Please visit http://blog.sina.com.cn/project95 for Peter's as-it-happens blog. For a slower-moving, but perhaps slightly more insightful diary, this site right here is the place to come.
To get you in the mood, please first have a look at this fun video!
Miss Daisy had, in retrospect, surprisingly few problems, given what I put her through. Among her problems, one stands out. It first emerged at the worst possible place…at Tanggula Pass, at 5,230m the highest (national road) mountain pass in China.
Suddenly Miss Daisy wouldn’t start. We towed her for some time. The tow row kept ripping until none of it was left. Then we used a steel cable which promptly tore off Miss Daisy’s tow hook. It was 8:pm (or so), the sun sinking fast, the temperature dropping, just below the pass…I was ready to abandon Miss Daisy in the interest of our own safety.
Then Mr. Zhang managed to start her up. With hindsight, it was pure luck.
At fault was one small sensor (air intake pressure sensor)….
I didn’t find this out until two weeks before the end of the journey, after having suffered many more instances when Miss Daisy failed to start, stuttered, cut out intermittently and what not.
But in the end, we overcame all difficulties, one way or another…
What would a journey - or life - be without challenges and surprises, anyway?
Since I still have a captive audience, here’s a thought…
Have you checked out On the Road in China? How about a bit of adventure for yourself? The next journey starts on October 10!
Come see what I have seen and experienced (or at least some of it). No, you won’t be driving in a Caterham, but in something just a bit more comfortable.
On the Road in China driving holidays are not only about driving. They are about the stunningly beautiful landscapes of South-West China (the area generally referred to as Shangri-La), about enjoying hiking and horse riding excursions, outings to temples and monasteries, visits to Tibetan homes and nightclubs, shopping in quaint towns, sampling a variety of dishes – some delicate, some spicy, all a simple pleasure – and coming away with an entirely new appreciation for Chinese cuisine.
You can drive yourself or get a driver. Either way, I’ll be personally showing you around!
If you can’t make it this time, but would like me to tell you about future journeys and more of my adentures, please drop me a note to peter@ontheroadeditions.com.
Miss Daisy and I have driven 20,275km since leaving from Beijing on May 3. (Actually, we drove about 10% more than that since the tires I fitted her have a much larger circumference than the ones that come standard, but never mind.)
If you’ve read the news, it was a summer of torrential rains, landslides and deluges along the route that we’ve driven. These news caused friends to send two types of messages – panicky sorts in jittery fonts asking “Are you ok?� and celebratory ones expressing in bold font sentiments of “Good riddance�.
To the probable delight of the former and the likely annoyance of the latter, not only have we returned, but we can report that I haven’t had to put Miss Daisy’s hood up for more than 10% of the time.
***
Miss Daisy is one hell of a car. For one, she’s the most fun-to-drive car in the world when the road surface is good. She spurts ahead like no other car on earth, and when it comes to how she moves, well, let me tell you, you have not experienced how exciting driving can be until you’ve flitted through bends and switchbacks in a Caterham Super Seven! No other car comes close – not Porsches, not Ferraris, nothing I’ve ever driven.
Not only does she have the world’s best handling, she makes people smile and attracts them.
Whether it’s school children…
Or Farmers…
A friend put it best: “I’ve never owned a dog, nor had a child, but a Seven can outcute either.�
And this cuteness, this star-appeal has rubbed off on me during the journey. Wherever we went, she made a star out of me. After a few kilometres today, after I park her at Baideli and walk away, I will be an ordinary man again.
***
What will happen to Miss Daisy? Within less than a month, she will become the first prize in a lucky draw in China. Those who want to participate in the lucky draw will get a chance to make a donation to the China Youth Development Foundation and then there will be one lucky man or woman who will become the new owner of Miss Daisy. Will he or she know to appreciate her? If yes, Miss Daisy is sure to make a star of him or her as well.
(Details of the lucky draw will be announced by Nokia soon.)
***
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1. I didn’t check the tyre pressure once
2. I didn’t have to change a single tyre
3. I didn’t fall sick - not even with a cold or diarrhoea
4. I didn’t once fall over in a squat toilet
5. I didn’t have a car accident
6. I didn’t pay a single traffic fine
7. I didn’t lose anything (except my car keys in Yushu…luckily I had spares)
8. I didn’t leave any babies behind
Thank heavens for these eight good things!
