… intense competition.
So basically he tried to convince us for 10min to buy HIS instead of HERS, and also gave us heaps of free stuff. We ended up buying from his because it was exactly the same product, but cheaper. He slit his finger accidentally while stumbling to open the cardboard box, and I think… how hard it is to earn money for so many people. You gotta openly declare war with all the other shop owners that sell the same stuff as you, and live a life full of lies. I often hear shop owners that say “this is the lowest price! I’m not earning any money off you!” when it is obviously a lie. But that is their world, the life they live everyday. Such hard money to earn…
This is just one side of the spectrum. There are soo many cases where there isn’t even a human conscience anymore, for people who just want to earn money. I don’t want to go into that, but, I’m sure there are people like that in every country too.
3. China is moving at a really fast pace, but many people aren’t keeping up
People are building amazingly high class, tall buildings as if it was as easy as…if it were toys. The economy is shooting up, and imo there are a lot of rich rich rich rich RICH young Chinese people around who really spend and luxurise themselves. I think that in all areas, there are just so manypeople. I don’t think I can really understand how vast this actually is. Some areas are really good; but many public toilets are disgusting. Esp up Tai shan, the most famous mountain in China, it is such a huge tourist attraction and I haven’t been able to stay in a single toilet place for more than 5 seconds because it is that disgusting. I think the general hygenic awareness isn’t that high and a lot of people don’t really think for the person after them.
A Greek proverb says that a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. Imo, even though materialistically China is like a developed country, in many humanistic ways, we still have a long way to go.
It seems as if all I’ve been saying are critical things. A lot of people might think that many Chinese people are quite selfish and fast paced (pushing in lines etc), but I think it is just because they are placed in that sort of environment. In biology, there’s natural selection. And in such a competitive environment like China, I think people feel that if they don’t do that, then they’ll fall behind. I don’t think Chinese people are bad in their natures though, it is just selection pressures.
Initially, when coming over from NZ, a much much slower paced country, ofc I will feel unease and discomfort and a lack of understanding at why people would do that. But once I get used to it, I think I can begin to understand. Not necessarily agree on, but at least form an initial understanding.
I really enjoyed my trip to China. I can’t really say exactly what I’ve learnt, but I know that holistically, I’ve matured and grown a lot. I’m thankful that we’ve managed to come back to Auckland in one piece, and that we’ve had relatively good luck all throughout our trip.
I will upload photos onto Facebook tomorrow 🙂
It is 2:49am.
I’m feeling at peace.
Life, 