China makes an unforgettable impression on visitors. Some, after seeing only the facade of a huge country and communicating with the Chinese through a translator, come to generalizations of a global nature. Others, even if they do not have a Sinological education, look closely at the life of the "Middle State" from the inside and carefully compare it with Russian realities. The following materials give the reader the opportunity to compare two different views of China.

The dragon has long been considered a symbol of China. The image is still accurate. A ferocious but Wise (as the hoary tradition claims) "head" leads a giant "trunk" - the people of the most populous country.

Today, there is no shortage of optimistic and admiring articles in the world press about the pace of China's progress. Throughout our stay in China, we - a small group of Russian journalists and representatives of the business world-were bothered by one question: "Why are they so eager to move forward?" And then the second - " Why don't we?" I hope that at least some of the answers are contained in the proposed mosaic of our purely tourist experiences.

CHIFAN LA MA?

Our Beijing guide, Ju Bin, or, as he introduced himself, "in your opinion-Mikhail", graduated from the local"yinyaz". He's 33. He took part in the Tiananmen Square student riots in June 1989...

"This is the largest area in the world," says Mikhail, " 44 hectares." Cold. Total +6°C. It's raining, but there are a lot of people. On the square - the Great People's Palace (Parliament), the Museum of Revolution and History, a 38-meter stele-monument to folk heroes with sayings of Mao and Zhou Enlai, in the southern part of the square-the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, from the entrance and the Forbidden City you can see his huge portrait.

"What is Mao to you now?" - I ask the guide. "God, the leader, the father of the nation," he replies. - When the mausoleum is open, people stand in line for 3-4 hours... "And, after a short pause, adds:" But there are also those who never go." "And Deng Xiaoping?" - "This is also a great man, he made China modern, pointed the way to the future..."

CHINA BEGINS... FROM THE KITCHEN

"Hello" in Chinese sounds like this: "Ninh hao". But for centuries this word has been replaced-

page 67

there was the phrase " Chifan la ma?" ("Have you eaten yet?").

I will not entice the reader with exotics. Snakes, scorpions, dogs, and even more so the forbidden dish - monkey brains-we did not taste. But we tried a lot of other dishes, which are generally unclear: fish that can not be distinguished from chicken, beans that resemble meat, sweet pork, a lot of different greens and noodles, etc. The cuisine here varies greatly depending on the region. But everywhere the main food is rice and dumplings, dozens of other dishes on the rotating table are their culinary retinue.

But, of course, in Beijing, the "hit of the table" is Peking duck. We tasted it in a restaurant where this dish has been served to visitors for 140 years. Chefs in snow-white attire conjure with carcasses suspended behind transparent glass. The bird is rubbed with powdered sugar to get a chocolate-colored crust, water is poured inside the gutted carcass, and this" vessel " is hung on a hook and placed in the oven. There it is fried (outside) and boiled (inside). And on the rotating table, dozens of cold and hot appetizers from the same duck are spinning. Liver with black pepper, boiled tongues, legs in mustard sauce... You can't tear yourself away... But take your time, leave some space in your stomach, because finally the cook is carrying It. You should see how he carves up this piece of culinary art. Each piece of meat will definitely have a toasted crust. You put a thin unleavened flatbread on your palm, green stalks, cucumbers or onions on it, two or three pieces of duck, dipping them first in a spicy sauce, roll them up - and in your mouth...

I'm not a foodie. But Chinese food is delicious. The beer here is wonderful, the wine is both local and European, there is also the strongest "maotai" - rice vodka 58°C.

And yet, what is the main thing in food? In my opinion - the price. Products in China are cheap. Very. Cheap lunch and in the restaurant. And this is a big point. The word "population "in China is denoted by two hieroglyphs" ren "(person) and" kou " (mouth). The country has 1 billion 300 million "human beings" - more than 20% of the world's population. And only 7% of arable land is suitable for farming (in the USA it is twice as much).

Reform of the country in China began with the village, where more than 70% of the population lives. Gradually , step by step. First, they conducted an experiment in one province, liquidating collective farms, and leasing the land to farmers, in a family contract. Then, having made sure of the effectiveness of the initiative, they extended the experience to the whole country. In 1985, the then billion-dollar China produced 400 kg of grain per person. Now it produces 500. By 2050, when, according to forecasts, the population will reach 1.5 billion, with the consumption of 400 kg of grain per capita, a harvest of 600 million tons of grain per year will be needed. There is no doubt that this figure is achievable. In addition, the diet is changing-the consumption of meat, eggs, fish, and vegetables is growing. A cup of rice a day per person in the still very recent hungry past goes not only from the memory of people, but from their psychology.

