China
Returning to the US from China feels like returning to sleep after waking from a dream, the mild consolation of normalcy dwarfed by the depressed sense one has that the dream, in its fecundity and dynamism, was preferable to the nullity into which one is descending. It is easy to say this, of course, as a Westerner, for whom the extraordinary adventure of life in China is a dream easily woken from; for those whose lives unfold under the arbitrariness of bureaucratic authoritarianism and in a nation that features incredible destitution in its very capital, it is something other than delighted dynamism, something far closer to a fight.
But it so happens that we were Westerners and that periods of change are more interesting to us than the draining stases from which we departed. Marx’s well-researched descriptive ideas have merit: there are phases of “world historical development” and there are vicissitudes to life under emerging capitalism which seem unavoidable, reflective of its “internal contradictions”; that his ideas about how to address this problem proved a revolting farce demonstrates how much easier observation is than direction, how much simpler history is than politics. Life in Beijing seemed at times like nothing so much as London during the Industrial Revolution, while our trip to Tiananmen Square on the anniversary of the massacre reminded us that the “class struggle” has been little more than an excuse for a different elite to make war on civil society.
We did the tourist things, of course, but seldom and quickly: Jack July was too good a guide to waste time on relics reconstructed after whatever paroxysm of revolution, ordinary or cultural. Instead, we spent most of our time walking the city, meeting locals whose friendliness and amusement was welcome, accompanying expats on ‘wanders’ of the hutongs, eating and drinking endlessly, and witnessing such a variety of sights, smells, and sounds that it felt as though many days were compressed into each 24-hour period.
Always, though, there was a peculiar mode of social existence: in several places we went the locals had not seen Westerners, and stares were ubiquitous, sometimes accompanied by greetings and on one occasion a hug and kiss on the cheek. But though we were always focal points of attention, I speak no Chinese and most Chinese speak no English, not even enough to tell it apart from Russian, so that I had a kind of anonymity of identity: although we were hyper-visible physically, my personality and self were not at all scrutinized. The feeling of being invisible yet not ignored was intoxicating.
Insofar as we travel both to encounter otherness and newness and to leave ourselves behind, it was an ideal state: selfless without feeling lonely, without attributes yet without feeling dull, I was able to wander as an eager, disembodied eye. What I saw was a dense and entrancing as any dream, and I hope to see far more of it soon enough.
