I was very excited to be able to go to China but unfortunately my memories of that country are blurry and distant from the forefront of my mind. Why? I have always been sensitive to the political and social atmospheres of the places we travelled and the repressive atmosphere of China was palpable – I truly felt like I couldn’t breathe. The entire three week tour became more about preserving the integrity of my soul rather than enjoying my surroundings. China was a juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, the ancient and the new, the progressive and the primitive. Fake smiles and gestures for the sake of appearances – with an underlying air of fear and cruelty. There’s a reason why China moved to the top of my list of “Countries never to visit again”. I simply could not survive there. My creative outpouring and outspoken nature are essential to my mental and physical health. The China that I encountered forced me to squash my natural instincts and become someone that I am not.
I was a guest artist with a Toronto company headed by a Chinese ex-patriot and our tour of China took us to Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou, and Shanghai. Beijing was the first stop. From the very first morning in Beijing, my life became regimented by timetables. Breakfast at 8:00, bus call at 8:20, guest teaching at 9:30, lunch at 12:30, etc. It’s not that I haven’t had to deal with timetables before – after all, life on tour is one big schedule of traveling, eating, rehearsing, performing, sightseeing and resting. It was the lack of free time and the lack of free movement that soon began to bother me. We were constantly accompanied by official translators who firmly steered me and the entire group in the directions that they wanted us to go in. My usual spontaneous encounters with natives of the country that I was visiting were out. I saw whom they wanted me to see and I talked to whom they wanted me to speak to.
There are obvious beauties in China and the opportunity to see many of these sights up close and personal was priceless. Most people have seen a photograph of the Great Wall but it is another thing to actually walk over its rocky ramparts that have been worn down by time and millions of feet. The opulence of the emperor’s palaces and simply the scale of the buildings are overwhelming – they’re humongous! Chinese oppositions continued. Summer palace beauty filled with hundreds of pushing and shoving Chinese tourists. The majesty of the Forbidden City opposite the marching ranks of armed soldiers in Tiananmen Square. We were in Suzhou which was a picturesque city between Nanjing and Shanghai. Beautiful little bridges span the canal that runs through the city. I was standing on one of the bridges and drinking in the beauty of my surroundings. “This is so gorgeous,” I commented to my companion. My words barely left my lips when a window near me, overlooking the water, crashed open and a pair of hands tossed a bowl of garbage out into the water below. My eyes followed the garbage’s descent. The water below the bridge was filthy – filled with the trash of humanity. Floating by was a fisherman who threw his arms up to protect himself from the raining refuse.
The dancers in the company had a rough time with the cuisine. Especially the vegetarians. I don’t think the Chinese had grabbed that concept yet. Their version of a vegetarian meal was vegetables served in a meat sauce. These poor kids basically lived on rice for three weeks and the result was a crash diet for many to the point that some became almost skeletal. I don’t subscribe to sticking to my own dietary preferences. If I’m starving – I will pretty much eat anything whether my stomach likes it or not. I did encounter several interesting meals. During the tour we were invited to several banquets and at these banquets, the company was divided into hierarchy placement. That meant that principal dancers and artistic staff sat with the Chinese officials. This was a good thing and a bad thing. Good in that I was able to have some interesting conversations with the men who were part of the ruling class. Bad in that I had to eat everything that was placed in front of me and didn’t have the luxury that the rest of the cast had in picking and choosing what they wanted to eat. Diplomatic eyes were on me. What do you do with a duck’s foot? For those of you who know, I commend your knowledge. I picked it up with my chopsticks and after staring at it for a minute, put it back down onto the plate and looked around at my fellow diners for guidance. The diplomat next to me chuckled and told me to eat the webbing. It was interesting – a bit chewy but interesting. I was relieved to find out that thousand-year old eggs are not eggs that had been kept since the beginning of eternity. It’s simply a colloquial term for a preparation process. I can say that I was less than pleased to know what constitutes bird’s nest soup. Ignorance can be your friend.
My time with the Chinese officials was informative with the topics of conversation shifting around various subjects such as birth control, minority representation and history. I was struck by the difference in perceptions – especially when we got onto the subject of minorities. One official was telling me about the problems they were having with one particular minority who constituted a small proportion of China’s population – there were only fifty million of them. Wow – fifty million people in a minority. That’s more than a lot of countries have in their entire population.
The most relaxed time in China was spent in Guangzhou. Like the southern regions of many countries (the US, France, Italy, etc.) – the population is a bit more easy-going. Why this is – I don’t know – but I do appreciate it in all of the countries. Even our time spent at one of Guangzhou’s dance studios was a relaxed and fun day – filled with excitable energy and creativity. Time spent in the studios farther north were more regimented and segregated. I found it amusing that the Beijing officials had had nothing positive to say about their brothers to the south. Before we left Beijing for Guangzhou, one official warned me about the crassness of the southern China region, saying that they eat anything with four legs except tables and they eat anything that flies except airplanes. Although I had never heard it expressed in quite this fashion, I was not surprised. The Parisians say basically the same thing about Southern France and New Englanders say the same thing about the U.S. South. My experience in China was not a stellar one but it did spark an interest in the country. Since that trip I have studied the country’s history, read many of its books and continue to watch its political and social metamorphosis. I hope that one day, I will be able to return to China because anything that leaves me with that bad of an impression needs to be looked at again – hopefully with a better result.