***
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Distance from Beijing: 19,790km
Distance from Changjiang Wusongkou: 18,603km
Overnight altitude: 847m
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. You sit down for dinner and life as you know it ends.��? So writes Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking about the instant when her husband suffered a massive and fatal coronary and her life as she knew it ended.
I finished reading this book the day before I drove to Taiyuan.
***
On November 30, 2003, Hong Hong and her then-boyfriend Wang Hao took an evening walk. They crossed a street and heared metal smashing into metal. Then nothing.
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.
***
Three-and-a-half years later Hong Hong and Hao were, at last, released from hospital. Hao is heavier than before, the bones in his legs now stiffened by steel. But at least Hao still has both legs. Hong Hong is not so lucky. Her good, right leg, too, is strengthened by steel, but her left leg is gone, severed just below her hip. In place of her cut-off leg, she now has an artificial one of Chinese manufacture. It is far from ideal, but at least she is beginning to talk again.
(This is in Chinese, but the images alone are worth watching…)
***
When Hong Hong and Hao were run over, they had been seeing each other for only three months. One year after the accident, they got married over Hao’s family’s strenuous objections. “According to Chinese traditions,��? explains Hao, “your spouse’s mind and body should be intact to be eligible for marriage. Hong Hong’s mind is as sound as ever, but her body has been maimed. Still, I think the accident bound us together forever.��? And so Hao decided to ignore his family’s refusal to approve the marriage. “We got married at a group wedding ceremony along with many others who can’t get their family’s approval for one reason or another,��? adds Hong Hong. “I can’t express how lucky I feel to have Hao as my husband.��?
Overcoming Hao’s family objections was not the only obstacle that lay in their way.
According to witnesses, the driver who ran into two taxis before ending Hong Hong’s and Hao’s life as they knew it, was drunk. But this never made it into the police report.
Right after the accident, this driver, a man without conscience, said to them: “The car is my friend’s. Lets settle this privately. I don’t want to cause him trouble.��?
Before they knew it, however, the car’s ownership changed from being an individual’s to a company’s, specifically a real estate developer who is the driver’s employer.
The car was covered by third-party insurance. And the insurance paid up. Thank heavens, you will say. But not so fast: the insurance company paid the money to the policy holder, the real estate developer who was the employer of the man without conscience.
“How can that be?��? I ask incredulously.
“The spirit of Chinese third-party insurance coverage is that the money should end up with the injured party, but in the thicket of actual operation, the money is always first paid to the policy holder,��? Hong Hong tells me and nods to confirm that she’s not kidding.
As a result, she and Hao have been fighting for the last three-and-a-half years to get some of the money which, in spirit, should have been theirs to begin with. Mind you, she’s not talking about some sort of compensation for suffering. She’s just talking about money to pay her and Hao’s medical fees.
When they were first able to after the accident, they looked for help at a legal assistance service in Taiyuan. After getting nowhere at first, they found, at last and by sheer luck, a lawyer who took on their case and has been fighting it on their behalf for all this time without charging them. He has a daughter and a heart of gold. Slowly, slowly, money is beginning to trickle in.
Hong Hong and Hao now live in a one-room, ground floor flat that costs them RMB400 per month. The only shiny thing in it is a computer, connected to broadband.
“At first she resisted it and instead wanted a TV,��? Hao tells me and Hong Hong nods in agreement, “but I convinced her that a computer is more valuable.��?
Last October, Hong Hong began to write her story on Sina. A Sina blog editor got interested and featured it. Within a short time, Hong Hong’s blog had tens of thousands of readers.
“Have you received direct help from your blog’s popularity?��? I ask Hong Hong.
“Well, not really, but I’ve made many friends who’ve encouraged me,��? she replies.
Today, Hong Hong and Hao have two dreams. Above all, to be able to afford, sooner or later, the best artificial leg available. These are made in Germany, Japan and the U.K., but they cost RMB400,000. The other is for them to own a home again. Hao owned one before the accident, but had to sell it to cover the many medical fees.
“The only thing that prevents you from achieving your dream is the fear of failure.��? Once again, these are the only words I can find to lend my support. With the indomitable spirit that Hong Hong and Hao have shown, for sure they will succeed.
