We Return, and Look Back

We've been back home for some days now, though we may have left behind some of our body rhythms in China.  Still adjusting to here rather than there.  

But we have our memories.  One day our friend Ming-Ming and I explored a small but wonderful "hutong" museum.  Hutongs are the older style of housing, often just one story, sometimes in a large square with a courtyard in the middle for an important family.

At right we see a model of a typical "courtyard house."  To our surprise, a local grade school boy with lots of English had trained to guide people such as I through the museum, which I enjoyed while Ming-Ming chatted with his mom.  One of the residents of this neighborhood was the artist who created the bas relief work in the photo above, of the May 4th movement (1919), unrest when the western allies, after World War I, returned rights to some of China to the Germans (Germany, Britain, the U.S., and France had taken "concessions" in eastern China around Shanghai earlier).  The Chinese were not happy that China hadn't the power to prevent this.

Artwork in this period--between the fall of the last emperor, and the Chinese Revolution in 1949 (and beyond) is often heroic, meant to commemorate the sacrifice of those who resisted the old and tried to create the new.  In the painting above (in the National Museum of China), perhaps 12 feet by 20 in size, we see a peasant village welcoming soldiers during the years when victory by the Communist side was still not a given.  Perhaps as nationalist art is in most countries is, it contains an idealism and a narrative of hope.

In the cities where we've wandered, there are shiny places to shop, and a growing minority of people with money to buy a lifestyle even their parents might not have imagined (food rationing ended only in 1993).  And there are now far fewer truly poor than a generation ago, though life in isolated rural areas can still be truly poor for many.  In some ways, though at great cost, the revolution has brought a portion of what people hoped for.

Some want more.  The young sociologist in the photo at right, leading a walking tour around social justice issues, does hope for more, especially out of a concern for those left behind by the rapid economic growth and rising inequality she sees around the edges of a surprising affluence.

Others we've gotten to know seem to have satisfying lives, and the dreams of the young.  Perhaps they are a select few--mostly aspiring therapists or social workers or artists, usually with English, sometimes who've studied in the U.S. and returned.  They are friendly and hospitable to us (as are quite often people in the street, who come over and offer to help strangers like us who are, once again, evidently bewildered and lost), or offer a subway seat to me when I'm apparently looking like an older, weary guy.  They have dreams which may well come true, or so we hope.  We see them happily celebrating at the end of one of Barbara's courses (below), around a large table, crowded with traditional dishes; a student leans over to pick up a bit of Peking Duck (with chopsticks), and to get a bit of the various sauces that go with it.

I often feel inadequate to understand more than a small bit of what China is about today, and the lives of the 1.3 billion people who are making their lives there.  But each time we visit, especially this time when we spent time with people in Hong Kong and Beijing who are friends more than hosts (though the latter too are gracious), I feel a little more at home--and I think Barbara does as well.  

We leave this blog for now (though Barbara may have one more post), and like the music therapy students taking a bow at the end of their performance (of Broadway Musical tunes!), we also bid farewell (for the moment!).