Through tourist’s eyes, gratitude

I’m carrying around fresh mental snapshots of China these days. I’m storing these images: Billboards of high-fashion European models, hovering above Beijing pedicab drivers, carry cases of Heineken beer in green bottles one day or a rack of wicker birdcages, complete with birds, the next.

I’m remembering the scents of jasmine tea, incense and diesel fuel. There are the sights of the enormous bird’s nest of the Olympic stadium, the brilliant reds, blues and teals of the freshly painted temples surrounding golden Buddhas, the gelatinous gray yolk of a preserved duck egg staring up from my broth. But mostly I remember the suffocating pillows of dense gray smog, unlike any I’d ever seen, and their metallic taste.

That particular image reminds me most sharply of the economic and political lessons I discovered as my husband and I explored this country with friends for the first two weeks of this month. A visit to this country today turns into a case study on the dangers not only of communism, but unbridled capitalism as well.

I arrived in Asia with another psychic bank of images. They were the outdated stereotypes of China I’d formed over the years. I expected grim, stoic communists, but I found those qualities only in the architecture. The people, the newly prosperous and the poor alike, were usually friendly, generous and good-natured.

Young Chinese wore fashion-conscious shirts printed with English words that often made no sense. I saw only one elderly Chinese man in a blue Mao suit.

I expected to encounter a pervasive Asian mysticism, weaving together ancient spirituality and the values of nature, health and longevity. Along the brilliant green Yangtze River region, I found massive industrial cities, their temples mostly destroyed, and bad air and polluted water.

Yet in a country where thousands starved not so many years ago, people now eat better, use more electricity and save for their first cars.

Nearly 1,000 new drivers a day hit the streets of Beijing. They ignore lane markers and pedestrian crossings alike. Bicyclists and walkers swerve around them constantly. My friends who live in Beijing often see bodies alongside the road.

In this land of exploding economic growth, endless shopping stalls stand jammed with pearls and porcelain, silk jackets, as well as such knockoffs as Victoria Beckham jeans, Northface jackets and Tod’s handbags. The inventories make Costco and Wal-Mart look sparsely stocked.

After I returned from China, I delved into the Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning China coverage from last year. It illuminates the tourist impressions I carried away.

So far, Chinese people make lousy consumers. They save their money to pay for tuition for public schools and for doctor and hospital bills. We were often greeted by beggars crawling toward us on damaged limbs. The Wall Street Journal tells me Chinese workers are often injured at dangerous construction sites. They lack hard hats, steel-toed boots and disability pay.

Last year, Americans were appalled that 47 people died by Dec. 27 working in our country’s coal mines. In China, the Wall Street Journal reports, 4,236 coal miners were lost in the same period.

I came home marveling. Americans spend so much time wrangling over labels like communism and capitalism. We fight as though the answer lies only in the extremes.

But the lives of Chinese people, improved as they are by higher wages and new job opportunities, seem lacking the moderating influences we take for granted: Social Security, health insurance, worker’s compensation, environmental protection laws and the minimum wage, as well as our numerous freedoms.

I know the best course, as the ancient Greeks write, lies somewhere between the extremes. I’m glad to live in a country where we have a chance to keep wrangling over where that optimum point lies.

Now that I’m back, I have real photo albums to fill, a sense of gratitude for discovering China’s treasures, and this new awareness: Our imperfect land remains a safer place not only for mining for coal, but also for the golden mean.