8/6/15
The antibiotics have finally kicked in; today is the first day
I’m actually starting to feel better. Good thing too, as our excursion today is
a visit to the Shibaozhai Red Pagoda, which requires a 12 story climb to the
very top of the pagoda. It was a beautiful building, built into the side of a
cliff, painted dark red (hence the name) and built during the Ming Dynasty. The
impressive part is that it was originally built without the use of nails: just
held together by fitted slats and wooden pegs. It has since been restored and
secured with nails to handle the tourist traffic. [NN: Also because there was
an earthquake a few years ago that devastated a nearby area.]
This is our last day on the cruise and I have to say, I’m
glad about that. All of the day trips have been cool and the scenery along the
Yangtze is beautiful, but floating along a river at a snail’s pace, living in a
somewhat cramped cabin, eating the same food every day, and of course being
miserably sick, loses its luster after a while. But it was nice that our last
day was more of a leisurely day. Only once excursion and the rest of the day we
were at leisure to take it easy, no rushing from event to event.
In the afternoon, the cruise manager, Ruby, held a mahjong
lesson, which was actually pretty fun. Kind of hard to learn at first because I
kept forgetting what the Chinese symbols on the domino-like pieces were, but
Ruby gave us a print out of all the translations, so we quickly got the hang of
it, though it was pretty slow going. We had a good time, playing with the kids
of the group, and Ruby going around behind each of us, laughing at us when we
would start to put down a “bad” piece and urging us to make a better selection.
Nick even won once!
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| Mahjong! |
Part of our tour company’s policy is to hold little cultural
lectures throughout the trip. Today, we had a discussion on China’s one child
policy. Out tour guide very cognizant that what we learn about China in the US
media can be very different from what actually goes on in China or from what
the Chinese learn form their own media. But he told us that the one child
policy, which many Westerners view as archaic and unreasonable, has only been
around for a little over a generation. It actually came about as a reform
measure after Mao’s policy to build a bigger, stronger PRC by having people
breed as much as possible. As a result, the population explosion became more
than the government’s social programs could handle – something Mao’s “infinite
wisdom” obviously take into account. [NN: Another interesting note is that the
one child policy applies only to ethnic Han Chinese, 92% of the population, and
there are no restrictions on other ethnicities. The government says this is a
way to show reconciliation with minorities, but our Han guide thought it was
unfair.]
But as a result of the one child policy, which has gone
through three successive reforms to ease the original restrictions, the current
generation of parents, referred to in China as “the 80s” for the decade they
were born in, have gotten a reputation for being spoiled and selfish– something
they attribute to being a generation of only-children. [NN: Doesn’t every
generation believe subsequent ones are spoiled?] Which even our tour guide said
is a problem in most marriages – including his – both individuals want
everything their way and compromise is not often made, so divorce rates are
high (a generalization, of course). Add to that, fewer children means a large
aging population is not replaced and China definitely is a country of senior
citizens. But well taken care of seniors: they hold the highest level of
priority in the population and receive full government pensions once they
retire (age 55 for women and 60 for men). Which is why we’ve seen so many older
people just hanging out on their street together, drinking tea, playing games,
doing exercise: they have nothing else to do, so theirs is a true life of
leisure. Unlike the US, they don’t have to worry about how they’re going to
live in retirement without an income. [NN: Albeit a very low income by our
standards.] Which no doubt, like most things, has its pros and cons.
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| Heading toward Fuling |
At the end of the day, we sailed past the town of Fuling.
After days of Chinese countryside and tiny villages scattered among lush green
hills, it was so strange to see a giant city of high density sky scrapers and
bustling highways – it kind of felt like we had returned form time travel. The
irony is that Fuling is considered a very “small” town by Chinese standards:
only 4 million people. [NN: It is also strange that are you float by it is very
hard to see human activity from the riverside. People are not out and about
like you would see in a city with even 1/10
th the population in the
US or Europe. The streets, river banks and even roads look very empty.]
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