Reforms in China began precisely with the solution of the main social issue - how to feed people. In this respect, their reform was much more humane and really socially oriented than our own economic refinements.

In all the cities we visited, I asked about the average salary. It was about 250-300 US dollars per person per month. A well-fed person will not go to a rally on the square, and even more so, will not take up a machine gun. Just 2% of the population in China's recent famine-ridden past lives below the poverty line, according to official figures. This is to the question: "why did they rush so fast?"

CHANGES AND TRADITIONS

During the trip, I was able to get acquainted with the report of the National Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China. China's gross domestic product grew by 9.1% in 2003 compared to 2002. In value terms, the volume of GDP amounted to 11.7 trillion rubles. yuan (US $ 1.4 trillion). China's economic growth is based primarily on export-oriented manufacturing and foreign direct investment. In the first nine months of 2003, retail sales in China increased by 8.6% compared to the same period of the previous year, industrial production by 16.5% - to 2.9 trillion rubles. yuan, industrial product exports from China - by

page 68

29.4% and amounted to 1.9 trillion rubles. RMB. At the same time, 85% of the export volume was accounted for by products of the electronic, light, textile and machine-building industries. The launch of the first Chinese cosmonaut by its own, so to speak, forces was also indicative. In 2003, China accounted for $ 1,090 in national income for every person living in China.

I didn't see any beggars in the country. So, groups of beggars, inevitable near a cluster of intourists and other foreigners. Beijing, which is 12 million people, is a multi-storey, but not skyscraper-like, modern city. Cranes flying over pagoda-shaped roofs are a typical landscape. Multi-level interchanges, six transport rings, express roads, cleanliness. The city map becomes obsolete every six months - this is the pace of construction. There are not as many cyclists in the capital as expected. And yet, an elegant lady in a business or even evening dress on stilettos can dock on a bike both to the restaurant and to the office.

But in general, Beijing switched to cars. On the streets of the capital almost all the prestigious car brands of the world. But they are mostly... chinese. They are assembled in joint ventures. Own Chinese brand one - "Red China". However, even after joining the WTO, China is doing everything possible to protect its own auto industry. Today, Chinese cars account for 7% of the global car market. So far, for such a large population as in China, there are not enough cars - only 16 million. But the growth rate of the number of car owners is impressive. In 2001, passenger cars were bought by 20% more than in 2000, and in the first six months of 2002, by 30% more than in the whole of 2001. But motorcycles are prohibited in the city - they respect the environment.

"And how," I ask Ju Bin-Mikhail,"about taxes?" - "The tax is progressive. The higher the income , the higher the tax, but not more than 45%." - "Is there a hidden income?" "Got it! There is also corruption. But the punishment for this is severe. "Recently, a famous singer was jailed for 15 years for not paying her taxes in full."

In the early 1980s, China legalized private industrial enterprises if they employed less than 100 people. They grow like mushrooms after rain. Within 5 years, there were 8 million of them in the country.

No matter what side of the life of society in the PRC you touch, you can always feel a well-thought-out line, a legal basis, and effective tools of the law. Here, for example, the local "traffic police". Stopped in the wrong place-a fine of 200 yuan and 3 penalty points, unauthorized stop on the expressway-a fine of 600 yuan and 6 penalty points. 12 penalty points per year - and away with the rights. Driving on sidewalks, parking at public transport stops, and even more so driving under the influence of alcohol are out of the question.

"Are you a party member, Mikhail?" - I ask the guide. "Not at all. Joining the party is not so easy. But there are no social or other restrictions on joining."

We talked about democracy, multiparty relations, and human rights. And I realized that in China these rights are not understood in the same way as in our country (or as the West imposed on us their understanding). They are understood in Chinese. I won't brag that I figured out how. But, perhaps, the once popular motif "if only the native country lived, and there were no other worries" is closest here.

This can be seen at least by how reverently, carefully and interested China is in its history and cultural heritage of the country. Just one example: in the country, in places of world tourist importance, where foreigners are piling in, Chinese tourists often predominate. This is the need for self-education of the individual, and public policy.

