Echoes of the Past

Before we could get to the Terracotta warriors, perhaps the most famous testament to a man’s desire to fight until the end – and beyond, we had to do our own battle with the Xian traffic. Later on that day our bus would get into a honking battle with another bus, only to have the other bus violently cut us off and then stop so that their driver could walk back and yell at our driver. Despite our high hopes, there was no kung fu fighting. On that front, China has been a bit of a letdown.

But back to the morning. As we were clawing our way through the traffic, we were afforded an excellent view of Xian’s old city wall, the best preserved city wall in China, running 9 miles around the center of the city. It was old, it was beautiful. It only had four openings, one in each face of the wall. Our tour guide Cindy indulged in a rare moment of criticism, and informed us that while Xian traffic is normally very efficient, the wall tends to create bottlenecks and back the traffic up a bit.

I think her statement might have managed to sum up all of China. It is a place where the future’s greatest impediment is the past. And yet the quandary is, were they to give up the past in search of a better future, would they actually be gaining anything?

There are few things as outmoded and obsolete as city walls. Most old artifacts are still capable of performing their intended function. Old pots still hold water, old cotton gins can still do whatever it was that they originally did (1). This wall keeps people neither in nor out, but it does keep them in gridlock. Somehow I doubt that was part of the plan. It would be unthinkable to destroy it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if every single Xian citizen with a driver’s license hasn’t, at some point, wished that this particular national treasure were located a few miles outside of city limits.

China is China. It is almost a mantra that I have occasion to repeat daily. It is full of quirks and inefficiencies that have equal capacity to either enrage or endear. In the end, it boils down to being China. I don’t anger easily, but recently the quickest way to raise my ire has been to assume that the American way is normative without taking any time to consider the vast cultural and economic differences that make the two countries, in some ways, incomparable.

What angers me is that people come and refuse to take China on its own terms, ignoring its charms and crucifying its weaknesses. They see how it could be improved, but fail to see the cost to the national identity. And yet, where do we draw lines? Where must they sacrifice being Chinese in order to fit into the currently western-dominated business sphere? What is the price tag that we put on an identity? What should I give up of myself in order to go forward? What should I hold onto and allow to shape the way in which I advance?

Later I will get the opportunity to walk the wall. The day will be cold and eerily clammy, the sky misty and mysterious. The wall will fade into the fog about a hundred feet in either direction, and even though I know it is only 9 miles in circumference, at that time it will seem like it could stretch on forever, implacable and solid as the stones of which it is comprised. I will stand there on the wall that has stood against armies and traffic, the wall that has stood against time itself, and I will look down at the cars as they honk and scurry through the city, and I will wonder which I would prefer to be. Then I will turn and walk along the wall, through the fog, into the fog, trying to find the point where the mist touches the stone, because maybe at that point things will begin to make sense.


(1) Which, I have been told by a reliable sources, is not ‘make gin out of cotton.’ Sigh…