The People Stand Guard, III

Three cities in China, and a half dozen tour guides, is not enough data for conclusions, but it raises some interesting questions. 

In my own home culture and micro-cultures (friendship circle, work environment, hometown, family…), I am pretty comfortable sorting out culture from personality, but this trip has thrown me into a lot of new situations very quickly and discerning the rules is a challenge.  More one day about shipboard culture, perhaps, but today we look at China.

Because we had many warnings about travel in China being difficult in the week before the new year celebrations, I chose to travel with an organized tour all but the last day of my China experience.  While it has many advantages, it is a very different way of experiencing the local culture, a whole new kind of standing guard.

Patrick helpfully comments that I have run into the "Great Firewall of China" in not being able to reach google or blogger from Xi'an.  (They are once again available in Hong Kong.  Or they are available today in Hong Kong.  Or they were last time I tried.) 

On our trip to the airport, leaving Xi'an, Borbor said we could ask him any questions we wanted, but not personal questions.  I said I had noticed a lot of businesses had "Jing" at the beginning of them, and what did syllable mean?  It means it belongs to the government.  So the Hyatt-esque hotel we stayed in is a government hotel.  The tour company he works for is a government company. The government is everywhere.

Oh. 

Someone asked, "Does the government censorship affect your everyday life?"  Borbor had to have "censorship" defined.  He either couldn't hear it or the question didn't compute.  Eventually, the answer was, no, he could say what he wanted. 

With Borbor, you just never know.  Several times, he said to us, "don't tell anyone; I will lose my job," but I think he is smart enough to not put his job into jeopardy for a night with a bunch of college students.  I took that as one of his teasing remarks.  Our second night in Xi'an, he went with the students to a dance club, and the third, they went to a karaoke place.  It seems more likely that he gets a kickback than that he puts his job into jeopardy.  Like Susie in Shanghai, I think Borbor is good at delivering the goods.

However, at our Xi'an art museum stop, the docent showed us some propoganda art from the Cultural Revolution and translated some of the slogans.  She said, "You may think, 'how did this ever work?" and even in China, people of my generation think this is ridiculous." 

You do not get the feeling the government is keeping too close an eye.

On the other hand, everywhere we go, there are people who do nothing but direct traffic.  Since I am an obedient sort (and one who gets lost easily), I do not know what dangers lie outside the designated path.  Dangers for them, or dangers for me?

On the bus, another student asked, "You've told us about religions in China. Do you practice a religion?"  To me, it was clear she was asking a personal question.  Borbor answered by saying, "We are free to believe any religion except a bad religion," which is something he had also said earlier.  This time, he went on to describe how you were not allowed to believe a religion which said you should kill yourself, and gave us some suitably gory details of self-immolation and evisceration, along with more routine kinds of suicide which were frowned upon, and told a story featuring a mother and child.  The mother, having had a hard life, set herself and her daughter on fire.  The daughter survived, horribly scarred, with a ruined future.

Our tour leader (the Semester at Sea person responsible for us) asked if that was Fulan Gong, Borbor was surprised we had heard of it.  Then he said he had heard it originated in America.  It's my dim recollection that we heard in America an opinion that the Chinese government was presenting a carefully managed view of Fulan Gong so that it appeared dangerous when it was not.

Where does the truth lie?

I know our tour guides are hardworking, successful people who have a lot of knowledge about their cities and a lot of experience with Americans.  I am sure that they earn money or other considerations from working with carefully selected vendors and venues.  Like successful service industry people everywhere, they smoothly navigate the shifting boundary areas.  Did Borbor misunderstand the question about his religion or did he dodge it?  We'll never know.

At dinner one evening, our conversation shifted back to the ship and the crew who would be leaving in Hong Kong.  The students talked about their favorite waiters, some of whom slip them extra treats.  A faculty couple mentioned a waiter who immediately recognized them from a trip several years ago and called them by name. Then, a student commented that we were discussing them as if they were children, using words like cute and adorable, and this made her uncomfortable. 

We all have our jobs to do, from the children dancing in the orphanage to the tourists exiting through the gift shop.  The boundaries can be difficult to navigate, given the barriers of culture and language and privilege. 

We carry a lot in our knapsacks.  It felt good to get "home" to the ship and unpack for a bit.  Hong Kong is, quite literally, a breath of fresh air after a smoggy few days in Xi'an, and it marks our transition from winter to summer.  Unpacking the physical backpack took only a few minutes.  Unpacking the cultural one takes a lifetime.