Tour Guide, Chengdu, China
| 4 mins read
Facing the impact of western ideology, anything different is considered odd or even improper, which results in prejudice. Under prejudice, China is ambitious, aggressive and trying to be the number one. Reports are everywhere about how much work China did in equipping its army and how much danger is hidden in such a situation. A red China is forced to be isolated, though, from the bottom of their heart, they are the most peace-loving people. A country based on farming is self-sufficient, so their focus falls on how to create wealth from their own land, and fortunately, this piece of land is fertile. Missing of chronic insecurity is not likely to happen here, on the contrary, conservativeness and self-defence easily grow. For that reason, any word like explore, initiate, or invade is new to Chinese. Well, it’s far away from being a perfect country, conflicts are still going on somewhere, but separate events can not represent China.
Are Chinese superstitious? Superstitious is defined as believing in old ideas, ideas that have not been proven by science. Where does science come from? From human’s wisdom, and where do human beings come from? From nature! So personally, I think superstition in China is more like awe and respect to nature. After long-term observation of nature, many ideas came out, and some of which are regarded as being superstitious. Compared with nature, the human is like a drop in the ocean, and a great number of phenomenons remained unexplained because nature is too big to be fully known and understood by us. China is one of the few countries, or I would rather say the old China is grateful and respectful to nature, mother of all beings. So, it explains some of the Chinese superstitious ideas, for instance, they believe in all kinds of god, the god of cloud, wind, wealth and god of the earth. Though none of the three biggest religions has ever been dominant in people’s spiritual life here in China; it’s hard to say there is no religion in this country because Chinese have their own faith, not god, Buddha, nor Ala, it’s nature.
Is history boring? Especially in China’s history, which sounds very complicated. It’s apparently not a great idea to tell people from different background every detail of each dynasty in the history of China, but if the history of China is shown on the chart, the law of history is easily got. What is the law? From the book “My country and my people”, Chinese history is divided into cycles of eight hundred years. Each cycle begins with a very strong centralized ruling power and is followed by four or five centuries’ peace and prosperity. Then social problems lead to peasants’ uprising, succeeded by successive wars and conflicts. After that, a strong and powerful government stood out and unified the whole country, which is the end of the cycle. Let’s look at China after it enters the time of the systematic record of history in the Zhou Dynasty. The cycle starts from Qin dynasty, the first emperor in Qin unified China in 221B.C. After over four hundred years’ economic booming, uprising fell at the end of eastern Donghan, throughout Wei, Jin Northern and Southern Dynasties; chaos has never been stopped. The second cycle begins with the Sui Dynasty in 589 A.D., as several centuries’ well-off life builds China into a superpower. Then a time of turmoil comes at the end of Tang. The third cycle comes in the Ming Dynasty in 1368; Ming and early Qing create another peak time in the history of China, upheavals last till Chairman Mao’s time. The fourth cycle starts in 1949 when new China was set up. Based on the law of Chinese history, perhaps China is going to flourish in the coming centuries.
Is China smoggy and dirty? A fast-developing country like China is for sure going through serious environmental problems as pollution is really everywhere. Sometimes, we are too sad to open our eyes in an originally-beautiful place but damaged by a word called “greed”. But it doesn’t mean that the whole country has nothing beautiful left. A vast and gorgeous land accumulated numerous stories that are resistible to any kind of damage. What we are willing to do is to let people know about it.
It would never be an easy job to be a guide in China, as it is a country of a long history, rich and continuous culture and the large population. Such a profound country has been greatly misunderstood and even its own people are not able to understand and to appreciate. Therefore, a guide to China shoulders the responsibilities to show the very best and also the true side of China.