PICTURE CHINA

Chongqing has long been the economic focus of southwest China due to its strategic location at the halfway point of the Yangzi river. It is a major center for shipping and commerce moving from the rural western part of China to the cities of the east. The population of Chongqing proper is just over 12 million people, the third largest city in China, but is expected to grow by another 10 million in the next decade. When the surrounding Chongqing municipality is added, the population reaches a staggering 32 million, making it, by some people’s estimates, the largest city in the world.

Chongqing has boomed in recent years as a result of the Chinese government’s “Go West” policy to develop and utilize the western half of the country. Chongqing is seen as a strategic link between the east and west of China and much of the over $100 billion spent in the past five years on infrastructure has directly benefited the growing metropolis.

As in many Chinese cities, Chongqing’s rapid growth has lead to a host of problems for the city and its residents. The city is one of China’s post polluted and the gap between the businessmen who have benefited from the city’s boom and the poor immigrants who have provided the labor is glaringly evident. The city continues to build and grow in anticipation of the 2009 completion of the Three Gorges Dam which will create a giant reservoir leading to Chongqing and allow international ocean freighters to reach the city from the Yangzi’s mouth in Shanghai.

Every year over 8.5 million peasants from China’s rural areas move to its cities and nowhere in the country is this urban migration more evident than in Chongqing. Workers from the surrounding provinces have flocked to Chongqing in search of higher paying jobs and a better life. The reality is much less appealing as they often end up doing long hours of back-breaking labor for very little money.

Many of these migrant workers end up as part of what locals call the “Bang Bang Army”. This 100,000 plus army of laborers are identified by the bamboo poles (or bang bang in Chinese) that they use to carry heavy loads around the city. Due to the hilly topography of Chongqing, the bicycles used to transport goods in other Chinese cities have been abandoned and manual labor used instead. Bang bang workers are hired by everyone from business owners to tourists to move all sorts of goods from ships at the port into town or around the city. For their efforts a bang bang man will make an average of 20 Yuan ($2.50) for working a 12 hour day.

The Three Gorges Dam is one of the most ambitious and controversial building projects ever undertaken. Over a mile and a half wide and 600 feet high, when completed, it will be the world’s largest hydroelectric dam and capable of generating as much electricity as eighteen nuclear power plants. The dam will create a giant reservoir stretching over 400 miles and will allow 10,000-ton freighters to reach China’s interior from the Yangzi’s mouth on the East China Sea.

The Dam project has received intense scrutiny both from within China and abroad. Critics insist that the dam will cause more harm than good and it is true that the effects have been and will continue to be extreme. The rising waters of the reservoir have displaced over 1.2 million people and 100 towns, ancient sites have been lost forever and the habitats of several endangered species are seriously threatened. For all that has been sacrificed it is still questionable whether the dam will function as promised. Cracks have appeared as a result of faulty materials and some experts predict that the dam will become so clogged with silt that it will be rendered useless in seventy years.

Proponents of the dam look to solve many of China’s problems at once. The dam is designed to control the river’s flooding, which has claimed the lives of more than one-million people over the past century, as well as provide electricity that is desperately needed by the exploding populations of China’s cities. The dam is also a key component of China’s plan to develop the western half of the country.

For better or worse, the Three Gorges Dam is scheduled to be finished and operational in 2009. In the meantime the Yangzi basin is busy with construction to prepare for the rising waters, businessmen from Chongqing to Shanghai are figuring out the best ways to capitalize on the new possibilities that the dam creates and cruise boats of Chinese tourists are plying the waters of the Yangzi to catch a glimpse of the legendary Three Gorges scenery before it is altered forever.

The city of Fuling, like many communities on the Yangzi, has been profoundly affected by the building of the Three Gorges Dam. Just an hour from the booming metropolis of Chongqing, this city of a million people has been completely transformed over the past decade. The rising waters of the Yangzi have prompted the government to demolish much of the city and build a series of dikes, highways and bridges in its place. A new section of the city has been built further up the hill from the river to accommodate the displaced people.

It is the hope of the people of Fuling that all of these changes will bring prosperity to the area. In the meantime the city has a distinct feeling of a place in transition. Half-finished buildings and bridges dot the waterfront while farmers work the land where homes have been demolished and new high-rises have yet to be built. Only time will tell if the dam, and all of its effects, will be good or bad for Fuling and the other communities along the Yangzi.

Tibet has long been a place shrouded in mystery, in large part due to the difficulty associated with reaching it. Located on a plateau at 4500 meters and surrounded on all sides by imposing mountain ranges, until the turn of the 20th century, few outsiders had laid eyes on the so-called “roof of the world.”

After the 1950 occupation of Tibet, air and road links were established by the Chinese but the expensive and arduous journey was not undertaken by the masses. All of this is likely to change with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, which began operation in July 2006. For a mere $48 one can get on a train in Beijing and arrive two days later in Lhasa, the capitol of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. The train is a true engineering marvel, reaching over 5000 meters and passing over 240 miles of permanently frozen ground, it is the only train of its kind in the world.