MASSES AND PERSONALITIES

Previously, the Chinese liked that there were a lot of them - such a mass is more convenient to repel any foreign enemy. And epidemics, poverty, and wars have somehow stabilized the population over the centuries. But since the mid-50s of the last century, there were already half a billion Chinese, and in 1980-a billion, now-1.3 billion.

Hence the strict family planning policy: "One family - one child". However, for small nations (and there are more than fifty of them, and they account for only 7% of the population), unspoken indulgences are allowed. For example, if a girl was born in such a family, the authorities may also allow a second birth.

After all, until now the girl in the family is... disappointment or something.

page 69

As a result, there was a tender bias in the country. Today, 50 million bachelors in China have no chance of finding family happiness.

So, "one family - one child". For the second - a large fine and deprivation of many social benefits.

Next to our hotel in Hangzhou, there was a huge "book store", not even a store, but a semi-library. Students rummage through books here, study in small groups on the floor. There are many foreign magazines in English. Our logs are not available. There is little" Russian spirit " in today's China. We haven't seen your artists here for 15 years, Mikhail said.

Chinese schools teach English, and smart Chinese boys go to study in the United States and England.

At 6.15 am, on the site of this very bookstore, its employees (mostly ladies of a respectable age) are doing exercises together. With fans, jump ropes, and other sports paraphernalia. I took pictures, spun around for 40 minutes-it was necessary that both the store sign and their focused faces got into the frame... I came - they were already engaged, I left - they were still engaged. It wasn't the Chinese national gymnastics team, or even the Chinese book industry team. But it's 6am... Elderly aunts... Agree, an important touch to the character of the nation and to the answer to the question: "Why did they rush so fast?"

CONTINUITY OF CENTURIES

Trains in China (both long-distance and local) are convenient, comfortable, accurate and clean. During the four-hour journey from Suzhou to Hangzhou, the guides repeatedly removed invisible specks of dust. The desire for cleanliness seems to be imbibed in the nation's genes. Everywhere you go, you notice it-they go and pick up a fallen piece of paper, a piece of wrapper. I may be wrong, but I don't think there are any stray animals here: in 10 days in China, I saw only two dogs, one of them was a pug in the back seat of a 600th Mercedes. Having a dog is an expensive fad here. The license costs 6 thousand yuan, and you need to walk with your pet strictly according to the schedule-either before 8 am or after 8 pm...

Everyone knows speculatively about the millennial cultural heritage of China. But I am sure that the pyramids of Cheops in Egypt or the Taj Mahal in India know (or have heard) much more than about the unique monuments of at least the Chinese capital-the Imperial Palace, or the Summer, the tombs of the Ming Dynasty, not to mention the wonders of Hangzhou and Suzhou, where you were lucky enough to visit. Marco Polo, the "great Italian tourist" (as the local guide "Tatiana" called him), in 1280 considered Hangzhou the most beautiful city in the world. Here you can relax in the Botanical Garden with its collection of rare plants, and if the soul wants something sublime, then the best place for it is in the "Temple of Refuge of the Soul" (326), at the entrance to which a giant Buddha smiles mysteriously. We have seen a great many Buddhas in the cities of China - hundreds, very different. Buddhism is one of the main religions of the country, consisting, however, of different trends. Confucianism is the leading religion in the country, but it is more a moral and ethical teaching than a religion. The Chinese don't seem devoutly religious (this isn't India). And the ceremonies in their temples and monasteries are not filled with religious passion, much less fanaticism. People in general are reserved in their emotions, rather, people are on their own minds. Angry and even frowning faces are almost not found here.

Suzhou is also called paradise on earth - I remember, perhaps, more precisely for its similarity to"Venice". After dropping $ 10 each, we hired a boat as a group and sailed through the twists and turns of the local canals. And they did not regret it, because they saw China not from the tourist "facade", but from the "inside out". From the modern city, we suddenly found ourselves in the world of the Middle Ages: one - and two-story dilapidated houses, drying clothes, shabby walls, old women rinsing wool in the water, kids with open mouths, watching the boat with their eyes, but they don't run after us, and they don't ask for anything... Poor, but decent. Between the China that we saw in Beijing, and this - centuries. But these centuries here not only divide, but also connect the past and present, the patriarchy of ordinary life and the bold reality that looks to the future-

page 70

schee. And outside the train window - rural real China-smooth plots of rice, vegetable gardens, rare tree plantings, production facilities... There is no free land.

