Bobby's blog home

Recent Entries

• The Stars Align
• Traveling Light
• Solly the Seal
• The Greatest Walk On Earth: New Zealand’s Milford Track
• Bobby’s Blog — Don’t Worry.  Be Happy!

Recent Comments

• By Bob Hicks from the entry 'Vantage Point'
• By Nikki from the entry 'Vantage Point'
• By Susan W. McMakin from the entry 'Vantage Point'
• By Nancy Trego from the entry 'Vantage Point'
• By Jay Black from the entry 'Vantage Point'
• By Richard Anderson from the entry 'American Pride'
• By Carlos Catillo from the entry 'How Much Is Enough?'
• By Brendaveggie from the entry 'How Much Is Enough?'
• By ginger allen from the entry 'How Much Is Enough?'
• By caar from the entry 'Up Periscope'

Chongxing (formerly known as Chunking) is China’s largest metropolitan region with about 32 million people and, typically, nearly as many building cranes. I exaggerate, but I am really sorry I am not in the crane business.

We visited the zoo for a little panda-monium. Now, I had thought Todd the Tour Director was joking when he said Tauck would bribe the panda to let us see him up close. We had just heard stories of how the economy really works, and we had bribed our way into a close parking space for the Terracotta Warrior museum. Ha ha…bribe the panda.

But they actually did bribe the panda…with apples! Apparently, pandas crave variety from their bamboo diet, which they prefer to munch further away from prying eyes. The bribe worked wonderfully, and the panda performed for a short while. On seeing no further bribes after two apples, he retreated out of view.

But the real attraction turned out to be (drumroll)...US! Group after group of six year olds in uniforms streamed into the zoo, escorted by female teachers and male military escorts. All smiled excitedly and waved and blurted out, “Hello!” There was pure delight on their faces as the Big Noses waved back and said, “Hello!”. We snapped photos of each other as troop after troop passed by. Even the military escorts laughed and enjoyed the moment.

Appearances deceive, however. Surprise, surprise. The military escorts are present not for security but for the children’s political training, which begins at such a young age.

At the zoo we learned that people and animals are much alike. Only, all we needed to perform was a hello. The panda got two apples.

One’s first impression of China coming from Japan begins an hour from Beijing, when the sky is marred by a thick smog. Flying into the airport, you see pods of apartment buildings, all identical. Neighborhoods are being built with a half dozen or more cranes at a time. Forests are planted with row after row of the same tree. Such is the appearance of growth orchestrated by a command economy.

Life is loud, with honking horns everywhere. Unlike Japan, theft warnings abound. Throngs of people block your way. Lines are the rule, not the exception.

Traffic lights are just a suggestion to motorists and cyclists, who travel in both directions in either bicycle lane. Within the pedestrian crosswalk you still risk your life.

People are not polite. Thousands push and shove to get where they want to go. Nobody seems upset by it, but to the visitor the impression is pure rudeness.

The scale of Tian’ anmen Square, the Forbidden City, surrounding buildings and broad avenues make Texas seem miniature by comparison. There is no comparable experience.

Police are omnipresent and wear at least six different uniforms. Cameras watch your every move. These authorities are intent on keeping order and security. The people’s apparent fixation with honoring Chairman Mao’s memory makes the their acceptance of these restrictions more understandable.

Whereas Japan had a Shinto shrine on every block seemingly, here there is little apparent deference to a higher being other than the authorities. The overall impression is a society brandishing a mix of capitalism and authoritarianism that combines the worst aspects of both.

The Great Wall is an amazing testament that this country’s sense of scale and engineering accomplishment, which began centuries ago. The Chinese breed of capitalism makes sense after walking just a couple of sections that lie at the crest of the mountains north of Beijing. The Wall’s original expanse was 3,000 times this distance.

We made it far enough away from the tourist area to see three people emerge from a forest trail and scale the wall with plastic bags of contraband to hawk to tourists. Such people are everywhere, and we learned to shoo them away by saying, “Boo-Yao!” That must mean something really nasty because you don’t have to say it twice.

Building is occurring on an unimaginable scale. Everywhere there are blocks of housing being razed and replace by huge apartment buildings. I would not be surprised if the construction crane count in Xi’an alone is close to 1,000.