***
On my way back from Taiyuan to Beijing, I am both disillusioned and inspired. I am disillusioned by the institutions of China that let a man of such recklessness get away with impunity. Have I not known before that this is what is going on? Of course I have, but Hong Hong and Hao’s story have rubbed it in. While these institutions may not bring China’s modernisation to a halt, what an immeasurable drag they put on China’s renewal! And at whose expense does this drag come? At the expense of people like Hong Hong and Wei.
At the same time, I am also inspired. But “inspired��? is the wrong word. I think in the light of these unaccountable institutions, I should use the word “consoled��?. Because it is the pure spirit, drive and fearlessness of Hong Hong, Hao and their lawyer friend who, I dare hope, will eventually get the better of these institutions. That is my consolation.
***
Sharing these thoughts are made possible by Nokia and my N73
I’ve arrived in Beijing. Ever since replacing the sensor, Miss Daisy has been running as smoothly as never before.
Tomorrow I will drive Taiyuan to visit Hong Hong. All I can think is Yuanfen (缘分), a Chinese word meaning “pre-destined affinity”, an element of fate.
Distance from Beijing: 18,825km
Distance from Changjiang Wusongkou: 17,638km
Altitude: 0m
It is a sweltering, humid summer day. The crickets make a racket. And what a racket it is: hard though it is too believe, I can barely hear Miss Daisy’s engine over their concerted chirping.
At first, trees line the road, but then they gradually thin out.
33 kilometres to go.
The entrance fee is waived for the good cause that is part of my journey.
A brief section of road leading to the pier is flooded. At first I approach it slowly, then speed up. The water crashes over Miss Daisy and I…what a welcome shower the cool water is for this tired mind and body.
As I reverse Miss Daisy into the position for the photo, a man steps out of the crowd and says “I’ve seen you on a website. This is a Nokia journey, isn’t it?�
Hugging Miss Daisy…what a car, what a journey!
What is this?
Ah, Miss Daisy’s road clearance…
“Your car’s too low. You won’t get through this road! (ä½ çš„è½¦çš„åœ°ç›˜å¤ªä½Žã€‚ä½ å¼€ä¸?了这个路ï¼?)â€?
How often have we heard this said, and yet we have arrived.
I remain at the mouth of the Yellow River for a moment while tears of joy and a sense of loss dry on my cheeks. Then set course for Beijing.
***
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In Qufu today…in the hallowed grounds of the Monument to Confucius (å”庙).
(Two quick points about the latter: First, it seems appropriate that this memorial to Confucius is called a temple; after all, he’s the founder of a religion of sorts. Second, I found it remarkable that in this temple there is no obvious likeness (statue) of him suggesting that his thoughts are more important than the person.)
“Westerners just don’t understand China.� This I’ve heard a lot. “You just don’t understand China.� This I’ve heard a lot too. When people say this what they mean, presumably, is that there are differences which “outsiders� just don’t get it.
What are these differences? I’ve been thinking about these throughout my journey. (Note I’m talking here about the differences among people’s outlook on life not their governments.)
Do people who say “you just don’t understand� mean that Chinese eat with chopsticks and Westerners (mostly) don’t? Do they mean that Chinese prefer rice and tea whereas
Westerners would rather eat potatoes and drink coffee? Hardly.
Could they mean, for example, that in Chinese lives saving and giving face, relationships (guanxi), children’s education are important whereas in the West these don’t matter? Hardly. Perhaps saving and giving face, relationships, and education matter a bit more, but this is just a difference of degree, not of principle.
So are there any fundamental differences?
***
The Cambridge Illustrated History of China is a fascinating book that gives a concise and colourful overview of the history of China. Ever since reading this wonderful book, I’ve been particularly fascinated by the Eastern Zhou period.
It was a time of extraordinary strife and fighting among several kingdoms. The second half of this period is called the period of the Warring States. What makes this period so fascinating is that
“The ruthlessness of the competition among the regional powers, although uniformly lamented, nevertheless served to foster social, technological, and economic advances. These included the introduction of iron casting, infantry armies, coinage, private ownership of land, and social mobility. New ideas also emerged in profusion. Those engaged in advising rulers about state affairs began analyzing basic principles of human society and the natural order. Soon the most reflective officials were questioning established assumptions and values. Their ideas began to be written down, and the circulation of these treatises further stimulated intellectual debate.�
The statue of the Six Horses of Tianzi is a symbol of the heads of one of these regional powers. Confucius, on the other hand, is the prime example of “new ideas emerging in profusion�. This was the time when Confucianism first drove roots into the ground, when Daoism sprouted, and Legalism was defined. It was the period when the saying “Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred scholars contend� (百花�放百家争鸣) was coined. It was a period, in other words, in which China’s philosophical foundations were laid.
