John McCarthy, writing from Tai'an: Everywhere we have been we have seen massive building projects. The other day, coming back here to Tai’an, we went under an elevated section of rail link which one day will unite Beijing and Shanghai to cut the journey time from twelve hours to five. Snaking its way 50 feet above the flat farmland, this project, like other road construction works we have passed obviously improves the country’s infrastructure. But they also throw into sharp contrast modern, booming China with one that seems a hangover from the days when five year plans were directed by political ideologues rather than bureaucrats with MBAs. Super-highways thunder past poor and depressed landscapes where famers push, pull or pedal carts laden with bushels of drying maize stalks. Sometimes just a couple of hundred yards lie between the tiniest of dwellings and a vast new housing estate.
When we drove in through the Tai’an outskirts these estates stretched on and on which, given the velocity maintained by our deranged driver, meant they must have covered miles. And when I say housing estates, I don’t mean Wimpey homes, but big apartment blocks in rows ten-deep back from the highway. The blocks on each estate are lettered A through Z. I counted five estates before a manic manoeuvre by our wannabe Qensahn Button had me considering a wooden box six feet under rather than an apartment six floors up.
And there is plenty of breathing space around them too with landscape gardens. Billboards showing, strangely, western models drinking cocktails in their lavish apartments, bring home the fact that, of course, these properties are built for sale, not set up as municipal housing as I assume the densely packed downtown tenements were back in the days when Mao was still utterly in charge.
But even those dingy blocks are nearly all now in private ownership. Ning tells me there is virtually no ‘council housing’ left in China, and the top story on tonight’s news on CCTV 9, the state TV’s English language station, is that banks are having to cut introductory low interest rates for first time buyers. However there is no let up in demands for mortgages, so clearly the private sector property market is booming.
There is a general atmosphere of prosperity and good humour. Given all we hear about the power of China’s economy, the prosperity isn’t surprising, but given what we know about the government’s human rights record (it was announced a couple of days ago that two people involved with the disturbances in Tibet last year had been hanged), I am surprised that people seem so cheerful. But maybe in the ordinary day-to-day lives of most people, the Party isn’t intrusive or oppressive. When I ask Ning if people worry about ‘Big Brother’ he laughs and says; “It’s not ‘Big Brother’, it’s ‘Big Daddy’ and we Chinese respect our parents!”
After two thousand years of administrations schooled in Confucian principles that urge respect of elders and state, the Chinese must be well-trained in accepting authority. Then again the old imperial model so revered by Confucius was ultimately swept away by the revolutionaries of the Kuomintang who in turn were themselves ousted by Mao and Communists.
Maybe that spirit of revolt is also an essential part of the national character and maybe that explains why Daoism (and what is, in many ways, its imported cousin, Buddhism) has sat alongside Confucianism as another key element of Chinese culture. The two native traditions complement each other; Confucianism representing the more formal, conservative and public relationships, while Daoism expresses the anarchic, rebellious and fun loving side of life.
Maybe it was inevitable that Mao’s revolution would burn out in the end. When the rebellious spirit turned conservative and Dao became dictator, the big wheel could only keep turning by crushing everything in its path, including the ‘feudal ideology’ of Confucianism, with the brutal horror of the Cultural Revolution.
Mao is still here of course (on every bank note for starters) and so is the Party, but the Cultural Revolution was abandoned and people can now go up Mount Tai to burn incense to Confucius and pray to the gods of Dao, Buddha and nature. And they do – even in the rain – so we went with them.
John W has posted on our expedition part-way up Taishan, so I’ll limit my notes here. Having been initially sceptical that we’d get even one useable frame thanks to the rain and heavy mist swirling around the mountain, I was delighted we went. The mists, views, ancient inscriptions and pilgrims – even the stalls selling incense, souvenir rocks and green onion pancakes – all work together to create a powerful atmosphere. How could you not be touched by the magic of a place with natural features with names like Cloud Splitting Stone?
On the other hand there was Mountain Man. We’d just panted up a series of very steep flights of the stone steps which go right to the top of the mountain and were catching our breath. Smoke issued from the narrow mouth of a cave; as did a living gargoyle. I don‘t go a bundle on gargoyles incarnate but Ian and John W are more gung-ho about these things. They shook hands and then hugged the straggly-haired, toothless beast in his Mao era army issue overcoat. My mental I-pod immediately started playing a Chinese strings version of the theme tune from Deliverance. Diddle-ing, ding, ding, ding, ding, ching, ching. I’m ashamed to admit I just kept moving.
They got away – and we all out-stripped the World’s Worst Spitter – but there was no escape from Garlic Man. He was another whose sartorial sense harkened back to an age when camouflage caps and jackets were de rigueur. I squeezed in next to him for the bus ride back down to the foot of the mountain. Like Taishan he took my breath away.
As the evening light crept over the damp city I went to explore a food market that ran down a winding road between dilapidated apartment blocks. Illuminated by a haphazard string of bare 40 watt bulbs, it was a fabulous display of many of the edible – and in the case of a pile of what looked like toasted hornets – the inedible, delights that China has to offer. There were stalls selling cakes of every shape and size, others hawking all manner of vegetables, on barrows and on the ground, and then there were live ducks and chickens.
One lady stood behind a mountain of noodles, but my favourite was the herb stall. The little owner’s leathery face cracked into a broad grin when I gave him a ‘thumbs up’ in approval of his business. Until this evening I’d been convinced I’d never see anything to beat the perfectly manicured pyramids of zatar and spice offered up in the narrow lanes of the old city of Jerusalem. Yet this simple stall in this plain street was a clear winner. Its beauty lay in the fact that the herbs weren’t ground and ready to spoon or pinch into the pot. They were in big, rough bunches that you’d have to chop and pummel to release their scents and flavours. The whole process would take you much closer to the plants and the earth in which they’d grown. Bizarrely I found myself comparing culinary outcomes of one place with a monotheistic tradition against another with a whole host of gods. Tai’an won, hands Dao’n.
Related posts: China 12: Luoyang express 3 November / China 10: return to Taishan 1 November / China 8: place-settings and plans 30 October / China 7: Confucius, we say... 30 October / China 6: stairway to heaven 29 October / China 5: eyes wide open 28 October / China 3: prayers at Puning 26 October / China 2: dentistry in Beijing + Beirut 24 October / China 1: not in Kansas anymore 23 October 2009.
Art of Faith II is an Illuminations production for Sky Arts to be screened in 2010.