Intelligent Design : Two Weeks in Chengdu and Environs

By Fred Reed

November 23, 2018 "Information Clearing House" -  Vi and I have just returned from Chengdu, a Chinese village of seventeen million and the gateway to Tibet. Since China is of some interest to the US these days, I thought a description of sorts, actually more in the nature of a disordered travelog,  might be of interest. I hadn’t been to the country for twelve years and, before that, not since living in Taiwan in the mid-Seventies. Each time, the changes were astonishing. Herewith some notes:

A caveat: we never got more than three hundred miles from the city and do not pretend to describe the country beyond what we saw.

Despite Trump’s trade war we had no problems in getting visas in Guadalajara or getting through customs in Chengdu. Nobody showed us the slightest hostility. Although China is assuredly a dictatorship and vigorously represses dissent, we saw virtually no police. A friend who lived in Chngdu for several years until recently asserts that there is close to zero street crime. (White collar crime is a very different matter, he said, and seems built into Chinese culture. There are books on this.)

China is often described as a developing country. Well, sort of. Chengdu is decidedly of the First World, modern, muscular, appearing to have been recently built because it was. The downtown is beautiful, at least as cities go,  and livable. In many hours of walking aimlessly we encountered everything from elegant high-end stores selling upscale Western bands to noodle shops. It is not a poor city. A considerable number of people wear worn clothes and clearly are not overly prosperous, but nobody looked hungry and most appeared middle class. We saw no beggars or homeless people of the sort common in the US. Whether this is because there aren’t any, or because the government doesn’t allow them on the streets, I do not know.

For anyone who knows what China was before Deng Xiaoping took over in 1978, after Mao made his greatest contribution to his country–he died–the growth of prosperity astouds. Many criticisms may be made of the Chinese government, some of them valid, but no other government has lifted so many people out of poverty so fast.

When I lived in Taiwan, I wondered why the Chinese, especially the mainlanders, were so backward. They seemed to have been so almost forever, certainly since well before Legation days. At the time Taiwan had a Five Year Plan for development, but so did all sorts of dirtball counties, mostly consisting of a patch of jungle, a colonel, and a torture chamber.

I noted, though, it the reader will forgive me a digression:  Taiwan was actually meeting its Plan. In the Thirld World of the time, this was a novel idea. The Jin Shan reactors were going in, the new port, the steel mill.,the highway. I interviewed the  head of the nuclear program for the Far Eastern Economic Review–Harvard guy. Other officials were from MIT. Idi Amin they were not.

Young and dumb as I was–the two being barely distinguishable–I thought Hong Kong looked like Manhattan with slanted eyes, hardball financial turf, and I knew Taiwanese students in America were excelling in science courses. I concluded that Mousy Dung was the greatest American patriot who ever lived since, if he ever stopped holding these people back, what has happened might.

But back to Chengeu.

The first thing we noticed in the city was the enormous scale of everything. Buildings downtown were huge. The elevated highways everywhere were huge. The numbers of people were huge. There were literally hundreds of hugely tall apartment buildings. The principle seemed to be that if you have too many people to spread them out, stack them up. Said a Chinese guide we hired, they weren’t there twenty years ago.

Conspicuous to both Violeta and me was evidence of Intelligent Design. Chengdu clearly did not evolve randomly as cities do in the West. Somebody thought about things beforehand. The overhead highways kept heavy  traffic flowing. Very wide sidewalks downtown made pedestrianism pleasant. The subway was nothing special but well designed to be easy to use even if you don’t know how. (Well, it does have sliding glass doors to keep you away from the tracks until the train comes. This way,  you can’ t throw things onto the tracks, such as your mother-in-law.)

In a country that thinks it is communist, or pretends it is to save face in case you notice that it isn’t, you might expect horrible architecture. You know, like the awful Stalin Gothic of Moscow. Or Franco’s mausoleum that looks to have been designed by someone channeling Albert Speer. Actually no. (Except maybe sorta for the huge apartment buildings, mentikoned aboce, that cluster together in sometimes groups of twelve that could hold the population of Guatemala).

Thing is, the Chinese have a well-developed aesthetic sense, at least in the visual realm (not so hot musically, and Beijing opera is a crime against humanity). Somebody, which means the government, said that considerable green space would be left, and it was. Planters with (unsurprisingly) plants in them are everywhere, and patches of what look like manicured forest. The resuslt is curious. You can sit in cool shdy woods a few yards from an enormous overhead highway.

Communism, which China once had, pretty much forbids religion, so I wondered what we would find in the faith line. Buddhists. We visited Buddhist temples, meticulously maintained, with worshipers, mostly women, obviously worshiping. How was this, I asked my round-eyde friend. Well, he said,  Christianity was strongly disapproved as being Western, but the government was nervous about public reaction to a crackdown on Buddhism. So they decided that Buddhism wasn’t a religion, see, but Chinese culture, and thus OK. I don’t know whether this is true, but thought it a nicely practical waffle.

Huge. Here we go again. Chengdu has what it says is the world’s largest building, 1.5 million square meters. This is the Global Center. It is the damndest thing I have ever seen, maybe. I suspect it was built to overcome an international short-man’s complex. I bet it did, too. It was like going into the VAB at Canaveral, unlimited space, with hotels, stores, offices, wide open space. But–the aesthetic thing again–it was wonderfully colorful and just–“gorgeous” comes to mind. It was not designed by corporate in New Jersey.

To prove that China has reached American levels of mild lunacy: we passed an Alienware store–high-end gaming computers–with a crowd of Chinese looking at a screen on which, somewhere, a video game was being played. The announcer sounded as excited as a Latin American  covering a hotly contested soccer match: “Womenhau…wangjile!..wangjile! mijyou!MIJYOU!woshrhenhau!..YANGGWEIDZE….” in a rising shriek. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but the involvement reminded me of when Mexico beat Germany in the  World Cup.

