I have always said that China is a paradox (though i suppose most countries are the same, though China might be more than most). Though most of last week was actually quite unpolluted (1 day i could see 'as far as the eye could see' for the 1st time ever in Xi'an), on friday it started to get bad again, and especially dusty (since all the building near the apartment). Thus, yesterday we went down to the Qin Ling Mountains a couple of hours away for some fresh air.
There are at least 8 panda reserves in these mountains, and we ended up in the worst. The 'zoo' is more like a jail in a war zone: full of concrete and metal bars. There is more money and space devoted to the trees by the paths in the zoo than on the animals in the zoo. It really was that depressing. There was no grass inside any of the cages -even the leopard was stuck in a 3x3m concrete and steel jail cell. It is a crime. And so depressing. Ironically WWF do a lot of work with other panda reserves and zoos in this area; I presume they do not even know that this zoo exists. The highlight of the zoo trip was when a peacock opened its feathers; the lowlight when some kids threw stones at the leopard trying to get it to move.
Thoroughly depressed we almost ran out out of the zoo angry at all things Chinese (not all zoos are this bad in China, honest) and drove West parallel to the mountains, spotted a village by the side of the road and thought that would be a good place to start our camping trip. The driver thought we were a bit weird; the locals in the village thought we were even more so, as we sauntered through heading along a small river in a valley, deep into the mountains. The village was named after a 1,000 year old pagoda nearby which we quickly checked out and discovered that most of the pagoda complex had been destroyed during the cultural revolution (10 year period from 1966 where Mao encouraged everyone to destroy anything of cultural value and defy elders and academics -which is somewhat weird, since China's 5000 year culture is based on the 2 elements of family and education; but hey, that is Mao -the evil dictator)
Thankfully the water, the green, the smells and the exercise made us forget the morning and after a few hours we were exploring villages that consisted of 3 buildings in a 1 mile stretch with the only transport to them being a footpath. It was great (again) to be in places untouched by development. No phone lines and even no electricity at the farthest village we reached to, and the views of the mountains were beautiful.
We camped along the stream and spent a while talking to a local who had 4 sons (20-30), but none of them were married (as no woman wants them, they are so poor) and only 1 was left at home (the others were working in the cities). He only had 2 cows for ploughing but spent ages telling us about the plants that could be eaten and the ones that could be used for medicine. He had lived on the hill for 50 years (though he had been to Xi'an infrequently). It is a joy to still talk to some of those 25-120 million people who are still in relative poverty in China (25m is china's number of extreme poor, 120m is World Bank's definition of poverty) who Plan is focused on helping (though we do not work in the area we were hiking in). Although this guy (in his 70s but still working the fields) is probably in the 120m bracket not the 25m, he lives mostly off what he grows and a few things to trade to buy other food. If anyone is near Xi'an; I highly recommend heading south and then west tot he edge of the mountains, picking a village and go off exploring. We'll be doing it again, that is for sure.
The water was so fresh and clean, as to be drinkable (according to the man, and verified by us); the people were so kind to us strangers it really is the opposite of Chinese cities where people and cars seem to actively barge or crash into other people and cars; where there is trash and pollution everywhere. I guess I'll be talking more about China over the next month in the UK to my Plan colleagues, and of course to friends and family, most of whom I have not seen for 18 months.
No comments:
Post a Comment