Here is how the Cambridge Illustrated History of China summarises the period (emphasis added):
“The ideas expounded in the late Zhou originated in specific geographical and temporal circumstances. The preference of the Daoists for private life and the earnest wish of the Confucians for a moral transformation of humankind can be seen as responses to the brutality of the era.
Still, because the ideas of these thinkers were recorded in ‘books’ - actually, rolls of bamboo strips or silk - in time the ideas expressed in them were detached from their historical and geographical context. In this detached form, they came to play an enormous role in shaping the development of Chinese culture. Chinese education until modern times involved deep immersion in texts from this period. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of these books in providing a common set of understandings about the world and the people who live in it.
China was not the only place where key philosophical ideas were elaborated in the first millennium BC. In India of the Upanishads and the Buddha, in the Greece of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as in China of the Hundred Schools of Thought, intellectual breakthroughs occurred as cultural or religious experts ceased to limit themselves to expounding the rules of their culture and began to stand back and look beyond, to question and reflect on established conventions. In all these places creative individuals began to propose new visions and perspectives. But the visions thinkers of each region offered were rather different, with the result that the outpouring of reflective thought in this era marks a major step in the divergence of civilizations.
At the cosmological level all the major philosophical schools in China shared ideas related to ancestors and heaven. They also shared an underlying assumption that the cosmos came into being on its own, without a creator of the sort so important in most western thinking. Instead of focusing on mechanisms that set things into motion, which are important where there is an assumption of a creator, these thinkers emphasized the organismic interconnections among all the constituent parts, stressing relationships and concurrences much more than causes. Seeing the cosmos as an integrated whole, Chinese thinkers were not inclined to organize their world in terms of opposites that exclude the other, such as natural and supernatural, life and death, or mind and body. Rather, they saw all oppositions as complementary polarities, on the order of night and day, yin and yang, and knowledge and action. Moreover, they thought in terms of processes and phases more than discrete things.
At the level of social and political order, differences between Chinese assumptions or basic cultural orientations and those of other major civilizations are also telling. Particularly important here is the unchallenged conviction that the family is both natural and good. Unlike Greece, for instance, where the ‘private’ realm of the family was not given the positive evaluation of the public realm of the polis, in China devotion to family was taken as an obvious good. Laozi’s utopia is not one that liberates the individual from the family, but one that lets families operate with little or no pressure from social or political units much larger than the village. Not only did Chinese thinkers assume that the family is essential to society, they also did not question that it is patrilineal and patriarchal. The family thus also provided for many a model for the ideal political order, one centred on an authoritarian ruler who would make hierarchical co-operation as natural as it seemed to them in the family.
Among all Chinese thinkers of the period, order was viewed as inextricably connected to rulers, indeed to cosmically based universal kings. It is the universal king who embodies political order and possesses the power to transform the society below him for good or ill. Law, by contrast, was not granted comparable power by any Chinese thinker. Whether from a Confucian, a Legalist, or even a Daoist perspective, law was viewed as an expedient, not as something noble or inviolable, or something that exists above and beyond the ruler.
Another widespread conviction in Chinese thought, one that contrasts especially with early Indian thought, is the belief that life in this world can be improved. Most major schools of thought, with the important exception of the Legalists, looked to the early Zhou or even earlier to ancient rulers like Yao, Shun, and Yu for a better world. This belief in a golden age also meant that Chinese thinkers, lamenting the failings of their own age, did not conclude that reality or goodness lay in some other, unworldly realm. Achieving a golden age in this world was possible.�
Wow!
“The cosmos came about on its own rather than being created by a powerful being…�, “thinking in terms of processes and phases instead of in concrete things…�, “political order coming from an authoritarian ruler…�, “law as an expedient, not something noble or inevitable�, “achieving a gold age in this world is possible not only in some other, unworldly realm.�
Here we’re talking real differences. Does this mean that we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever understanding each other? It just might, but we won’t know unless we try.
***
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