Blog

A man, faded army issue pants, wool coat, rope belt which wraps too far around his too thin waist, shovel, missing front tooth, standing in a dirt field with a blank stare at the foreigner riding by on a bicycle and gear costing much more than his yearly wage.  But he doesn’t know that, all he knows is that just over 30 years ago foreigners wern’t allowed into his country.  He knows that growing up during the cultural revolution he was told to eat his rice because there were American’s who were starving.  He knows that somehow things have changed but he isn’t sure of the scope.  Left in the dark and far behind not 100 miles to the north a place exists called Beijing which within the year will host an event on the world stage.  Not too far to the south exists a place called Shanghai, a place more foreign to him than to millions of Americans.  But he knows his son moved there, along with countless millions of others to the boom towns of post Deng Xioping’s economic freedom movement.  He knows that his son sends money home from his window washing job, he sends home the equivilent of 40 US dollars a month, much more than what he had ever been able to make growing corn, cabbage, and carrots.  It would not be too much to say that his son has a direct window to view the change occurring in this country at a hecticly and mind spinning pace.  He may get a chance to share this with his father once a year when he returns home on an over crowded train for the new year celebration.  His son sends home a lot of money, to this man my plane ticket to the country, my bicycle, my video camera, hard drive, and camping equipment dosn’t exist, it can’t exist, or one would starve.  Back in the United States I am poor, jobless, and missing out on building my 401k, paying off a mortgage on a house and car, and ruining the statistic of unemployment rates for my college.  Should I feel guilty for taking advantage of a situation, an unfair and unbalanced coincidence that I am able to travel, document, and see things that make our world ours.  I struggle with the thought that I make money in the U.S. then spend it on a lifestyle a fraction of the price for the same goods, while people here work day in and day out to make ends meet.  I have put myself in a unique situation.  No other generation in the history of human kind has been able to travel and see the world the way mine has.  I purposely have no children or current career that I had to tear myself away from.  The ability and freedom to explore has exponentially risen with the advent of better transportation and communication.  Would I then also feel guilty for not exploring these options?  I find a way to cope with this is by doing exactly what our group means to do, a way to share with friends, family, and anyone unable to take benefit from travel like myself.  We live in a highly globalized world which will only become more so.  Not only can this man working the fields in Hebei province China not understand me but I can most certainly not understand him.  But we can begin to build bridges for the future.  Not only for major corporations investing money in third world countries and the boom cities foregin to most residents in China, Americans, and a vast amount of their own inhabitants.  But we can try to understand the true people that make up the world we live in, along with exploring who we are ourselves in the process.  No we can not all quit our jobs and tour the world, it would then surly fall apart.  But we can step back ponder the man in the dirt field the same way he ponders us. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 8:12 am and is filed under Adam's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.