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广东，广州 (Guangzhou city [Canton], Guangdong prov) is essentially the epicenter of the famously booming Chinese economy.  Far in the south, just 2 hours from Shenzhen (mainland city started in the 1970s to faciliate the regional economic growth direclty across from Hong Kong) and Hong Kong (an economic “miracle” since the 1960s due its then status as a British colony and detachment from the mainland’s chaos of that time) its location location location that explains Guangzhou’s selection to be the factory central of China…with Shanghai and Tianjin playing in a close 2nd and 3rd.  After biking south 50km from Guangzhou, its been solid development and factories, and I expect it to be so down to Shenzhen, the port.

 Its of course the abundant labor that drives China’s economy, and those that fill the jobs often come in from the countryside with courage enough to seek a better life through higher incomes than agriculture can offer, and are willing to take the risk to move to a big city without pre-arranged work.  Guangzhou, due to its reputation as the economic and factory folcrum of China naturally attracts a comparatively large percent of China’s rural migrants.   Although countless construction sites in addition to its factories absorb an incredible number of these people, a surprising number of migrants who can’t find work (and therefore don’t have the dormitory housing that still accompany many jobs in China) make due with sleeping on sidewalks and under bridges.  Walking by them naturally makes me uncomfortable.  Most sleeping by 10pm, they look peaceful and comfortable enough.  It seems they’ve gotten enough to eat, this eases my unease.  A bowl of rice is, afterall, 1 Yuan (US$0.13).  But I still think of the luguans (cheap hotels) I’ve stayed at in the last 2 months, and how though most westerners would never even consider staying at them due to the lower standards, they’d be a far cry better than sleeping on the street.  But tonight, I’m not just at a luguan.  I’m at the Landmark Hotel, for Kevin’s wedding.  Just about as opposite on the socio-economic scale as one can get.

I’d often heard from people in the north – in Beijing and in Jilin – that Guangzhou was “dangerous” with “high crime” and is China’s least safe city.  Not that Guangzhou natives are more apt to stealing, but people told me its the poor migrant workers who steal.  Now my second time to Guangzhou, even if some statistics that I haven’t seen prove this, I’ve never had any trouble whatsoever.  I often tell people that China is the safest country that I’ve ever been to.  China’s obsession with walls and gates and guards seem to go well over board with a strong culture of early to sleep, early to rise, but no matter the reason, Guangzhou in my experience joins the rest of China in being very safe, not to mention rural Chinese people being overly more friendly and open than urban dwellers.  Perhaps my height scares off would-be pick-pockets, for they do exist in all Chinese cities, but I do think the northern perception of Guangzhou is a bit off.

When we 5 fueled-by-ricers pulled our bikes along side new BMWs, Mercedes, Audis (yes, the Germans dominate the Chinese car market), by the front door of the Landmark Hotel, in our dirty clothes, with our dirty bikes, carrying out dirty luggage, the perfect harmony of cleanliness, of niceness, that is characteristic of the typical Chinese facade of quality and wealth was disrupted.  Immediately, guards and car park guides felt uncomfotable with our presence and immdiately told us we couldn’t “park” our bikes here.  “No problem, we’re just taking our luggage off our bikes.”  “You can’t park your bikes here, go around back across the street to the bike coral.” “Ok, we just have to take our stuff…   Yes, yes, we’re guests here are your hotel.” 

Culture shock.  Really, we should fit in perfectly at the Landmark.  We’re foreign, and foreign means firstly wealth to many Chinese.  We all studied in America and have the ability to go to the US, which alone classifies us in the top echeoleon of world citizens.  We are, afterall, middle class, so the Landmark and its niceness, its cleanliness, its class, its fancy-pants image, yes yes, it’s all a part of who we are.  But its a part we’ve all seemed to have left behind when we started this bike trip, if not earlier in our lives.

