Six Weeks In China

Whenever I travel to a new city I find that it's sometimes hard to come up with what music best fits it. I learned today after classes that Kid A by Radiohead is, in fact, what Beijing sounds like to me. Or rather, what it looks like it sounds like. I think I'll be listening to a lot of Kid A in the next few weeks.

Yesterday we went on a tour of the Houtong alley neighborhoods in Beijing. It was interesting to see all the old buildings, the buildings that were built in the 15th and 14th centuries that people still live in. I was struck, though, by the fact that the government has been paying people to rebuild and restore their homes in this historic district while many similar historic districts have been destroyed by construction.

The other thing that made me the most uncomfortable was the fact that we were observing the inner workings of this neighborhood as tourists. It was made perfectly obvious that we were, being carted around in rickshaws and taken to a man's family home that he has turned into a tourist destination. I was especially uncomfortable because it seemed very contrived. It seemed the reason that this particular neighborhood was being preserved was because the people were willing to collude with being made into a tourist attraction.

I felt very self-conscious about being an outsider. It seemed intrusive, artificial, unnatural. I felt like I was using these people, even though they had opened their home to us, because there is the very real possibility that making themselves into a tourist destination is one of their only economic recourses to support their families. Like Greg said, "this place is a zoo." The animals in a zoo don't really have a choice to be on display, but they do benefit from the care and feeding of their keepers.

It made me question why it is we go travel to other countries. Are we in it just to observe the city? Are we in it to really understand the way people live? Are we there as bolsters to the local economy, or merely nuisances to local people trying to live their lives? How can we reduce the cultural footprints we make. And how is tourism itself an act of Western hegemony? These are questions Miriam and I bounced around while we were looking at the courtyard house we had been allowed into.

I am privileged to be able to travel from my home to this country. It might be my motherland (and I do think of it as such, in a way), but I am a stranger here. I am privileged to be able to think about these things at all. But isn't it my responsibility as a person in this privileged position to reject making my gracious hosts into animals in a zoo?

This is an ongoing crisis of faith for me. In many parts of the world, tourism is the major source of income for families who have virtually nothing else. I wonder, though, if tourism isn't just like an aid package: it helps many in the short term, a few in the long term, but cements the dependence of developing nations on the developed world. The only way to counter the negative effects of globalization is to consciously help the less privileged pull themselves up, rather than pull the less privileged up without their consent to or knowledge of our methods.

I've always disliked being a tourist, because I don't think you can really come to know a place on a double-decker bus tour or seeing the scenic spots only. But the "authentic" things we're looking at here seem to have been turned into a stop on a bus tour or designated by the government as a scenic spot. I'm feeling very ambivalent.

Today we finally made it out to Peking University. We were served an extravagant lunch in the university restaurant and given an extensive campus tour. It is, as promised, really huge. Most students live on campus, and the housing is pretty basic. The campus near the president's offices is really quite beautiful, and there are many more trees there in general than in Beijing at large.

We also finally got to meet our Peking University counterparts. They are all chemistry students, and it makes me curious about how they were chosen for dialogue interaction. It's not as though I don't think chemistry students wouldn't be interested in social justice dialogue, it's just that it seems as though sociology or psychology students would be more thoughtful about the things we plan to talk about. I wonder if they are prepared for what we are prepared to do.

I talked the most with a second-year student named David. He was very nice, thoughtful, and we commisserated about the perils of getting into graduate school in the United States. He says he would most like to go to MIT or Stanford, and was surprised that I was studying philosophy and wanted to get my PhD in information science. I guess it is a little surprising, but it was nice to get to meet these guys finally!

One thing that did surprise me was how fixated David seemed to be on binaries and heterosexual norms. I know that things are not as accepted here, but he read my gender cues as female and was surprised to learn that I identify as a man. I don't think he was quite with it enough to ask about details, but I continue to wonder about my safety and how the Chinese in general view someone in my position.

I am feeling pretty shaky and exhausted from the campus tour, and really the past few days. Greg, my roommate, passed out as soon as we got back to the hotel. I did, too, but then got up to meet our team down in the lobby to go to dinner. I chose not to go, considering how tired I am, but I kind of feel like now I can't go back to sleep. I came downstairs for some whisky but it's not sitting well either. I'm really having a hard time sleeping, which is kind of a disaster. I really need some good rest.

It's an epic plane ride from Detroit to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Hong Kong. One day of rest in Hong Kong, shopping with the extended family, and the best dim sum you've ever had in your life. Then it's on to Beijing. It's weird to be alone in a country where you cannot speak with anyone at random, where you have a hard time ordering lunch, and where everything is a stark contrast between very rich (for example, the Wenjin International Hotel) and the very poor (for example, the shacks that line the other side of the street). I'm not totally alone, but for the past day or so, I've felt very much so.

I'd rather not have started a separate blog for this journey, considering I'll be here in China for at most two months, and my current personal blog, The Noise of the Street Enters the House, is gaining some level of readership. Unfortunately, The Noise seems to be blocked by the Great Firewall of China. More than anything it has increased my fears about my personal safety here in Beijing.

Maybe this is a good time to introduce myself. I'm Cayden, a 21-year-old philosophy major at the University of Michigan. I'm here in China on University business -- through GIEU, I'm here with 16 others to engage in intergroup dialogue at Peking University. I'm the only person of Chinese descent on our trip, and this is my first time seeing the motherland. I'm only half, but that half has a pretty serious history. More on that later...I'm learning a lot about my heritage already, including my relatives who have graduated from Peking University and my great-great uncle Yan Fu, who was president of the University in the early 20th century. The other half was born and bred in Detroit, Michigan, roots of which I am also exceptionally proud.

I've been involved in social justice dialogue for some time. I'm a trained facilitator in the Program on Intergroup Relations at U of M, a commitment I've made in large part to represent non-binary social identities in campus social justice. I'm a post-gender identified FTM, and that's why I'm worried about my safety wherever I travel. Usually I've had overwhelmingly good experiences with people, but that's not barring the possibility that things might get ugly in the future. I've lived the past four years of my life not so much in fear but in extreme caution, and traveling to a country where I cannot explain my gender situation to people easily is my idea of kind of risky behavior.

The next six weeks are going to be really interesting. I don't really know much about Chinese attitudes toward people of non-binary gender identities. I don't really know if people think about these things so much here. Hong Kong seemed pretty laid back, but Hong Kong is an entirely different creature than the mainland.