When I came here six years ago, I had an incredible sense of difference. I’d been in Indonesia for six months then - and it’s not Australia of course, but when I got here I felt I was really on the other side of the world. Bewildered and without the ability to speak, there was still a sense of harmony, symmetry, a feeling that this place was a little bit the same wherever you travelled across this great stretch of land that one could - unlike Indonesia. It felt like another world. Well, I’m back - it’s been 10 months in Beijing, and it still does. Now this city just seems so far so far from home. In fact, the more you know, the more you realise it’s just a different world here. People often speak English, they sometimes drive their cars and they all have a mobile phone - but these aren’t the things that cultures are traditionally built on. Yes, they renew cultural evolution - they bring us together in unfathomable ways. But the core elements underlying people’s behaviour are still a longer history, especially in China.
How many more mobile phones and Olympic stadiums will it take to let the Chinese feel they’ve finally caught up to the rest of the advanced world, and can finally regain their pride after their continual beating by the West, Japan…and 1989? It’s still a mystery. People are certainly wiser than before to what it takes to deal with the outside world, but the pride is still fierce, and so far it’s holding it altogether. Development is the national religion. Its opponents are shut up.
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