It all seems so much better than a semi-circle of pensioners in an old-folks home in England, rotting zombie-like around the inane nothingness that is day time TV.
After the park, we visited an ancient temple, luckily not central enough to have suffered the same fate as an even older temple, whose name I’ve forgotten, which was demolished to make room for an enormous Mao statue during the cultural Revolution. The temple was full of Taoist devotees dutifully leaving incense sticks at various Buddha images. It kind of surprised me, as the Chinese I met had always seemed uninterested in religion, but of course, my knowledge of what Chinese think or don’t think is limited to classroom discussions, and as the PSB (Chinese police) often operate incognito, students were always careful about what they said or didn’t say in class. Expressing a strong religious affiliation still makes your loyalty to the Party questionable, in spite of all the religious freedom propaganda the Party’s been spouting lately, so if you have strong religious convictions in China, you tend to keep them to yourself.
The temple’s monks were a lot less colourful than their saffron-robed Thai counterparts, and held in far less esteem, needless to say. However, the horrors of the Cultural Revolution are long since passed, and monks are no longer forced to attend re-education sessions, take their monasteries apart brick by brick and rebuild them as barracks, factories or even pig sties. Buddhism, under the ever watchful eyes of the Party, does appear to be making a slow comeback in China, but it’s hard to imagine it ever occupying a central role in people’s lives again. Even in Hong Kong and Macao, where Buddhism was never suppressed, it is somehow ephemeral and almost irrelevant to people’s daily concerns.
However, one should always beware of ‘false prophets’ and I could be mistaken in believing that because the Chinese don’t talk about religion much, it is not important to them.
We ate at a vegetarian restaurant in the temple complex. The tofu meat imitations were some of the most impressive I’ve ever had-it tasted so real that Sandra couldn’t eat it. She said it was just so much like real meat that it had to contain some meat. I had no such qualms, and trusted the monks not to slip me a piece of pork on the sly. I must have eaten nearly a whole chicken’s worth of spicy tofu, and paid for it later that night with some terrible stomach pains. Sichwanese food is very hot and spicy, and infinitely preferable to the greasy slime so characteristic of southern Guangdong cuisine.
To distract me from my red hot intestines, we spent the evening at a Sichwa opera, puppet show and shadow dancing ‘extravanganza.’ A purist might object that it was touristic, and to an extent it was, but 90 percent of the audience was Chinese, so I didn’t mind so much. Later, in Beijing, we forked out 25 dollars for an ‘authentic’ Beijing opera, in which 90 of the audience was western, and I couldn’t see any difference.
The costumes were psychedelic and almost other-worldly. The characters in Chinese opera usually represent Gods; such as the Money God, the Pride God, the God of Compassion etc. This explains the bizarre make up, the inhuman grimaces, and the screeching voices. As an ignorant westerners, I was completely lost and hadn’t the foggiest idea what was going on. It felt as though I had been transported to a different planet, where strange bipedal life forms occupied time and space in much the same way as I did, and appeared to be using sound as a means of communication, but what were saying or doing was unknown and unknowable. If astronauts are ever sent as emissaries to study new life forms, they should first be sent to see a Chinese opera to let them know in advance how little they can expect to understand. Captain Kirk had an easy time of it when he went off to meet ‘new life and new civilisations’. I wonder what Bones would have made of the opera characters. “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” Yes, indeed.
The following day, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6.30 to see some pandas in Chengdu’s world renowned ‘Panda Breeding and Research Centre.’ You have to get there early in the morning when the pandas like to eat and play. Otherwise, you just get to see them engage in their other favourite pastime-sleeping.
There’s no getting away from the fact that pandas are cute. I read somewhere that we find them so irresistible because the black markings around their eyes exaggerate their eyes’ size. Oversized eyes remind us of babies, which are hard wired to find adorable. Pandas are also fluffy, another admirable characteristic in animals, although less so in babies.
There are only about 1,000 pandas left in the wild, and with the remaining bamboo forest being eaten up by human expansion, their future or lack of it may be determined by the success or failure of breeding centres like this one, and according to the breeding statistics proudly displayed on the wall of the museum, this is by far the most successful breeding centre. It’s the Sex capital of the world, as far as pandas are concerned. There’s probably a Hugh Hefner panda somewhere around, publishing PlayPanda.
Pandas are very fussy animals. They will only eat bamboo, and only certain types of bamboo, in spite of having the digestive tract of a carnivore which is entirely unsuited to digesting it. Indeed, they often die from digestive problems.
They’re also very fussy about when they’ll mate and who they’ll mate with, and so artificial insemination is often used to get around this problem. You can’t help wondering though what goes through the mind of a panda when she realizes she’s pregnant but hasn’t had sex. Does she suspect the miraculous intervention of the Holy Panda Spirit? Does she therefore expect to give birth to a Messiah, a Jesus, a King of the Panda People?
We happily watched the pandas stuff their face on prime bamboo, and panda cubs frolic about for a few hours in the dewy mist, and then headed back into the smoggy pollution of Chengdu.
