Rain, started up as left home. Rain on a Sunday morning. An hour ago I was crawling through windows in
a dream. I was staying at some odd beach
house. Inexplicably I was soon in the bathroom of the adjoining compound. As I was walking out, they were walking in
and I apologized that I’d sort of just wound up here and had sort of just used
their bathroom. Like me they were mildly
confused. I noticed that they were
obviously in a deluxe suite that was better than ours. I seem to remember savoring this. Why was that so important for my mind, as it
pieced this all together?
4:00AM when last I’d
looked had turned into 5:40AM and now I’d have to rush. Shower and all the rest. The front gate called a cab for me. He came quickly enough. No juice to be had. No time for coffee. Yep.
Rain. The guy had talk radio
on. Some gent was explaining all the
different components that made up the iPhone and how much of the cost of the
iPhone went to Apple and how much remained in China, where the phone was
made. I’ve heard all this before. I wanted to talk back to the radio: “What do
you expect, dude? The invention is what has value.” But I refrained myself. There was no point.
Driving at 6:30AM we had
no traffic and I was at the station entrance within forty minutes. But the entrance to the station was
completely backed up. Fortunately I was uncharacteristically
ahead of time and continue to write in the back seat. The driver suggested I hop off and walk up,
which would certainly be faster, but I wasn’t planning on doing this in the
rain. The queue for security was
similarly atrocious. There was a shout
up ahead and somebody cursed someone else’s mother for having cut the line. Now he needed to be held back by another guy
as he called the offending person, whom I couldn’t see, the standard Beijing
insult: “dumb cunt.” Then again, it may
have been that he was referring to other person’s mother’s dumb cunt. The person holding him back, a friend? A relative?
This guy pulled off is watch and tossed it further away. He went to get it and this generally cooled
things off.
Tight, but navigable, I
soon had a ticket with five minutes or so to spare. Now I’m speeding across China’s northern
plane. It’s wet outside and it makes the
countryside look interesting, romantic.
Up on the screen we have a propaganda loop about what a great country
China is, courtesy of our friends at the China Rail Corporation, presumably.
Everyone has managed to successfully block it out beside me. I think I should
properly time the loop so we can better define it. Just a moment:
It is a two-minute
loop. This is a five-and-a-half-hour
train ride (of which, I will fortunately only continue on for an hour and a
half). That suggests this instructive
loop will play over and over approximately one hundred and sixty-five
times. Was there a debate around whether
or not it was necessary to play this one hundred and sixty-five times for all
the passengers? “It’ll be good for
them.” What can you communicate in two
minutes of spliced clips? Well, like Graham
Chapman responds to John Cleese when he asked just how much he hates the Romans
in “The Life of Brian,” . . . “A lot.”
We have firstly, nature. China has
splendid coast lines and mountain peaks and waves and then, we shift to mastery
of nature, ships crashing through these waves at sea. We’ve high speed rail infrastructure laid
across the mountains and planes that soar in the sky. Air China gets a spot, in a way that no
American airline ever would. You may
well ask why we are advertising air travel on a high-speed rail line. Don’t.
We’ve still over ninety
seconds more to go, in our infinite loop.
There is army that can project power across the vast nation and
beyond. There are disaster workers in
white outfits marching in line rescuing someone, somewhere no doubt. There are grateful people from elsewhere in
the world, waving. I am guessing this
guy giving us the thumbs up, is from Iran, as he is the spitting image of a
young President Ahmadinejad. People love
China.
We have a strong leader of
course. Xi Jinping is welcomed warmly by
adoring crowds at the airport. He is seen
looking resolute with Vladimir Putin. He
can only but look impressive standing next to Donald Trump who is whispering
something in President Xi’s ear. Xi
doesn’t whisper to anyone. There is a
picture of the Queen of England’s little royal buggy rolling by. Xi is then seen with lots of generally
African flag flourishes that cannot be distinguished by any particular country
or leader, though that may well have been the South African President Zuma’s
bald dome appearing for a mili-second or two.
Now it’s time for is a multi-culti march of people after a second flash
of the U.N. flag. Back home there are
adoring crowds. That’s nice. People are in line, clapping. Ethnic minorities are jumping up and down. China
has children in school uniforms and old people sitting around a table, ageing
contentedly.
China has history. China has culture. China has things to see. The scales of justice appear and a room of
party officials stands and salutes. A
gavel striking a table clarifies for all, that all’s on the level. There are cops marching and people putting up
a sign which I believe indicates a state bureau of some sort. We see a yellow shape that’s part of a
traditional ship’s sail that drives on through the storm and emerges into the
sunshine. I wonder what that
symbolizes? And as we fade back from the
ships at sea four characters populate the screen: 大国外交： Big
Country Diplomacy.
Sunday, 8/27/17
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