Global Adventure Series, Part Seven
Dallying in Dalian
The seaside city of Dalian is a nice respite from all the more industrial, commercial and mammoth Chinese cities I have visited on this trip. Lovely Dalian sits beside the sea. The air is clean and fresh and navigating the downtown area is manageable for a western visitor.
On arrival at my hotel I had to go through one hundred and twenty minutes of a seminar on communications starting with the bellman who informed me I could not connect my laptop to the wall or it would explode. He kindly telephoned the reception desk and they indicated help was on the way. Thirty minutes later, and still no help, I contacted the hotel electrical department. They informed me I needed a converter and they would bring one right up. Thirty minutes later I was still without a converter, although the original bellman stopped by to check on my progress and suggested I call housekeeping. I foolishly followed that advice only to be told housekeeping was closed. I am not certain how one can run a hotel and close the housekeeping office at 3 in the afternoon but here in Dalian they have discovered a way to do it.
I know you are on pins and needles waiting to hear how you can run a hotel and close housekeeping in the middle of the afternoon. The answer is really quite simple: poorly!
Help finally arrived in the form of two people who could not speak a word of English and the only thing I could be sure of was that they were not from housekeeping. Hands were flying, eyes were darting, and moaning occurred but we finally got to the bottom of the matter.
Simply put, I could plug in my laptop without it exploding. So I did.
Over the next hour I had numerous visitors stopping by to be certain my problem was solved. I gestured with my hands and pointed to the plug and to my laptop. I smiled a lot. They nodded a lot.
They stopped dropping by my room at around 5PM. I suppose I will get a visit from housekeeping in the morning if, in fact, they ever work.
I hope you are admiring my courage here. Obviously, when I did plug in my laptop there was a small doubt rolling around in my brain with the expectation that it might really explode.
Dalian is the home of a wonderful park, right outside my hotel room window. To get to the park, one has to dodge cars and cross six lanes of traffic. There are no crosswalks. I was confronted with this problem in a Chinese city earlier and found that you could go underground and cross the busy thoroughfare. Not here. If you want to walk with the squirrels and see the bushes you have to survive the gauntlet of the six lanes of traffic.
I bit the bullet, and worried about biting the dust, but sprinted across (well, those of you who know me are aware that I wouldn’t be sprinting, so lets just say I walked briskly) six lanes and made it to the other side. I am certain some of my friends are now working on a joke that starts with “why did Jack cross six lanes of traffic to get to the other side?” I cannot wait to hear the answer when I return to the USA.
The parks are beautiful. With the average wage in many of these cities being $4,000 US dollars per year, you can get a lot of posey planters, waterers and weeders. With so many people in China and wages being so low it is easy to see why American companies fed up with their workers’ contract demands simply move their factories here. Over here, instead of picketing and bickering over a shorter work week, outrageous benefits or a lucrative retirement package, the workers just line up, bow a lot, say a great many “thank you’s” and fully expect to work ten or twelve hour days. And if you pay them $5000 they are middle class!
As in the other cities I visited, buildings are going up everywhere. It is hard to imagine that I am not witnessing the construction of the next great empire in world history.
One visual I will never forget. We were driving around the city and out into the suburbs when we came upon the ocean. We got a glimpse of it as we drove past an extensive wire fence, probably electrified. In the distance, by the shoreline, we saw a magnificent home, really more like a palace. Surrounding the home was somewhat smaller but still elegant homes. This compound had a golf course and a large gated entry. I learned it is where the present leader of China vacations. Evidently, when he wishes to escape the intrigue (and pollution) of Beijing, he comes here with a couple hundred of his highest-ranking pals and they settle down by the beautiful sea. As we drove by the large gate, I could see the uniformed Chinese guards. I decided against taking pictures!
Having recently read the latest book on Mao, and understanding both his humble beginnings and his plain ways, I reflected on what this seaside compound really was telling me. It was speaking loudly to me about the Communist Manifesto and the very real examples we have all over the world. You create a Peoples’ State. You tell everyone to share equally. You create communal farms. You isolate or kill the intellectuals or anyone who might come from a dynastic family.
To the extent that you are successful with this for a number of years, the people who run things begin to enjoy some of the better things of life. In each succeeding generation, the leaders become more and more like the people they deposed in the beginning.
It is not obvious that the people they rule begin to enjoy life’s pleasures (not at $4,000 per year) but as I looked at the current governmental elite’s playground by the sea, I realized that these guys are about as far from what Mao had in mind as you could get.
With this visual and the information I have provided in these articles about the expansion, building and economic muscle of China, I think we can retire those books our grade school teachers have that talk about a China of rickshaws, chopsticks, and a daily ration of rice.
Mao was reported to have loved the saying: “Better Red than Dead.” It is entirely possible his heirs prefer the saying: “Better Dead than Red.”
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