Pandas are so high profile, and government so keen not to be seen to let their extinction happen, that they’ll probably survive. The fate of other less lovable animals in much more grim. Although the Chinese government is unique in the world for having the balls to face the population problem head on and limit the number of children to one per family, although this policy is far from a success, the economic miracle means that Chinese pollution levels are increasing dramatically, and will increase a lot more, thereby further weakening an already fragile ecosystem. Yet again, I wonder if the planet can afford a rich China. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) may find, in twenty year’s time, that it has saved its emblem from extinction, but little else remains.
Only 1,000 pandas left-enough for a couple of tower blocks, perhaps.
Hum.. I’m thinking now of a potential science-fiction movie in which a great breakthrough is made in panda breeding by splicing the rat genes for reproduction with normal panda genes. Everything goes swimmingly, at first. Panda numbers rocket, and pretty soon, there are enough of them for people to keep them as pets, and the scientist who invented the process (played by Julia Roberts, I think) is universally acclaimed.
However, things take a dramatic turn for the worse when the panda genes mutate in unforeseen ways, and the pandas change from docile vegetarians into aggressive super intelligent carnivores, with a special affinity for human flesh, especially young virgin female flesh. They break out of their breeding centres and spread through the remaining forests of central Asia, increasing their numbers exponentially while preparing for a great assault on Chengdu.
In one scene, General Wee Pee, the panda leader, talks strategy with other panda generals, while Julia Roberts, held hostage in a small cage and taunted by thuggish panda guards, who call her ‘big mouth, baldy monkey face’, looks on helplessly. The Chengdu offensive takes the city in two days, and panic spreads through the world at large, as satellite TV images show humans being torn to shreds by bloodthirsty panda killers, their black and white fur splattered in red blood stains.
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, the American President (played by somebody black or female, or preferably both) convinces everybody that the only way to retaliate is through a limited nuclear strike on the Sichwan area. The Chinese leader (played by Jackie Chan) at first proposes a kung-fu solution, but admits there isn’t time to train the populace and reluctantly agrees to the American plan, and the USAF drop the big one.
However, catastrophe strikes again when the radioactivity only makes the pandas stronger. New Super Mutant Pandas emerge from the ashes of Chengdu; 50 metres tall, with claws the size of cars, and laser eyes. The pandas look set to take over the world. Chairman Jackie Chan manages to take out a few with some deft martial arts moves outside the UN building, but he’s overpowered and all looks lost.
After a vicious genocidal war, human numbers are reduced to 1,000, and the pandas set up a Human Breeding Centre in London zoo. The humans are pampered and given everything they could need for a happy life; mobile phones, big cages, home entertainment systems and a McDonalds. Most of the humans settle in happily enough to their new lives of ease, and learn to ignore the panda cubs laughing at them and pointing at their antics, but ex-president Bush kind of enjoys all the attention, and performs special tricks to make the cubs throw monkey nuts.
Julia Roberts, however, refuses to accept her prison sentence, and joins a crack band of resistance fighters in a daring bid to escape from London Zoo. Then she breaks into a laboratory, plays around with some test tubes for a few minutes and finds the solution that somehow eluded all the best scientific minds during the Panda War.
She deploys a lethal panda virus into the water table that kills all pandas and leaves mankind (well, pretty westerners anyway) back in control of the planet, and the pandas are sent into extinction, where they belong. The film could be called “Mutant Panda Killers,” and the advertising slogan might be, “They’re not so cute when they’re trying to eat you.” All I need now is a love interest. Perhaps Julia Roberts could hook up with one of the resistance fighters-some kind of tough marine type. You know, the guy-who-breaks-the-rules-but-always-gets-his-man action hero used in all Hollywood films these days. Bruce Willis might be good for the role. Heaven knows, he’s never played any other role.
Yes, I think this will be next year’s summer blockbuster…But there has to be a twist in the tail. Of course, Julia Roberts turns out to have been artificially inseminated with panda general Wee Pee’s baby-and then there can be a Mutant Panda Killers 2. Horrah! I’m gonna be rich!!
Llasa
You join me on a plane from Chengdu to Llasa. Almost all the passengers are Han Chinese, showing who wears the trousers in modern Tibet. The first group of Tibetans I saw were unloading the luggage from the plane.
The ‘roof of the world’ is only an hour away. From the plane window, the scenery looks ‘moon-like’. I know this adjective is often overused, but in Tibet’s case, the description is valid. The mountain tops are occasionally snow covered, but mainly brown and barren. I’d expected mountains like the Alps, with craggy snow covered peaks separated by fertile green valleys and lakes, but I couldn’t see anything green from the plane-just an endless series of brown lumps. This must be what all of the earth looked like before life evolved. As the plane descended into Gongkar airport, I noticed that some of the valleys did manage to support some kind of meager agricultural production, but even these crops looked brown and almost petrified.
We got into Llasa, but very quickly felt dizzy and giddy. The feeling you get from the sudden lack of oxygen at 4,000 metres is a little like being drunk-you laugh for no reason and your co-ordination is shot. When we got into our room, Sandra lay on the bad and didn’t get out of it for two days. |