The train, like most large Chinese building projects, has been the focus of much international scrutiny leading up to its opening. The Chinese government claims that the rail link will bring modernity to Tibet and help improve the standard of living. Critics worry that the new rail link will lead to even more Chinese migration, further dilute the Tibetan culture and expedite the pillaging of Tibet’s natural resources.

Whether or not the railway will bring prosperity or more hardship to Tibet remains to be seen, but to ride the train is undeniably spectacular. Over the course of forty-eight hours the scenery transforms from concrete jungle to desert steppe, over permanently frozen glaciers and by snowy peaks to arrive at the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau.

Lhasa is the capitol of China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region and the epicenter of the Tibetan cultural world. Situated at 3700 meters in a valley surrounded by jagged snow-capped mountains, it is a place that is both beautiful and tragic. Once the home of the Dalai Lamas and the center of Tibetan Buddhism, Lhasa, and Tibet in general, has undergone tremendous hardship since the Chinese “liberated” the country in 1950.*

The Lhasa of today is a divided city. The western half looks much like any other Chinese city. Rows of shops line the wide boulevards and modern glass and concrete buildings are starting to dot the skyline. A mini Tiananmen Square lies opposite the Potala Palace and Chinese flags are strategically places throughout the city.

The Tibetan quarter, on the other hand, retains much of the feel of old Tibet. It is filled with ragged pilgrims who travel from throughout the country to visit the Jokhang, the most holy site in Tibetan Buddhism. From dawn until dusk the area is filled with prostrating believers and permeated by the smell of smoke from giant incense burners.

Despite all that has been lost, Lhasa is still an exciting and evocative place to visit. The Tibetan people are friendly and surprisingly resilient despite all that they have suffered. Like the rest of China, Lhasa is changing rapidly and new train connection will, no doubt, increase the speed of these changes. One can only hope that the Tibetan culture will be able to continue to survive the pressures of Chinese assimilation and modernization.

*In this post, I, like the international community, have referred to Tibet as a province of The People’s Republic of China. The issue of the Chinese occupation of Tibet is complicated and multi-faceted and I will not attempt to delve into it here. To find out more, I recommend these websites:

Wikipedia Article on Tibet
Free Tibet Organization
Official Site of Tibetan Govt in Exile

The Han ethnic group, known to most simply as “Chinese”, represents ninety-two percent of China’s people and has long dominated the country. Often at the impetus of the Chinese government, Han migrants have spread throughout the country to areas that have long been inhabited mostly by smaller ethnic groups.

The most striking and condemning example of this is in Tibet. Until the Chinese invasion in 1950, Tibet was an independent and insular country that rarely dealt with outsiders. Today in the capitol city of Lhasa, there are more Chinese than Tibetans and over two-thirds of businesses are Chinese owned. Much of the city looks identical to any other small Chinese city and this is being repeated in many other cities and towns throughout Tibet.

Many people see the Han migration as an attempt on the part of the Chinese government to exploit Tibet’s land, water and natural resources and worry that the influx of modern Chinese culture will further dilute Tibetan culture and corrupt the Tibetan society. The effects of migration are set to become more severe with the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet railway and the arrival of thousands of new migrants each year.

Religion has always been an important part of Chinese life. China’s native religions of Confucianism and Taoism have been practiced for thousands of years and Buddhism was introduced from India during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD). Christianity and Islam were brought to China via the Silk Road and today there is a significant Muslim minority of ten million people residing mostly in China’s northwest provinces.

During the Cultural Revolution, religion was portrayed as feudal superstition and was ferociously attacked by the Chinese government. In the decade from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies, the Red Guard destroyed most evidence of the religious history of the country. Hundreds of thousands of temples and monasteries were ruined and religious and philosophical texts were burned. No area of China was more severely impacted by the religious backlash of the Cultural Revolution than Tibet. In 1959 Tibet had a thriving community of 2700 Buddhist monasteries and temples; after the destruction, only eight monasteries remained with fewer than one thousand monks and nuns.

With Mao’s death in 1976 and the liberalizations of the 1980’s, religion began to slowly reenter Chinese life. Despite remaining restrictions, nowhere in China is religion a more integral part of daily life than in Tibet. Monasteries are being rebuilt and, though at much lower numbers, monks and nuns are beginning to refill them. Pilgrims flock to Tibet’s religious sites and the most holy places are constantly awash with the devout who come to pray and prostrate.

The Tibetan countryside is one of the most beautiful areas of China. Surrounded by awe-inspiring mountains and dotted with monasteries and holy lakes, it is in the rural areas that the Tibetan culture remains most intact.

Unfortunately, rural Tibet is also among the poorest areas of China with lower incomes and life expectancy than anywhere else in the country. One quarter of Tibetan counties cannot feed or clothe themselves, one third of children don’t go to school and the literacy rate is only 30 percent. Tibet relies heavily on Chinese aid, which had totaled more than 40 billion Yuan ($5 billion) since 1952.

Spread across thousands of villages and small towns, many rural Tibetans live much as they have for thousands of years. Despite the obvious hardship that their lives entail, most Tibetans remain warm and lively and a journey through rural Tibet reveals just how friendly the Tibetan people are.