On China

On China

My first exposure to China was the owner of the only Chinese restaurant in Coimbatore who used to cycle from the market with half a dozen chicken hanging from his cycle bar.

Then it was Pearl S Buck and her tales of bound feet and poverty and abandoned infant girls and concubines . Subsequently reading other books never quite erases the original images of courtyards with moon gates or cramped living spaces of cooks and beauticians.

The beautiful craft – lacquered screens , calligraphy with the attendant paraphernalia of Ink stones ,brushes and rice paper . Jade Buddhas , Embroidery without a wrong side , lac bangles , carved furniture ,porcelain , cloisonné . All this belonged to an exotic China .

A China that we thought we would see in a fine mist amongst weeping willows in courtyard houses where craftsmen would be diligently working amongst children and dogs and other live stock .

It was very interesting meeting different kinds of people on this trip [ Crafts Council Nov 4^th 2008 to Nov 21 2008] . All the more interesting cause we were all in a strange country of which we knew very little , most of which was wrong .

Nothing prepared us for wide roads and multi tiered flyovers and train stations that were cleaner than our international airports . For the acres of city squares and parks .

Where are the 1.3 billion people ? Certainly not on the roads . Not hanging out of their balconies . They all seem to have been accommodated in tall narrow buildings and humongous factories on aces and acres of land . So the individual doesn’t occupy acres of precious farmland in “independent houses”

We get panic attacks if we receive an order for more than 100 of any craft item . Nightmares of raw material availability and the agricultural and festival cycles . How do the Chinese fill bazaar after bazaar with hundreds of identical ‘hand made’ lac bangles ? How do they sell a 60 yuan bangle for 5 yuan because I am a special friend ? Is a product less beautiful because there are so many of them ? Is it less beautiful because machines have been used to make the craftsman’s job easier ?

In retrospect I wonder what is craft and what is industry ? Is there a line and who draws it .?
And do you call people who work 9 to 5 in a factory on predetermined designs craftsmen ?
Does the market and money decide the product or does the creator have a choice ?

A large diverse country . Immense geographically and population wise . How can we hope to understand in today’s terms the reason the Terracotta Warriors were built over 20 years by one emperor and 2 years later the whole thing burnt to the ground by another .
When people talk of the Great Wall they can only think of the people who died building it . Why did a nation spend all its resources to build this immense wall across the northern border ? To make an Empire .

Wasn’t a dialogue and trade possible with the awful Mongol hordes ?

A civilization that took 4000 years to reach a point when its descendants, in the Cultural Revolution, decided to destroy all that it developed . A brief blip in its history when all that was old was razed .
And we judge a history by the frail interpretation of a guide who has to make a living .

And a country through a journalist who needs his bytes