#4. Holding Contradictions
You can't always believe what they tell you
So Hannah and I heard about this place, and we needed to check it out.
Their cities look like cyberpunk scene-scapes: big neon art pieces in public squares, beautiful cafes and public squares, robots serving coffee.
They have a beautiful and varied landscape, from epic mountains to stunning desert.
They have a high speed rail network that connects most of the country, even many remote villages and cities. And everything leaves exactly on time.
They have universal health coverage (95% of the population gets nearly free healthcare, some of the best in the world, at that)
They have incredible elderly care. Every evening, public parks are filled with dancing grandmas. In many provinces, children are legally required to visit their elderly parents regularly to ensure they aren’t lonely or neglected.
There’s nearly zero crime. People leave phones, laptops, even babies unattended in public without even a thought about danger.
Their cities are clean. There is no homelessness. There is no druggy riff-raff. You’d be hard-pressed to find litter on the street, or even a spilled coffee cup on the subway.
They have highly talented engineers who’ve led breakthroughs in construction, automotive, industrials, agriculture, AI, etc.
They have the most amazing food, most of which you can enjoy for $1-3 per meal.
They’re also a sustainability powerhouse. With nearly 100% electric busses, mostly electric cars, a massive solar industry (more than the rest of the world combined), massive tree planting to prevent desert encroachment, and on and on.
Have you figured it out yet?
Yes, it’s also the one with 1.4 billion people, who mostly all enjoy these massive benefits, in stark contrast to a mere 40 years ago when 90% of them lived in poverty, and over half were illiterate.
Welcome to China.
“Woah woah woah,” you may think. “This is just the pretty shit. I know china. Show me the surveillance state, the cultural repression, the oppressive work culture, the Uyghur concentration camps. The news tells me they’re plotting world domination, and if Fox News and CNN agree on something it must be true.”
So let’s be clear.
Yes, all these bad things were true. Yes they have cameras everywhere, yes they bug hotel rooms, yes they turn sacred ethnic sites into touristy Magic Kingdoms where local Han women cosplay in indigenous ethnic garb, and yes they do have massive internment camps for Uyghurs (the muslim minority of Xinjiang).
But we eventually came to the realization that all of these made sense if you look at it like this: China sees itself as a single tribe, the Han, who cares above all about securing the safety and quality of life of its people.
That’s it.
They’re like a huge family that will ruthlessly pursue whatever’s needed to protect its interests.
Exploitive trade deals to get critical minerals from Africa? “Of course, if we don’t do it someone else will.”
Surveillance state? “Well the lack of crime means it’s working, doesn’t it?”
Muslim oppression? “Well it guarantees that we won’t have extremists like we see in so many other countries.”
Those crazy Americans with a crackpot president are making an AI god? “Maybe we should do it too just to be safe.”
We’re not saying that we ethically condone any of their oppressive behaviors, but you could just as easily look at America’s oppression of black people in this country, our terrorizing of Latin American immigrants by ICE, and our waging war on foreign countries (Venezuela and Iran, to start), and ask yourself how different we seem——except that we don’t have the cheap food, affordable housing, transportation, elderly care, free education, safe cities, and universal healthcare that comes with the Chinese package.
Hmm……
This trip has given us a lot to think about. Firstly, a reminder that that what we’re told about the world by the media is often a spin, and the real way to learn is to get out into the world.
But also, these past few weeks have been a lesson for us on how to hold contradictions. China is a massive country — an entire universe. It’s filled with endless beauty but holds a fair share of tragedy. It calls on us to question our prejudice, ignore the stereotypes we’re told to believe about a place, and instead ask ourselves what we can learn from the multitudes this place presents.
So here’s what we learned that we didn’t expect:
We met amazing people who were intellectual, stylish, curious, multi-cultural and anything but repressed. We had conversations with men about their mental health, met active practitioners of a bunch of different religions, spent time in an eco-village with the Chinese equivalent of agri-hippies (much more business acumen and hard work than you see in their western counterparts), met modern and contact improv dance instructors, and even met a sex education podcaster. There were a couple of things people avoided in conversation, but it was far from Orwellian.
We had some of the greatest food ever. The culinary diversity was staggering. Some days brought us DOZENS of foods we’d never even seen before. The flavors were strong and complex, the variety of ingredients absolutely dazzled us, and the spice level sometimes approached face-melting levels (or face-numbing, at least).
You can tell a lot about a people from their dogs. High anxiety cultures tend to have yappy, unstable dogs. Every one we met in china greeted us with smiles and kisses.
We saw some crazy art that would make seasoned burners shit their pants. Newsflash—the Chinese don’t only do state-sponsored calligraphy.
We learned a lot about tradition. Whether it was late nights playing mahjong with locals, learning how to put a baby to sleep with a sheet, chitchatting with traditional chinese medicine practitioners, or embracing the fermented hairy wisdom of moldy tofu, China surprised us at every turn.
We loved that nightlife looked less like buzzy bars with loudmouth drunks, but more live music spots and tea houses where you can find everything from traditional chinese ballads, to electronic pan flutists from Xinjiang, to Bob Dylan covers.
So how do we learn from this amazing—albeit complicated culture? You borrow what you want to. China got me a lot more into tea, TCM, and Sichuan cooking; and Hannah’s going to be a mahjong champion pretty soon.
It’s more than possible to borrow the good and not the bad. China borrowed capitalism after all, and did it without entrenched interests sabotaging public services.
Nowhere’s a utopia. But we know for sure that we’ll be coming back to see what the Chinese are cooking up next.
"When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is kindness. When kindness is lost, there is justice. When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Lao Tzu
Until next time. Or as they say in China:
来日方长 - “The Future is Long”
Much love,
Jordan and Hannah
Those photos at the beginning of China are unbelievably beautiful. I love the video with the sheet trick to get the baby to sleep. It’s a made up infant carrier.