Next time bullet trains, WeChat, other neat stuff.

Cheng Two: More Notes on Two Weeks in China

By Fred Reed

This is my second column on the two weeks that Vi and I just spent in Chengdu, China. It is meant not so much as a travelog as a snapshot of what is going on in an economic juggernaut. Judging by email from readers, many do not realize the scope and scale of China’s advance. Neither did I: Since I was last in the country twelve years ago, much has changed. Reading journals is one thing. Walking the streets is another.

Having heard much about China’s high-speed rail, we bought tickets to Chongqing, a mountain town of thirty million at a distance of 250 miles from Chengdu.

Chongqing. Well, a small part of it. Like Chengdu, it is largely new and, as cities go, quite agreeable.

At risk of sounding like a shameless flack for Chinese infrastructure, I can report that the rail station in  Chengdu was huge, attractive, well-designed, brightly lit, and full of people. I know, I know, I keep saying things like this. Well, dammit, they are true. As a self-respecting journalist, I don’t like to tell the truth too often, but here I will break with tradition.

Having gotten tickets beforehand we waited until our train was called, in Mandarin and English, as was true also in the city’s subway. Apparently Chengdu wants to be an international city and someone thought about it.

Anyway, the train pulled in and looked like a freaking rocketship. We boarded and found it to be clean and comfortable, with most of the seats filled. Off we went, almost in silence, and shortly were sailing through countryside.

At a cool 180 miles an hour. It was like stepping into a future world. I thought about buying one of these trains and entering it in Formula One, but I suspect that it would not corner well.

You can book here.Fast rail is hardly unique to China, but the scale is. So  far there are 17,000 miles of fast rail in China, aiming at 24,000 by 2025. The UnitedStates couldn’t finish the environmental impact sttement as quickly. The Shanghai maglev line reaches 267 mph. 

The Chinese passengers seemed no more impressed by the train than by a city bus. They are used to them. They think such trains are normal. As an American, I was internally embarrassed. A few years ago Vi and I went from Chicago to the West Coast on Amtrak. It was not uncomfortable, but slow, appearing to use about 1955 technology. We went through the mountains often at barely more than a walking pace.

There were until recently regular flights from Chengdu to Chongqing. When rail went live, the flights died. Nobody wanted the hassle and expense of flying. Here is much of why the US has not one inch of fast rail: It would kill of a lot of business for politically well connected airlines.  

For example, Chinese fast rail from DC to Manhattan would close down air service in about fifteen minutes. Fast rail between many American cities would be faster than flying when you added in getting to the airport hours before, and from the destination airport to the city afterward. And much  more agreeable.

On another day we rented a car and driver and drove three hours to a town near the Tibetan border. A tourist burg, it was not interesting, but the ride was. The highways were up to American standards, when America had standards. The astonishment began when we reached the mountains. The American response to mountains usually is to go  over them or around them through valleys.

This is not unreasonable, but neither is it the Chinese way. They go through mountains.  We went through–I’ll guess and say a dozen–tunnels, all of four lanes, all miles long (one said to be nine miles) lighted and straight. This was done in two parallel tunnels, each carrying two lanes in one direction or another.

Valleys? We crossed them on bridges or elevated highways.  The result was that a heavy truck would not have to gear up and down. Yes, I know, this probably would not work everywhere, but it worked there.

If there is anything in the US remotely resembling this, I am unaware of it. There may be a long list of things the Chinese can’t do. Building stuff won’t be on it.

Internet: Almost everybody uses WeChat (“Connecting a billion people….” says its website) an app similar to WhatsApp that does the usual things but lets you pay bills electronically. You hold your phone up to the taxi driver’s, information is exchanged, and your account debited. (“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”) This is not new technology, but the scale is. People go out at night without cash, which may cease to exist in a few years. China seems to have leapfrogged the credit card. The government monitors WeChat and you can definitely get in trouble for plotting to kill the Politburo. (Both Alibaba and Baidu have competing systems.)

The country invests hard in electric cars, but you seldom see one. (They have green license plates instead of blue.) The reasons, say people here, are  the objections one hears in the West: Charge time, and expense without governmental subsidies, which exist.

Obesity does not exist. In two weeks we did not see a single example. Maybe porkers are arrested and ground into sausage–I don’t know–but they ain’t none in sight. The reason may be diet. Or bicycles. See below.

Bicycle deposits like this one are everywhere. Each ride has an electronic gizzwhich that lets you rent it using–what else?–WeChat. The system is not robustly communistlc: Different companies paint their bikes in different colors, and have sales to compete. Phredfoto.

Chengdu’s claim for international attention is its pandas. These were thought to be on the way to extinction when apparently the government decided extinction wasn’t a good idea. Boom, the panda zoo appeared. As my friend in the city says, when the government decides to do something, it happens.

Panda zoo. If you are a panda, you ought to look into this. ViFoto.

In the National Zoo in Washington, the animals live in smallish enclosures of glass and cement bearing little resemblance to their natural environment. By contrast, the pandas live in what seem to be acres of forest. This means that you cannot always see them. They do what pandas think proper in the manner they think proper. Visitors walk through, in forest gloom, on walkways overhung with branches. One never feels sorry for the animals. While I think we were the only round-eyes we saw, the throngs of locals were sometimes oppressive.  

OK, that’s the snapshot. The lesson to take away, or at any rate the one I took away, is that this is a very serious and competent country and not to be underestimated.

Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. https://fredoneverything.org