From Beijing to Xi'an--views of China's transformation

our high speed train from Beijing to Xi'an

We’re flying, at nearly 200 miles per hour, through the brilliant green rice paddies of Central China, headed from Beijing to Xi’an on one of China’s many high speed trains.  The plain is pancake flat; the sky a rosy gray, a mix of clouds and the remains of the sandstorm that blew through here yesterday.
The train is clean, if slightly shabby.  A lady with a mop wipes the floors in between stops.  Our first-class seats are wide recliners, so we’re happily able to nap.  The toilets are the squat variety, which I’m not very fond of, but many Chinese prefer, thinking they are cleaner than the sit-down kind.  We ordered hot box lunches which were edible if not gourmet.  All in all, a nice change from the 6 flights we’ll be taking on the rest of our travels in China.
There are a few people working in their fields, but no tractors visible from the train.  Most of the farms are tiny and don’t lend themselves well to mechanization.  China is trying to move farmers to the cities and consolidate agricultural land so it can be worked more efficiently.  This, like so much over the last 30 years, is a massive change in an ancient way of life, moving at a speed too rapid for many people to absorb.  There are thousands of protests, but, in the end, people don’t have a choice.

fields and mountains between Beijing and Xi'an

We keep crisscrossing highways, another example of China’s enormous investment in infrastructure.  As we glide (and this is, indeed, a smooth ride) into the many cities along our way, there are the same skyscraper apartment blocks, seemingly hundreds of yellowish or gray or brown buildings all alike, jutting upward in narrow spikes that look like they’ll bend in a high wind.  I wonder how anyone finds her apartment in the countless tall buildings filling each complex.
Everywhere there are cranes.  China continues its building boom, with housing prices high and credit, provided by government-owned banks, easy to get.  Despite constant speculation about a burst in China’s housing bubble, it hasn’t happened yet, though it’s hard to see why not.  There are thousands of apartment blocks under construction on the outskirts of every city.  And there are hundreds of cities we’ve never heard of, where tourists don’t go, whose populations surpass 5 million. 

Every one  of them seems to be building, building.  Yet many buildings, both apartment and office, are empty.

2 apartment blocks, all alike

 Having denuded its mountains and plains of trees over too many years, China has been on a tree-planting crusade for the last 20 years.  They’ve planted rows of trees along every street and highway and throughout their housing and office complexes.  Even in rural areas, farmers are planting trees to fill empty spaces and block the ceaseless winds.  It’s an important start on improving its environment, but China has so far to go before its air and water are clean. 

At every train station, passengers are reminded “to please get off in an orderly fashion”.  That’s not the usual way in teeming China.  At the Beijing train station this morning, people jumped over barriers and slithered through the long queues aiming for a more strategic position  as we all moved slowly towards each of the several layers of security.  You have to broaden your physical profile in order to hold your place in line.
I remember our early visits to China when we’d see thousands of people waiting outside train stations for days to buy tickets home for Chinese New Year.  That was when there were no highways and few trains.  People might travel for days to and from their jobs in places like the Pearl River Delta, Suzhou, Tianjin and Guangzhou on the few trains that operated then.  Now, there are dozens of choices and, though the stations and trains are crowded, people can get where they want to go easily.  China has done an unimaginable job of transforming its infrastructure in less than 30 years.  And the Chinese people are taking advantage of it with their new cars and new ability to travel to all corners of their country.  It is an astonishing transformation.