As we passed through the lobby, our arms loaded with our Chinese road-grit-ladden bicycle luggage in our dirty biking shirts and beards, I felt uncomfortable, a misfit.  We’re used to staying in common low-end Chinese hotels in the rural areas…well, see the luguan photos in the Photo section yourself.  No, we hadn’t driven our cars to the Landmark.  Yes, reducing carbon emissions and helping to halt Global Warming / The Climate Crisis is sometimes dirty and unglamorous, dispite the romance of our trip that sometimes comes across this website.  Biking is sometimes dirty, dangerous, and uncomfortable (What?! You mean you have to use your own energy and muscles to propel yourself?)  But in the end, IT IS SO WORTH IT.  Until we have solar and wind produced electric cars, street cars, and light rails, riding bicycles instead of driving the internal combustion engine whenever possible is KEY to slowing and eventually stopping the Climate Crisis in the next 20 years.  We hope that our (rather extreme) example of how effective bicycles are in human (and luggage) transport may encourage you to keep that car of yours parked a little longer between outings.

Although our stay at the Landmark was very nice (after we worked through several staff people over the course of 1 hour to figure out where we could park our bikes) and we are SO GREATFUL to Kevin and Kaishan for their generous gift to us of 2 nights stay during their wedding, I realized that we have something in common with the jobless migrants sleeping out on the streets.  Its a common human weakness to judge someone by their outward appearance instead of a person’s internal character, but it must be overcome.  In modern China, image and surface looks are everything.  I’ve found the impression or illusion of quality is more important than there infact being quality.  One of Gandhi’s profound role models taught him this key life lesson, the role model himself wearing simple and rather dirty clothes daily.  Looking down upon people sleeping in the street, on people with the courage to try to better their lives through their own initiative and effort, leaving families behind, standing up to try to participate in some small way in China’s booming economy to balance the dangerously enormous income gap, is illogical and void of compassion and empathy.  Some Landmark Hotel staff may have looked down on me in a similar way because I don’t fit their image of a wealthy guest.  I’m foreign, yes, but…dirty shirt and arrived on a bike?  Confusion.   

2am walking the 5km back to the Landmark from an Irish pub the wedding party had migrated too late in the afternoon upon Adam’s insistence of not taking a taxi (The dirty “T” word), two women pulled me aside while I was ahead of the group.  At first moving their fists to their mouths, I thought they were thirsty, so I offered them my bottle of water.  No, not thirsty.  When they learned I speak Chinese, the sharades ended and they clearly told me that they were hungry.  Although most migrant workers are male, they’d just come to Guangzhou alone several days earlier from the countryside looking for work, but unfortunately hadn’t found any yet.  Their money had run out, most having been spent on their standing train tickets.  Having become a bit leery of giving cash to beggars in Beijing, I offered to go with them to a store to buy them food.  Half expecting them to tell me to forget it, they eagerly agreed.  So we walked about a block and found a latenight pulled-noodle restaurant.  They sat down at a small table in a corner, obviously embarraced in front of the restaurant boss as I ordered for them.  I ordered the standard beef noodels for them, just a hair over US50 cents a bowl.  It was late, I was tired from walking.  I didn’t sit down to talk more with them, though I wish I would’ve had the energy.  They smiled and thanked me, I wished them well.  Walking back I wondered if 1 bowl each would be enough.  Could I have helped them any more?  I worry about them, 2 women without work in a large city, in a country with plenty of prostitution for its overly male population due to years of selective abortion favoring boy-children in a 1 child policy environment.  They’re just 2 of countless others.  2 I had the honor of meeting, God bless them on their own journeys.

Interesting how Guangzhou’s migrants’ stories sound so similar to that of my great great great grandfather who immigrated to the US from Germany in the early 1860s at the age of 21.  And so similar to the stories of today’s Mexicans, South Americans, Somali, Hmong, etc in the US, and Eastern Europeans in Western Europe…

In the end, people are people – 人就是人。Its unfortuante so often our own identy depends on creating divisions, building walls, spreading sepratism in the form of loving those similar to ourselves and hating those perceived to be dissimilar.  Us and Them.  And though our identies are not identical, as John Denver sings in his Season Suite, “Yet as different as we are, we’re still the same!” At the very least, we may offer mutual respect to our fellow humanbeings.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 10:05 am and is filed under Group Posts, Pete's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.