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Seven Days in China

By Dr Asif Javed
Williamsport, PA

 

There is a lot to surprise a first-time visitor to China these days: it is remarkably clean; Chinese, at least the ones in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, appear remarkably hard-working and efficient; at times, one gets the impression that they have an inbuilt discipline and drive about them; obesity, endemic in the USA, is almost nonexistent. Our group of Pak American physicians did not see a single incident of crime, yelling, shouting, or any other unruly behavior. We saw several young women walking confidently alone late in the evening.

The infrastructure is world-class: no smog was seen either in Beijing or Shanghai; the high-rise buildings of Shanghai can easily put New York to shame. The traffic moves smoothly on excellent highways; not a single pothole was seen for the week that our group spent mostly on the road. The train from Beijing to Xi’an took a little over four hours to cover a distance of over seven hundred miles while stopping at two stations. Some of the facts are just mind-boggling: the train station in Xi’an, the 8 th largest city in China, has thirty-four platforms.

For a visitor, the language barrier is a problem. English is understood by many in restaurants, airports, and other tourist places, but just barely. The other annoying issue is the haggling needed for shopping. Going to China from the USA, it comes as an unpleasant surprise and reminds one of shopping in Anarkali.

The general impression in the West is that religious minorities have a difficult life in China. Our impression was otherwise. The Buddhist temple in Xi’an had an active service going on. The Great Mosque in Xi’an had Zuhur prayer being performed in congregation. A local Chinese Muslim did, at our asking, call Azan. Xi’an which lies at the eastern end of the Silk Road has a Muslim population of about 50,000. The Muslim merchants who traveled on the Silk Road from Central Asia to Xi’an were the ones to bring Islam to the heart of China. Walking through the Muslim Quarter in Xi’an, we saw several hijab-wearing Chinese women. Prophet Muhammad pbuh would have been pleased to know that China, which he had advised Muslims to go to in quest of knowledge, has a considerable Muslim presence.

Xian Mosque

Muslim Quarter in Xi’an

Several among us, who were curious about China’s political setup, asked the tour guide about Mao. He surprised us by frankly admitting that Chairman Mao had made “several mistakes” in the later part of his life; she attributed those to his age and poor health; the Cultural Revolution that devastated families including her own was “a mistake”, she said; Deng Xio Peng was “very clever and the one to lead China in the right direction after Mao’s death,” she said. This writer hesitated (and now regrets having lost the opportunity) to ask the tour guide about the sudden disappearance of Marshal Lin Biao. Marshal Biao, the Vice Chairman of the CCP, and the onetime designated successor of Chairman Mao, had died in a mysterious plane crash in Mongolia, in 1971. The rapid fall from grace, and then public humiliation, of Chinese President Liu Shaoqi in 1968 was another question that should have been asked but wasn’t. Both leaders were later denounced as “counter-revolutionaries.” Still, the frank criticism of Mao and the CulturalRevolution by the tour guide created the impression that China is not as closed as we are made to believe. There are still some restrictions: the group had been warned beforehand that not all the internet services would be available in China; indeed WhatsApp, Facebook and the like were either not available or were very slow, almost certainly being censored; CCTV cameras are everywhere; the group had been asked to keep our passports with us for several days.

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Square, the site of a violent uprising and several deaths in 1980, is huge. It can accommodate over one million people. Mao’s body lies in a mausoleum in the Square. As we stood there, the guide pointed to a balcony: “That is where Mao stood in October 1949 and declared victory over the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek.” China gained independence two years after Pakistan. It is depressing to see where China is today and where Pakistan has been heading to.

The Great Wall

The group, that mostly consisted of middle-aged physicians, and their spouses, generally enjoyed the week-long trip. There were occasional grumblings about food. And, of course, more emphasis on the ever-present desire to go for shopping rather than make the best of a visit to a country that most of us were visiting for the first, and likely the last time.

The Great Wall is what we had perceived it to be: with its impressive watch towers and solid structure, one begins to imagine how safe the Chinese must have felt once this magnificent structure was complete; they had every reason to believe that they had secured the northern border of China. That is, until the ferocious hordes of Genghis Khan’s Mongols descended upon them and proved yet again that human ingenuity can overcome any barrier, including the only man-made structure on earth visible to astronauts from space. Mongols ruled China for close to a century. Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson, had moved the Mongol Empire’s capital from Mongolia to Beijing. It was in Beijing that Marco Polo visited him, having traversed the Silk Road. Ibn Battuta too went to China and visited Beijing a few decades after Marco Polo. Ibn Battuta, however, had taken a different route to China and went through the Far East, having spent a few years in India, in Sultan Mohammad Tughlaq’s service.

Humans have always been worried about the life after death. It was this thought that led Egyptian Pharaohs to build Pyramids with their final resting places inside the pyramids with several necessities also placed in the secret burial chambers. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China went even further: at his death in 210-209 BCE, he desired protection for his tomb; and so, thousands of clay sculptors, of soldiers, horses, and chariots were placed around his tomb to provide eternal vigil. As often happens, the future generations forgot about this. Discovered by accident in 1974, most of these soldiers now called, Terracotta Army, have been excavated. However, instead of performing their intended function, the Terracotta Army has become a big tourist attraction, generating a lot of revenue for China. And His Majesty, he is essentially on his own in his tomb.

The Forbidden City is a vast palatial complex, bigger than any other palace in the world. It remained the royal residence for five hundred years for several dynasties. It had pretty much everything that one would expect: the

The Forbidden City

royal household, and all the service providers including guards. However, it had an impressive number of concubines too to serve the HRH. Their number: a staggering three thousand. It seems that poor Henry VIII comes a very distant second to the Chinese emperors as far as sexual pleasure is concerned. Closer to home, we had Mr Khar, the former governor of Punjab, who almost outdid Henry VIII.

As the group was leaving China, the general feeling was that China’s phenomenal recent rise is real. China is blessed with a dedicated, honest, and hardworking leadership with a vision that Pakistan sorely lacks; barring an unexpected setback, the future does belong to the land of Confucius. Back in the 1920’s, Iqbal had written:

Giran Khwab Cheenee sambhalne lage

Himala ke chashme ubalne lage

The poet-philosopher would have been happy to see his remarkable prediction come true. Regrettably, his other desire to see a homeland created in NW India for Muslims has not turned out to be what he had envisioned. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan does exist but is, for all intents and purposes, neither Islamic nor republic. Being ruled by the troika of Sharifs, Zardaris, and the establishment, its relentless descent into an abyss continues with no end in sight. In China, the infamous Gang of Four (that included Mao’s wife) was removed from power by Hua Guofeng and Deng Xio Peng in 1976, jailed, prosecuted, and publicly humiliated. China’s meteoric rise began after that. Pakistan too has been in the clutches of a gang for decades. Will Allah send a deliverer for Pakistan too?

(The writer is a physician in Williamsport, PA and may be reached at asifjaved@comcast.net.)

 

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