For these “on the train shots I don’t have much to say, and it isn’t very colorful, just the opposite of other blogs where length-of-speech ethics is breeched like no other criminal. Hmph, good then, just look at the pictures.
These pictures from a fingerprinted train window will show that China still is largely a farming country, even though higher technology and material goods factories maybe dominate the economic scene…I isn’t no business person so don’t know. I like the back country. Anyways you can just enjoy some farm country vistas with rice and corn terraces and lots of other kinds of gardened goods. As well here are forested panoramas. Landscapes are a lot more diversely interspersed with a variety of ecosystem types here than I am used to seeing in Canada. You’ll see wild forests and plantations but on average the ecosystem patches are smaller. My pre-China, pre-Aquaculture life was as a practicing professional forester in BC and NB of Canada.
Check it.
Regarding the train experience, I don’t have many on-train pics because of respect for strangers. I was the only white foreigner as far as I could tell but never once felt discriminated against. Basic courtesy and politeness and nice personality traits prevailed, consistently, without exception. I was never (and have never been in China) treated badly or relatively unfairly. People all respected my presence as I did theirs. I think it comes from not thinking or feeling I am above anyone else. I detest pompous attitudes and don’t display it, and that my friend is the key to being treated well. Not equal, I did not say that, I said “well”. I’m off track.
Some of these scenes remind me of Germany, and I am no political person understanding city layout. China did enter a feudal System and Dynastic Rule at the end of philosopher Mo Tsu’s time and exited the slavery system. Maybe that is why some of these farm scenes show clumped peaceful tight communities tucked in farmland. I guess it just makes sense too. I’m a political dummy. On the train you have the privilege of these scenes because the train seems to teeter razorback along mountain tops and at times you might jump with fright feeling you have just taken smooth flight off the tracks and into the sky. And thoughts of the Great Wall and other achievements wow you to wonder how laborers here can do these things with ease.
The negative note, here is cigarettes. The mentality here is like Canada was 10 years ago. Smokers still feel they have the right to smoke regardless if a child is sitting right beside them, not realizing or caring that they infringe upon and degrade the health of those nearby. As well, non-smokers must not realize that they partly foot the bill through taxes for Cancer and other diseases of smokers, or they’d surely rebel. Come on people, you need to stop this and stick up for our rights to not have some other disrespecting smoke blower ruin our health. Cigarette smoke blows freely throughout the train. Wait and get the hell off the train to smoke, and when you get off, take a 30 meter walk from the door so others can exit the train for a fresh breath of clean china farmland air not to be choked by cigarette smoke.
That’s it. And the smoker’s personality, once he drops the smoke, is just as great as or even better than the rest, as if subconsciously trying to apologize for his mistake. Make it illegal, hit the cigarette companies. Get it done. Xiè xiè!