China is an education on multiple levels. If we escape without a respiratory infection from the smog or some other disease from the filthiness, it will be remarkable. We will not miss the ever-present odor of twice burnt oil (at least). It will be some time, though, before we escape from the propaganda style coverage of news in the daily English language newspaper.

It is a mathematical certainty that China will become the world’s largest economy. That being said, there is little here worthy of emulating. The virtues that the American press assign to this “command economy” are vastly offset by the means in which economic growth is being achieved.

After being in this amazing country for two weeks, I feel amazingly at home. People are very welcoming, particularly as our is the first tour of Westerners since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Following are some observations, and I welcome those who are more versed in Japanese history and culture to comment. I remain a novice.

Let me begin at the end. Yesterday, we visited Hiroshima and were moved to stunned silence by the sadness and solemnity of memorials and a museum that told the story.  We found it even-handed, but some of the photographs and exhibits were horrific. This experience was a poignant offset to our visit to Pearl Harbor exactly two weeks prior.

The Japanese align themselves more closely with America than with any other country. We must have done a good job of helping them rebuild. Hiroshima is a modern city today, as is Tokyo, standing in sharp contrast to photos of massive devastation following WWII. Oddly, a genuine warmth and sense of kinship is palpable.

The Japanese are masters at rebuilding. Tokyo has been rebuilt seven times from wars, natural disasters and fires. Important shrines throughout the country have purposefully been rebuilt to enable craftsmen to practice their ancient trades. Rebuilding following the tsunami, however, is proving problematic due to the nuclear power issue, which for obvious reasons evokes deep emotions here.

Religious symbols pervade the culture, and most people seem some combination of Shinto and Buddhism. Kyoto alone has 1,200 shrines, not counting those in homes and places of business. People seem unconcerned with the differences among their personal practices, as they individually seek to earn merit toward enlightenment. Religion will not likely become a source of conflict here. A sense of calm and order prevails even in heavy traffic.

Baseball, however, evokes the animal spirits! We ventured on our own to the Tokyo Dome—an exact replica of the Twins’ dome in the U.S.—and we watched the Tokyo Giants battle the Hiroshima Carp. What a treat! The fans sang and cheered in unison the entire time their team was at the plate, and thanks to the amazing bullet train there were plenty of fans for each side. The beautiful beer girls seemed to glide up and down the aisles pouring draft from kegs affixed attractively on their backs. There were hotdogs, McDonald’s, Major League Baseball souvenir shops and American cheers. “Let’s go, Ramirez (pronounced locally as Rah-Mee-Ray)!” The scoreboard flashes, “Charge!” two young girls next to Marilyn spoke a little English and helped us figure things out.

The countryside has amazing mountains, glorious waterfalls and quaint villages. If poverty is widespread we haven’t found it. These are resilient, talented, fastidious people residing in a paradise of islands that occasionally are buffeted by horrific natural disasters.

Transportation is efficient, but expensive. The impeccable and uncrowded toll road from Kyoto to Osaka’s airport must have cost over $35 in tolls. No potholes. No construction. No delays. The bullet train runs precisely on time, and waiting areas for each car enable embarkation/debarkation in 90 seconds. Cleanliness reflects attention to detail and personal responsibility.

Silence is wonderful! These polite people make minimal noise, whether gathered in a lounge or driving a car.

In a few minutes we leave for Beijing, which we expect to stand in sharp contrast.

Hawaii is a place to find peace. Rainbows, dramatic sunsets, gushing waterfalls and the rhythmic crashing of waves soothe the soul. These delights, however, mask a deeper source of peace that lies in our connection to the land itself.

The Hawaiian islands slide ever so slowly along a tectonic plate moving over a relatively more stable hot spot deep below in the earth’s mantle. As we travelled from the lush northernmost island of Kauai to the southernmost Big Island called Hawaii, the lava lay increasingly bare. Nature’s newest fields were formed on Kilauea as recently as August third. One comes to understand the succession of a building land mass, which captures the trade winds and squeezes out their moisture along the windward slopes. Hence, the rugged landscape carved by rivers flowing as voluminous waterfalls and producing ever-present rainbows.

