Chinese reflections....

China Trip

I Ihave to admit that I had harboured tad bit of aprehension before my trip to China. Lets just say that I was not 'feelin' China and that I did not really like the place. So what if my ancestors were from there? I am not Chinese, I am Singaporean!

Thus, needless to say, I had a stereotype of China as a dirty and third world nation that had a conundrum trying to feed its 1.3 billion people (tht is a lot of zeros mind you) Well, I landed in Shanghai and was greeted by the wet and cold weather. Not a very promising sign of things to come. My 8 day trip took me to Suzhou, Wuxi, Nanjing, Huangzhou and back to Shanghai. It was many hours on the bus and a real bore.

But before I begin a narration, lemme talk about the trip on the whole. It was barely educational ( the tour guide spoke in Chinese, so not much could be comprehended), most days were raining, the food was full of pork dishes, smoking was a national pasttime and the people were so rude that they would cut the taxi queues!!

Aside from that, China has the most wonderful of scenerys. I mean, it is better than England, Australia, Israel, Spain even Korea. ( the pictures above would do justice to this statement). Anyhow, China was more of an eye opener more than anything else. I kind of feel a greater afinity to it even though it had presented me with so many 'turn-offs'. I felt rather comfortable and not so foreign.

However, passed all the beautiful facades of the rich culture and modern buildings, i saw the lesser known side of her. There were beggars on the streets struggling to survive as the standard of living surges ahead with her development.

For exmaple, an average worker earns about RMB2000, which is like S$500 and the cost of a MacDonalds there is like RMB22. So it is not a lot of $$$ to live on.They really are surving day by day. I think it was an eye opener to make me appreciate the life that I currently have. Anyone of us could have easily been in the same shoes as the beggars. After all, you did not decide if you wanted to be born and who your parents were to be. did you?

Well, I guess that is the purpose of holidays, besides the traditional idea of taking a break, visiting other countries has allowed me to further understand cultures and appreciate not only the life that we live, but the society that we are in. Anyhow, it was a good break but I'm glad to be on this sunny island, at least it does not rain every day! So enjoy the pics and till next time,
adieu