China is huge, fascinating and vastly different. Saying you know China after you’ve been there is as foolish as saying you know all of the United States of America if you’ve been to Disneyland, Grand Canyon and New York City. Every town, city and region has its own culture, people, and food. Every place is different than the other. But one of the amazing things about China is that there is a sense of unity and community over this huge country that I have not seen anywhere else. If you watched the 2008 Olympics, perhaps you have an idea of what I mean.
Within China, I have visited the following cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Zhongshan, Chongqing, Yi Chang, Urumqi, Dunhuang, Turpan, Jiayuguan and Xian. My travels have included a cruise down the Three Gorges area before the last series of flooding and dam completion and this last trip we explored towns and cities along the Silk Road.
I am particularly fascinated by farming and its proximity and relationship to Chinese towns and cities. China's farms are a pleasure to the eye. Rather than the massive American agri-buisness single-species crop farming, Chinese farms are small and varied. Many people eat what they grow and supply fruits and vegetables to cities. It is so easy to find fresh produce, especially when the farmers set up their wares at the night markets.
Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac was published over 50 years ago but I still love it. One of my absolute favorite passages in the book says, “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes form the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.” Most people in the United States are divorced from the origin of their food. Many of our processed food products are not even recognizable as food. Michael Pollan http://www.michaelpollan.com/ said that anything containing more than five ingredients or containing ingredients you can't pronounce probably shouldn't be considered food. His mantra of, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants," has been a Chinese tradition for thousands of years. Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food are an attempted wake-up call to American consumers. A thirty-two billion dollar industry is trampling over the small sustainable farmer and over our nation's nutrition and health.
So far China is not making the mistake the United States did by ignoring the small subsistance farmer. A farmer with a variety of crops is sustaining biodiversity. Food that is carried a few miles by small truck or even by bicycle does not need to be bred to uniform size. Most importantly China recognizes the importance of the small farmer and is controlling the rampant development of farmlands. China intends to maintain its capacity to feed its people. Famines, droughts, floods and both manmade and natural disasters have taught them a difficult lesson.
There are many misconceptions about travel in China and about Chinese culture. Part of my trip this summer was by train. China has changed so much in recent years and my impressions were very different from those of Paul Theroux in his Riding the Red Rooster published in 1988. Seeing China by train was an eye-opener that provided an exclusive view into the backyards of China. This view is very far from what is usually presented by most travel books. What you learned in school does not prepare you for the vastness and the variety across this huge country. Traveling in China is much more comfortable if you are prepared and know what to expect.
Frankly I don’t think most of the tour guide books do a very effective job on this. For one thing, China is changing so rapidly that unless the guide book staff are regularly traveling through the country and checking their information, their advice may be dated. Most guide books seem geared toward what I call “sheep,” large quantities of English speaking tourists hauled to tourist attractions by large air-conditioned buses.
In my opinion, this is not the way to experience China. When we travel in China, we do it on our own with as few guided tours as possible. Our joy in China is eating fresh food with the locals, wandering down side streets and trying to blend in as much as possible. Most guide books are not written for travelers who speak Chinese and want to see the country in that manner.
This blog will be looking at China both from the point of view of the traveler and farmer. I am sure that China's farmers are tempted by the jobs and the money of the cities. I hope that the government values the farmers who feed the people and that they find a way to encourage those farmers to continue their invaluable work.
I will be watching China in the future. I hope you will too.
