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Our first full week in China had a great start. On Monday at 8:30 a.m. we were standing on the outdoor stage of No. 9 Middle School in Nanjing, waiting for our cue. In front of 1500 students, we launched into "America the Beautiful." Then, for our final musical gift, music therapy majors Carin Beam and Megan Burns did a splendid rendition of "What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love."
After the presentations, all students had the chance to meet informally with six Chinese students and practice their English skills and learn about American culture. Hot topics included Yao Ming, whether Americans love McDonalds too much, and the war in Iraq, which most Chinese oppose. Some of the Chinese students asked us to sing along with them songs from American bands like the Eagles and the Backstreet Boys. One student admitted to liking Linkin Park but admitted: "When I play it on my iPod, it makes my brain feel crazy."
These students work hard to pass the national exams that determine their placement in high school and college. Many students said they have no jobs, study until 11 p.m. every night memorizing, and rarely go on field trips. That American universities like Queens permit their students to travel abroad shocked them.
The following day, we decided to go where 70% of the Chinese live — the countryside. We drove out to Gao chun county, seeing field after field of canola. We did some bargaining in a local town market where people bought Chinese seals with their Chinese names on them, blue and white textiles native to the region, and prayer scrolls painted on the spot, long things to be hung in pairs and designed to ward off evil spirits.
The last note sounded on our country visit was both the most troubling and uplifting. We went to a 500-person village called Sha tan. Few Westerners had ever seen these villagers, and few of them had ever seen us. The Chinese government and certainly ordinary tour companies do not like to show this side of China where the roads are made of dirt and the houses are tiny and the poverty is grinding.
Sha tan is a poor place in the middle of rich farmland. To help break down the barriers between us, we took pictures on our digital cameras and then showed them to people. Many had never seen themselves on an LCD screen. One older man jumped up and down and clapped his hands.
On the bus, we talked about our time in Sha tan. And we thought about this: how to ensure that when the village disappeared from the big rearview mirrors of the bus, it wouldn't also vanish from our minds and our hearts.
We toured the site of the Nanjing Massacre. Up to 400,000 residents of this, a former capital of the Ming Dynasty, were slain by the invading Japanese army in 1938-1939. The Memorial's dominant color was gray, visitors obeyed the Whisper Only signs, and to get to the exhibition of atrocities that included torture and rape, we had to walk around the entire site, taking a flight of steps down every several hundred yards — a long descent.
After a great overnight train ride on Wednesday night, we arrived in Beijing, the capital of China. We saw the famous sites of Tiananmen Square and the Temple of Heaven. The largest city square in the world, Tiananmen can hold half a million people. With our 25-person tour, we tried to do our part. The Temple of Heaven is a series of temples laid out along a long North-South axis. Here is where the emperor would come for blessings and to confirm his status as the Son of Heaven.
— Charles M. Israel
Superlatives (based on informal polls):
- Person voted most likely to be seen buying a black market CD: Carin Beam
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