How strange it is to return to Shanghai and feel you have returned home, I thought as we landed at the airport after a week's holiday in Yunnan. The decision to spend the May Golden Week in Kunming, Lijiang and Dali had proven to be a winner. But it hadn't been an easy one, poring over information about destinations across China, each of which looked more attractive than the other. However as the song says, I get by with a little help from my friends. We were greatly helped by the details and photographs provided by a friend who had traveled to these places and knew them well.
We put on our traveling togs and set out like millions of others to make the most of the Golden Week, In that sense China has got under our skin and planning for the holiday week has become as much a part of our lives as green tea, dumplings, glutinous rice, bean curd and morning exercises. Yunnan was the destination we chose for our holiday this year after finding ourselves being packed like sardines in as vast a space as Tian'anmen Square last year. It promised wide open spaces and the wonders of nature. When a destination has snow, flowers, mountains and water as the emblem for its local beer as well as the variegated headdresses of its lovely women, it holds the promise of a colorful, exciting holiday.
I thought of all this as I stood next to a Chinese journalist at a press conference to promote Indian Tourism in China. She looked wistfully at all the colorful brochures promising a plethora of adventure tourism, the Buddhist trail, the splendid historic architecture and verdant hill stations. "I want to go to India and see all this, but I can't. My parents will never let me get away. They love me too much".
That is exactly how average Indian parents of a twenty-something girl would react, I told her. They would think her too young and vulnerable to travel on her own. That's just one of the things India and China have in common. But I am sure someday she will be able to go there. Then we stood around and spoke about the various places that promised a great holiday.
I realized that in a holiday destination, we look for the exotic with a slight trace of familiar facets. Somehow it is comforting to find links between our own base and the place we are visiting.
So while we meandered through the Foreigners Street in Dali, I was reminded of the days spent in the cool and relaxing hilly terrain of the hill station called Simla. The small stores selling trinkets and baubles that you don't need but feel compelled to buy, the mulberries and strawberries freshly picked and sold by rosy-cheeked girls, the colorful costumes of the local people, the traditional song and dance which was as natural as breathing, the cozy coffee houses, the bracing cold weather that somehow fills you with bonhomie, the aura of history lingering from the past. No, it is not even possible to analyze this amorphous heady mixture, but Dali did in so many ways have links with the Indian hill station of Simla which had been the summer capital of India once upon a time. Yet of course Dali has all the characteristics of a Chinese resort, as Simla is stunningly Indian in so many ways. Yet from the known to the unknown is a comforting terrain to travel
Last year we decided to go to Beijing in May. So had the rest of China, or so it seemed. How can it be possible to find yourself being elbowed and pushed in a gigantic space like Tian'anmen Square and to have to push yourself to reach up to the Great Wall?
Beijing felt so much like New Delhi, not just because they are both capital cities. But after living in Shanghai for several months, the contrast between Shanghai and Beijing appeared to be that between Bombay and New Delhi. Shanghai is fast-paced, cosmopolitan, sophisticated and glitzy, yet there is a sense of relaxation, of a city that plays as hard as it works, of friendly cab drivers and smiling salesgirls.
Beijing, like New Delhi, appears a little self-conscious of its status, and somehow more sedate. Even as a tourist, you are somehow aware you are in a political arena in Delhi as in Beijing. There is also the history of the place that surrounds you. The Forbidden City defines the centre of Beijing as do the ramparts of the historic forts in New Delhi.
If you are in Beijing, you must of course spend a day going to the Great Wall - the symbol of China without which your visit would seem incomplete. So too, Delhi as a destination almost demands a look at the famed Taj Mahal, and a day's journey to Agra.
Perhaps I am stretching my imagination to find links, but that's my chosen take as a culture communicator. Being based in China after years of work in the media in India, I find so many familiar links but I have only one dilemma. Should I be promoting India to China or China to India? Maybe I will be a Mata Hari and work both ways!
By Margie Sastry. The author is a freelancer living in Shanghai.
(China Daily June 2, 2007)
