China

Now we’re safely in Mongolia it seems like a good time to recap on some of the more negative elements of our stay in China. Of course we knew about the human rights atrocities and the corruption and the lack of freedom of speech… But it was still rather disconcerting to come face to face with the system.

In Tiannamen Square our local guide welcomed us and quickly told us we should not take photos of the (ubiquitous) police and military presence, and that we should not under any circumstances take photos if any ‘re-education’ had to be carried out. As we were confused, he helpfully acted out what ‘re-education’ could entail with a mimed left hook! Shortly after that, his every word was monitored by some mysterious Chinese attendants. He mentioned the ‘student uprising’, and said facts were confused, but that was is certain is that the square is a place for peace now.

We met an amazing young guide who told us he hadn’t found out about Tiannamen Square until a tourist on one of his first tours told him. He told us about the corruption in the education system (doing well does not guarantee good grades for the children of those outside the party), the ins and outs of joining the communist party and the wonders of Chinese news. He was pretty inspirational and I hope he turns 23 a free(ish) man still.

With another guide we had a bizarre conversation about Facebook, where he claimed it wasn’t ‘exactly banned’, just no-one used it and it had a less than 10% market share! As it is in fact banned, we think any market share is pretty damn impressive. It was also slightly distressing to have all the warning messages on our iPhones which essentially said: everything you do is being filtered through China’s firewall.

And back to the wonders of the aptly named CCTV (China Central Television, or something like that). We were able to enjoy this through their English language channel, so I can confirm for myself that every half hour news programme contains ten minutes about how great China is, ten minutes is about how crap the rest of the world is, and ten minutes of sport. It’s not lies, it’s just a terrifying distortion of the truth.

One thing for sure is that China is not a communist country, it’s just a dictatorship. It’s a capitalist dream! Every brand you can think of, everywhere, all the time. Practically every person we saw in the three cities was dressed to saunter down Upper St on a Saturday afternoon (though Xi’an wasn’t quite so trendy). The UK’s welfare state is far far closer to communism than anything there. And in Shanghai we were told something astonishingly like the American dream… This is where poor men come to get rich, and where millionaires risk their millions for billions!