The "RC"

Everyday life has been pleasantly mundane lately: teaching; eating; ice-skating; reading; watching movies. No new adventures to report. So what follows is an essay on the "real China" by a person who has visited only three Chinese cities--Hohhot, Datong, and Beijing; who speaks only "restaurant Chinese;" and who has been "in country" for just 4 1/2 months. I apologize in advance. Now, let the pontifications begin....

Is this the “real China”? No way—we have these at home!

Is this the “real China”? Must be—I haven’t seen curbside butchers in Richland, Washington.

There is "Tourist China," with its lovely pagodas, temples, carvings, and ancient architecture. There is "Modern China," with its glittering skyscrapers and flashy malls. And then there is the "Real China," or as I facetiously call it, the "RC," with everything else: 737 million peasants, squat brick villages, dirt alley-ways, the smell of night-soil, ox-driven plows, donkey-carts, make-shift bicycle carts, coal-burning stoves, crowded train stations, street vendors, ancient peasant women pushing hand-carts full of garbage.

The "RC," in other words, is code word for the chaotic, complex, unsanitary, and largely backwards China. The RC is the "authentic" China that travelers long to experience (and take pictures of). It is the China that is completely unlike the West--an "alien" and exotic world that must be witnessed by Westerners if they are to have an "authentic" travel experience.

Exploring the RC on my bike.

The peasant shacks, donkey-carts, and dirt alleyways really do exist. I have seen them right here outside of Hohhot on bike rides that have taken me down dirt roads into small villages. But does the "RC" really exist, or is it largely the invention of western travelers and tourists who seek out "alien" and "authentic" landscapes, but, in doing so, become blind to the hybrid nature of their environment, where developing China and modern China meet and intermingle? Example: In my first days here, I would watch hundreds of taxis and luxury sedans race down our street as I waited to take a picture of a donkey-cart or some other odd and antiquated contrivance. When I got my picture, I had captured a piece of the RC to send to friends and relatives, but what about the hundred taxis that raced by as I waited for my snapshot of the RC? Were they any less "authentic" than the donkey-carts? In Hohhot, taxis are probably the most authentic thing around. With the photos we take (and post on our blogs), tourists and travelers (like ourselves) are continually designating what they believe is the "real" and "authentic" China. Clearly, McDonalds and KFC, no matter how crowded, are not the RC, whereas squat, crowded noodle shops are. Broad, clean, modern boulevards are not the RC, whereas dirt labyrinthine alleyways are. Everywhere, Western travelers eschew the New China as they seek the RC.

You want pictures of donkey-carts? Let me know, I’ve got dozens of them. This one is right in front of our apartment building when they were cutting the grass back in September. Must be the RC—we don’t cut grass like that at home.

There is a huge literature that describes how Westerners have for generations been defining China--and the "Orient" generally--in self-serving ways that ultimately say more about Western notions of cultural superiority than they do about the "reality" of the Orient. Edward Said's classic book, "Orientalism," is a good starting point. In "Americans and Chinese: Passage to Differences," Francis L.K. Hsu describes the photos of China that appear in the fourteenth edition (1959) of the Encyclopedia Britannica. There are twenty-seven images cataloguing, in Hsu's words, the following things: "a street scene with barefoot carriers, hawkers, and slum-like buildings; a junk with sails; meal time for about ten coolies (all squatting around a table); a pagoda; a camel caravan in Inner Mongolia; a barber giving a haircut to a boy on the street; interior of a Chinese fishing vessel used as a home; street fortuneteller and letter writer; three barefoot boys playing dominoes on the waterfront; an opium smoker in action; a worker adjusting a modern generator; wood water wheels on the Yellow River; construction worker applying plaster bamboo latticework on a house wall; six males outside a guard rail watching coke-oven batteries; bamboo rafts on a river; coolies carrying cargo on a water front; a harbor scene; a nearly nude coolie carrying loads with a pole; a soldier with bayoneted rifle but bare head and upper body; a street scene with three buses and many tri-rickshas; mother and baby in front of a village shop; a laborer dining at a sidewalk restaurant; two tribal women in rags grinding rice with primitive tools; farm women carrying produce to market; farmer transplanting rice; women grading coal by hand at a mine; a tri-ricksha man taking a nap in his vehicle."

Certainly a photographer visiting China in 1959 had more opportunities to witness primitive and exotic scenes than I do today, and yet, it does seem like Hsu makes a compelling point: the encyclopedia reinforces the view that "China is a land where coolies, fortunetellers, opium smokers, and primitive water wheels predominate--a picture in substantial agreement with America's popular notion of that Asian land." Is the popular perception of China really that much different today? In American minds, China is still largely a place of peasant farmers, exploited industrial workers, bird flu and other exotic diseases, unsanitary and unsafe conditions, and environmental catastrophe.

A dirt street! Must be the RC. Do we have dirt streets in America? By the way, the big guy in the yellow and black jacket is Jed, also an American teacher. This was on a bike ride a couple months ago.

In an interview with Diane Rehm, Rob Gifford says that “Shanghai is not China.” Shanghai, in other words, is not the "real China." I understand what he means. The economic miracle and modernization of China epitomized by cities like Shanghai does not begin to capture the reality of China for the majority of the Chinese who still live in rural villages or gritty industrial areas. It is similar to saying that "New York City is not the real America," meaning that New York City--urban, hip, artsy, liberal, and cosmopolitan--does not capture the reality of "America" for most Americans. These things are true. But, at the same time, I am highly skeptical of the search for "authenticity," whether in nature or culture. I mean--isn't everything authentic? Yes, there are quantifiable differences between old-growth forests and city parks, but both contain "nature." There are differences between growing up on the "rez" and growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, but Native Americans from both places are still Indian. There are differences between Shanghai (one of the richest areas of mainland China) and Gansu province (one of the poorest), but both are China. And yet, people are always seeking out "real nature," "real Indians," and the "real China." In doing so, they are also suggesting that other things, other people, other places, are not authentic. And I guess I just think that everything has a legitimate claim on authenticity. Even fake things--like politicians--are authentically fake, right?

A motor-cart with coal. Must be the RC!

I apologize if this post is getting a little bit too post-modern. I'm really not a post-modern guy. I do think that you can make distinctions between things. I do believe that objective reality exists beyond our subjective interpretations of it. I guess I'm just trying to rein in my own Western impulse (a la Encyclopedia Britannica) to seek out the "RC," and, in doing so, to exoticize and objectify China and Chinese people. (I have not yet used the phrases "the other" or "othering." There is an inside joke in our department at CBC about such despised academic jargon. However, in this case, I guess "othering"--as in defining oneself in opposition to exotic "others"--is precisely what I'm talking about.)

I coined the phrase, "the RC," as a kind of self-deprecating joke about my own questionable inclinations to seek out the "real" China. When we were in Datong, which was, in our frank opinion, quite dirty, gritty, and crowded, I would often say (in a deep pretentious voice with a British accent), "We're seeing the RC." I began to use the phrase for anything unsavory that could be reveled in instead of dreaded because it was the RC: the stench of the sewer, chaotic traffic, crowded trains, etc....

Deep down, I guess I'm still a sucker for the RC. We'll have to look especially hard for it when we visit Xian, Shanghai, and Hangzhou in January. Will we find the RC in the swimming pool at our four-star hotel? Will we be able see it from the window of our speeding bullet-train? I'll keep you posted.

A Hummer? No, can’t be the RC.