I arrived a few hours ago, but I'm going to sleep soon. I've been up for the last 36 hours, and sleep is having trouble kicking in now that it's nighttime.
For now, I'll just say I had a great time. Not as great as I thought, since China is growing and modernizing itself so quickly that all that we associate with traditional China is slowly being demolished. In most big cities we visited, my mother had trouble recognizing some since in one year, suburbs extending as far as the eye can see that consisted of small one-floor communal houses became seas of 40 stories apartment buildings. You couldn't take a look at the horizon without seeing at least 20 construction cranes at any one time.
That's not mentioning the shores of the Yangtze where they built the Three Gorges Dam (the biggest one in the world), which meant raising the water level of most of the river upstream of it by close to 90 meters in total (still has 21 meters to go). Hundreds of little villages were flooded, and entire cities have been built (and are still being built) to replace them, turning fishing villages into rather big cities with hospitals, schools and everything. I've seen plenty of huge suspension bridges halfway completed while cruising down the river.
Seriously, most of China right now is one huge construction yard. It's nice in a way to see a people so willing to get up to speed and show the rest of the world what they can see. You can see a sort of exuberance in the innovative and aesthetically pleasing new skyscrapers in the big cities, as if it wasn't enough to just pile up cement and bricks, but to instead make a statement that they want to make a better but also prettier environment. It's a welcome change from all the cynicism, pessimism and blasé attitude you can feel in most of North America right now, usually in small amounts but it's always there, lurking.
Of course, nothing is perfect. Poverty, while less prevalent than before, is still everywhere, especially in the countryside. In every big city, we got assaulted by people trying to sell us flashy junks, books, memory cards and copies of watches as soon as we'd get off the bus. Similarily, freedom of expression is still limited; I was never able to access anything more than Hotmail and Google China in any of the Internet cafes and hotels where I've been. But at least it's improving, as evidenced by the new cities with services along the Yangtze, the quickly growing tourism industry as well as the construction of bigger apartments for people, the introduction of things like life and health insurance as well as the large-scale renovation of old neighbourhoods and more freedom of expression than before. For example, one of our local guide was quite politicized regarding government policies, religions and such. She said that at least now they're at least allowed to talk about sensible topics and disapprove of their leaders, as long as they don't get too public about it. Baby steps, but we really weren't much better off in the first half of the century mind you.
Anyway, I'll add more tomorrow, with pictures this time. The food was mostly good though regular stuff and not anything fancy or gastronomical, apart from in Beijing, where I just couldn't get used to the general way they made their sauces and cooked their meat usually with skin and big slices of fat. Anyway, good night.
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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Current projects: Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)
