The Nomadic Alternative

Emeishan, China — Bamboo forest.

Emeishan, China — A monk at a buddhist temple.

Emeishan, China — Another side of China.  It’s not all development and destruction.

In the photo three Buddhist monks head towards the summit of Emeishan, a mountain holy to Chinese Buddhists.  

In China, since ancient times, people traditionally have regarded mountains as access points to heaven or places where deities dwelled.  The expression “to go on a pilgrimage” literally translated from the Chinese means “to go pay one’s respects to the mountain.”  Traditionally, pilgrims would go to a holy mountain to seek a vision of the deity, to perform a penance, to ask for heirs or cures, to pray for good health or long life for themselves or family members, or to pray for the peaceful repose of their deceased ancestors.  Though these traditions have largely died out or been forcibly quashed by the Communist government, in some remote places traces of the ancient practices still survive.  

Of the many sacred mountains in China, thirteen stand out for their importance.  Four are Buddhist, four are Daoist (Taoist) and five are the so called “Great Mountains” and are traditionally venerated by both Buddhists and Daoists.

I spent several months following these ancient ways, looking to find what never dies, what was there before the beginning.

Datong, China — She was nearly 100 years old, hard of hearing, but otherwise really sprightly, friendly, smiling and curious.  I met her in the backstreets of Datong, one of the last old neighborhoods remaining in the city and already in the process of being destroyed.  I’m not sure how she saw it, but to me being forced out of you home in your ninth decade, seems like the crowning indignity in a life filled with official abuse.  She would have been born a few years after the last emperor of China abdicated in 1912.  Often, when I saw old Chinese people like her I imagined what they must have seen and experienced in the course of their long, tumultuous lives.  And to me it seems remarkable, almost miraculous how some people, like her, managed to maintain courage and a joy for life despite being put through the meat grinder again and again.

Shanghai, China — Yezhou is a systems analyst at a bank in Shangahi, but he is also very knowledgeable about Chinese history. When we talked he often began his sentences with, “In the Tang Dynasty … .” or “In the Qing Dynasty … .”  It was endearing.  So what did he think of China’s future?  ”In the Ming Dynasty we had a a huge boom like this, and then it went bust,” he told me.  ”We’ve had this in China many times.  Boom and bust.  Boom and bust.  And I think the bust is coming.”  Yezhou hopes to emigrate to Canada before the bust hits.  His wife is already there.

Erlian, China — A construction project on the edge of the Gobi Desert.  I’m not sure what it’s meant to be.  It looked like a cross between an air traffic control tower and a museum.  Much of the Chinese economic growth in the past few decades has been fueled by government investment in infrastructure projects.  But the utility and economic viability of many of these projects is dubious.  As one economist put it, I’m paraphrasing: Digging a hole in the ground and filling it up again creates economic growth; but it’s not a very sound economic policy.  Over the past couple decades China has built apartment buildings that have no tenants, roads with no cars, train stations with no trains.  There are museums with no exhibits and large airports with only a few flights.  In fact there are entire, newly built ghost towns — cities designed for hundreds of thousands where hardly anyone lives.  I have seen perfectly good roads being resurfaced and in another place workers cutting down trees by the side of the road and replanting new ones in their place.  Sometimes it all seemed like a giant ponzi scheme that can continue as long as the easy investment money from the government keeps flowing, but how long can that be?

Chengdu, China — There is something about the destruction of a library that seems particularly brutal, savage and totalitarian.

Beijing, China — In China religion is still forbidden to members of the Chinese Communist Party.  Otherwise religion is tolerated but closely supervised and controlled by the government.  Popular religious movements or sects that the government feels could undermine state control are suppressed ruthlessly.  Most Chinese people now seem to have no religious or spiritual inclination.  Temples and churches serve mainly as a backdrop for photos.

Hohhot, Mongolia — Airuna sitting at home under a large picture of Gengghis Khan.  She is an ethnic Mongolian.  ”When I was a girl I spent a lot of time in the countryside with my grandparents.  They were herders, and I would spend months on the grasslands grazing the animals.”  Recently the government has forbidden animal herding in the part of Inner Mongolia where Airuna grew up in order to leave the land open for mining.  Many Mongolians, including her relatives, have lost their livelihood and have found themselves forcefully parted from their millennia old way of life.  Inner Mongolia is now overwhelmingly populated by Han Chinese migrants, and the government takes little account of the interests of the indigenous Mongolians.  ”I feel like a guest in my own home,” said Airuna.

Xian, China — Yin used to work as a journalist but left that job to work full time on a novel.  He is very pessimistic about Chinese culture and sees more Westernization of the country as the only hope for a better and freer future.  ”The collective is too important in China,” he said.  ”The individual counts for nothing.”  ”Some day I hope to leave this darkness that is China,” he told me.