Here we can observe the succession of life as lichens and moss attach to nascent lava, followed by the growth of ferns and native shrubs, and finally the emergence of trees and other species introduced by man. One’s sense of peace becomes grounded in an understanding of the land and its origins that is rarely so apparent.

The locals are grounded in more physical (and perhaps metaphysical) ways, expressed in petroglyphs evident on the older lava flows of Kilauea. After a child is born, one carves a circle adjacent to others in one’s family and places the placenta in the circle symbolically connecting the child to the land and to preceding generations. The lava petroglyph field of symbols and circles is a genealogical library connecting the past to the present. People from the Mainland are not the first to venture to this place to find the connection to our roots.

Daily, in Virginia we spend much time obsessing over minor matters by comparison. We are consumed by layers of distraction that obfuscate the underlying source of our peacefulness. Our proud sense of history of a few hundred years seems superfluous as compared with our connection to the ancient ground upon which we reside. Our obsession with politics, economics and daily distractions seems positively silly. Armed with a clearer perception of the peace one finds in connecting with the land, our escapes to the ocean or to the Blue Ridge Mountains make more sense. We might all take more time to connect physically and emotionally to the source of our existence.

Journey number one was to the country of Central Kansas, replete with rich farmland and grazing land that surprisingly rolls among areas of varying water supply. I had thought Kansas was flat.

Speaking for everyone from the East Coast who has never visited Kansas with a Kansas native, we have no clue. We just don’t get the complexity that underlies unending and seemingly homogeneous fields of grain, corn, soybeans and the like. And, we can’t envision how complicated community life can become even though it is built in straightforward fashion on the pillars of family, church and country.

I have a word for people who say, “It’s a dry heat.” They just haven’t tried to work when it is 112 degrees outside. After fifteen minutes walking on a farm, I could feel my kneecaps cooking.

Central Kansas is first, second and third about the land. Land has different characteristics depending, for instance, on its formation through glaciation or its location along a riverbed. How deep is your topsoil, and how rich are your land’s nutrients? Do you have a natural water source? Do you farm enough land to gain economies of scale? Who in your family is going to carry on stewardship of the land and the farmhouse after Mom and Dad pass away?

Farming is big business. The fixed cost to farm is huge, running up to millions of dollars for equipment and structures, not to mention the land itself and the farmhouse. Tractors, combines, silos, elevators, barns all come at a high price for today’s technology. Do you invest in your own, or do you pay to use the coop’s facilities?

The science of farming grows ever more sophisticated, encompassing fertilization, crop selection and the use of genetically engineered seeds to increase yield. One farmer told me that thanks to experimental seed from Kansas State University, his field yielded 70 bushels of wheat this year compared with 40 bushels last year. Since prices are much higher this year than last, the difference in his gross income due to new science is staggering. It takes substantial experience, education and acumen to manage each year’s crop through uncontrollable variables like commodity prices and weather.

We drove past a field that had recently been harvested, and we noticed four rows of burnt out corn left standing. The neighboring field also had four dead rows. When we inquired of the owner, we learned that there wasn’t enough rain to save the early crop, and the four rows were left for the insurance adjuster to determine how much recovery will come from crop insurance. Each farmer has to weigh the cost of irrigation against the cost of crop insurance, or whether to take a chance on Mother Nature and invest in neither.

Overlaid on the business of farming are the dynamics of family and church. There is more than a hint of the rough independent danger of the old West. Patriotism runs rampant. Fox news is omnipresent. Football and other traditional sports are paramount. Hunting is ubiquitous, if you can squeeze it into your 5:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. workday. After that, it is family time. People commonly own multiple weapons for protection as well as sport.

Life in America’s Heartland is fundamental to our nation’s values, health and lifestyle. Our nutrition on the East Coast depends on the productivity of the land in Kansas. In Abilene, the former home of President Dwight David Eisenhower and now the home of his Presidential library, residents are rightfully proud of their native son’s role in protecting our homeland and way of life.

I feel like I could write an entire book about the land of Central Kansas, even though I know I have only scratched the surface. But, my in-laws are waiting for me to take them to the rodeo.