SYMBOLS OF GREATNESS

On the evening before we left for home, our entire group, consisting in general of serious people (from Lukoil, Gazprom, Hewlett-Packard, and Kirovsky Zavod) gathered for tea in the hotel bar to take stock of what was most memorable and striking. Almost everyone named two places - the Great Wall of China and Shanghai.

"There is a drop of sweat in every grain of rice," says an ancient Chinese proverb. You can imagine what a sea of sweat was shed by countless Chinese people who built this grandiose structure over the centuries-the Great Wall of China. Mao is credited with saying: "He is not a hero who did not conquer the Great Wall of China." If the leader meant all 6300 km of its length, then of course. But I have a bronze certificate that I conquered it. There is a T-shirt with the corresponding inscription. My daughter and I spent a long time and with great difficulty climbing to the rather steep top of a wall fragment in Samotai near Beijing, where we were solemnly sold this document and a T-shirt. The wall, it is a wall - quite high, from 3 to 8 meters, towers of 10 to 12 meters, steps are high and steep - there is nothing to do here in shoes. Like a giant dragon, the wall winds through the mountains and passes, for centuries it stood as a bastion against the wild nomads. An eternal monument to superhuman perseverance. An eternal symbol of the greatness and power of China of past centuries.

Shanghai is also a symbol of the country's greatness and power. Only today's China, and to an even greater extent, the China of the future, which is rapidly adapting to the new challenges of the twenty-first century.

Shanghai is not a typical China. You stand on the embankment and look from the west bank to the east-at the skyscrapers sticking into the clouds, the offices of foreign companies, the realm of glass and metal, at the neon-torn advertising of the world's leading companies, filled with timid characters of Chinese companies, at the spire of one of the tallest TV towers in the world, from the observation deck of which you A 17-million-strong monster city, a cosmopolitan city. And you feel like a small particle under the heel of a giant.

IT'S NOT CHINA, BUT IT'S CHINA

I asked our Shanghai guide an important question for me: "What does this city, these offices of foreign companies shining with advertising, give the Chinese peasant?" He thought about it and said, " They make his life better."

However, all of us, our entire group, were absolutely unanimous - none of us would want to live in such a city. Although here, in Shanghai, there is another, "normal China". I turned the corner of an ultra-modern hotel, 300 meters deep - and already narrow (spread your arms - you will touch both walls) streets. An elderly Chinese man scribbles something on a typewriter. And in the next shop, a young tailor is ironing a newly made suit; they bake cakes, sell parrots, coolies with simple provisions in baskets, with" rockers " at the ready, when they see the camera pointed, they run away - shy. Nearby, chickens cackle in a cage, the owner-seller, waiting for the buyer, busily plucks one of them alive. Colorful Shanghai, many-faced Shanghai.

The Great Wall of China and Shanghai are different symbols of the country's greatness at different turns of history, but it seems that the current round of the historical spiral in China has only just begun to unwind. The dragon is just waking up.

China has a strong state, a strong government, and order. And that's why business is coming here. There are a lot of rich Chinese people in the world. At one time, the government called on them to help the Motherland. And the Chinese diaspora, especially at the initial stage of reforms, helped a lot, in particular, in creating free economic zones. The West first watched, and when it realized that the game was worth the candle, went to China to do business: the Germans, Spaniards, and even the Japanese... Over the past decade, the volume of foreign investment has grown more than 20 times and now exceeds $ 50 billion a year.

In China, foreign investment and injections are welcome, but they remember that the best infusion into the baby is an infusion of mother's milk, and they rely on the development of their own productive forces.

Almost simultaneously, they and we began to reform. And the result?! Who can be considered an "older brother" now? Who can learn from whom? The country's leadership gives people the opportunity to work. They didn't really look for a national idea here. It was simple - survival. But the right strategy and tactics of leadership, coupled with the native Chinese diligence (vacation here is still only two weeks a year), respect for traditions, for history (both ancient and modern), the ability to learn from past mistakes, tolerance - all this has borne fruit. And the country made a breakthrough.

Where to? I look at the eastern shore of Shanghai. Will the whole of China be like this in 50 years? Is this what the nation is striving for, and will this be the appearance of a dragon that wakes up from its slumber? I don't think so. Otherwise, they, the Chinese, will not differ from the West in any way. But they're Chinese. They have enough historical wisdom, originality, and dignity. Besides, there are a lot of them. You can't change them. It's not about the form. About the essence. The jade Buddha in the Shanghai Temple is calm and smiling...

Beijing-Suzhou-Hangzhou-Shanghai-Moscow

Permanent link to this publication: