What To See When Travelling to China?

I fully agree with Dr. J B Lim's comments on an email containing the beautiful scenery of Shanxi, China from my friend Ir. C.K. Cheong and wish to post it here for the benefit of all readers of this blog.

There is really little point in travelling to China just to see how modernized or advanced she has become now. Rather, it is the several thousand years of ancient civilization and historical heritage that we should explore and reminisce in China.

知者乐水，仁者乐山。旅游中国，应当欣赏神州大地的壮丽山河，缅怀文明古国的绝代风情，而非现代化的摩登面貌！

Dear CK Cheong,

Many, many thanks for your lovely slide show on Shanxi, China and the very appropriate, beautifully composed traditional Chinese music that goes with it.

After looking at the slides, I think I will put Shanxi as my next itinerary to China because it depicts so typically traditional ancient scenes of China as if it was during the pre-era of the Bamboo Curtain. That’s was what I like to see about China - say 100 - 500 years ago. Unfortunately she is now leaping and bouncing towards modernity with gleaming new cities and townships mushrooming everywhere since Deng Xiaoping opened China up to the world in 1978.

A lot of these ancient scenes may rapidly be eroded away by the next generation due to the horrendous speed she is now progressing. She has already overtaken Germany just 3 months ago as the last country in Europe to overtake, after which Japan as the last country in Asia - which was overtaken just a few weeks ago, and she is now fast speeding towards United States as the last country in the world to overtake economically which analysts say will take China just another 20 years to achieve superpower. No wonder everybody in the western world is now trying to learn Mandarin.

All these are going to damage traditional scenes and cultural lifestyles of the people of China – something that has taken them 5000 years of culture. civilization, and history to build up.

Since 1980, China has established special economic zones in Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong Province and Xiamen in Fujian Province, and designated the entire province of Hainan a special economic zone to erode ancient lifestyles of the people of China even further.

To make matters worse, in 1984, China further opened 14 coastal cities—Dalian, Qinhuangdao, Tianjin, Yantai, Qingdao, Lianyungang, Nantong, Shanghai, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Zhanjiang and Beihai to overseas investment.

This entire pace is not good in my opinion as it is going to accelerate global warming and hurt world trade and economies of other countries by skewing up trade balances. As it is, China already holds the world largest foreign and US reserves and this economic prowess can be a threat to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately this was not what I wanted to see during my few visits over the last 6-7 years to that immensely vast country. I wanted to see ‘ancient, nostalgic and traditional’ scenes as in the slides. What I like to see may soon be paled away into antiquity. Whatever I like to see were seldom included in my itinerary. Instead, the tour agents always sent us to supermarkets, factories, industries and department stores to buy products there, and then watching heavy volumes of modern traffic, and super fast bullet trains whizzing and criss-crossing at near 500 kph across her vast farm lands. That was not what I wanted. I am not interested in modern cities like Shanghai. Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen I like to see rural China and get a feel what it is like seeing and living in a mythological, ancient, rural China.

I wanted to be a historian-tourist to see an ancient world to get the feel of my ancestry homeland as it is now depicted in pictures and paintings only.

That was a very nice slide show nevertheless. I will pass this round.

Thanks a lot again.

Regards

JB Lim
March 04, 2010