I ran into an old (not so good of a) friend couple of weeks ago. While exchanging the awkward yet mandatory "Hey how have you been?" he told me he was planning a trip to China. "I'll start my journey from Beijing and travel all the way to Shanghai," he explained looking all excited and determined. "Oh, the boring cities," I though, as having seen different sides of China I regard Beijing as the most polluted and the least interesting city we visited. Later that day we had a discussion with Merilin about our latest great adventure, when she asked me if I'd recommend people to visit the place or not. Truth be told, it gave me a great deal of food for thought, but I didn't doubt once, when I replied: "Definitely."
This is for several reasons:
See the amazing nature
I was never particularly attracted to trees and nature when I was younger. Possibly because my mom always made me weed the garden and inevitably as a rebellious teenaged I was forced to hate it. Thus, I hated flowers, trees, bees and at some point even birds. Although, I am not a fan of birds till this day, I've grown to love and appreciate mother nature. Well, you know what they say: "Home is where the genome is." I can honestly say that I've never witnessed such remarkable landscapes before I visited China: Badaling, Guilin, the coast of South China sea and Hong Kong. Even the view from the plane over the steppes of Mongolia were breathtaking.
Not racist, but before last summer I was convinced that Chinese people are dirty, angry and utterly boring people. I, myself, had had little to no interaction with Asians, but truth be told, the stories I heard from the people around me were terrifying and somewhat disturbing. As it turns out Chinese people are not only concerned with noodles, maths, dragons and table tennis, they are genuinely interesting and generous people who love the same things as we do: music, films, celebrity gossip and social media. The only difference, however, is that they have different perceptions of those things. And yes, I have to admit that, Avril Lavigne is still a big thing in China, but the blame can be put on the government who has decided that Avril Lavigne is one of the few exemplary celebrity that can be shown on the media.
Understand Asian culture and closed minded people
Speaking of Chinese government, yes this is concerning to us: the notion of British or Estonian government banning Facebook and Youtube or censoring negative news or Miley Cyrus (although, media is corrupted anyway and the humanity might benefit from banning Miley Cyrus) is unbearable. But there's a reason behind the saying "Ignorance is a bliss." As far as we heard there are only good things going on in China. Probably the first extensive negative story against the Chinese government was the last week's wide-spread documentary of China's pollution, which surprisingly was not blanked out, but instead admitted and brought up as an actual concern.
People are only aware of the events that the government allows them to know. This might help us to understand the people in neighbouring дорогой друг Russia. Human behaviour is the response to the stimuli, it's a response to the environment they live in. It should be easier to understand than to judge.
See what a poverty looks like
Ideally there are no rich or poor people in socialist China, as one of the ladies whom we visited told us. I remember the pride that reflected from her eyes when she said it. In reality, however, this isn't going so well. We met people who were very wealthy and owned flats in different cities. On the other hand, we witnessed extreme poverty: we saw towns that had no roads and people lived in garages, we saw people walking barefoot and yes, we actually saw people who polished shoes on the street for a living. But what we learnt from witnessing this was: you can always find a job. If a brush and shoe polish are the only things you own, you'll take your only two items and go get that money.
Test yourself
I have never challenged myself like in China. I do not speak a single world of Chinese, well, I thought I knew "Konnichiwa," but as always with good things (instant noodles, Playstation and sushi) it's Japanese. So imagine us, two white girls, in Beijing airport not knowing a single word in Chinese. We had no idea how to get to our hotel, let alone how to get to the other corner of China. Fortunately, primary school acting classes that I attended paid off and imitating a train or a bus worked perfectly. Go body language! After having been to China with zero language skills you will never get hopelessly lost.
Cuisine experience
Okay, this one might sound a bit terrifying. Yes, we ate snake meat and thinking back I wouldn't be surprised if we were fed rat or cat meat, which supposedly was quite common street food. In fact, about 4 million cats are eaten in China every year, but that's that. Indeed they seem to follow the rule: "If it's not rock, it's edible," we were offered rotten eggs, duck neck, chicken feet, duck flippers, toads, ants and every last internal organ of a pig. However, we also got to taste this amazing food, which I still crave every single day. Chinese takeaway doesn't impress me at all.
My favourite free entertainment. I don't know if they used Google translate, or not even that, but:
Travelling to China will prepare you for life. By the end of the two months we spent there we weren't surprised by anything. And you can be certain that Europe will not top what you'll witness in China: people living in caves, rats on your bedside and people walking on the street barefoot. I promise you, you will get a good dose of adrenalin and life experience after travelling to China.
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