The Heights of Ignorance

When my Professor told us this week that for extra credit we could write about the great wall in relation to China as a whole, I groaned. I’ve read countless instances of misty-eyed tourists traveling to foreign lands writing of the “profound” metaphors they see around them (myself being no exception). It’s insufferable. Of course, the travel blogger writing about the romance of the Taj Mahal might be well intentioned. But the idea of going off to some Asian or African country and masturbating to the otherness of it all in the form of quasi-sophisticated rambling on the abstract beauty of “the East” is nauseating. So I’m going to try and do something different.

I’ll start by introducing a hypothetical tourist by the name of Sid (I use this name because it’s a shorthand for names in multiple cultures, so the image of Sid’s appearance will be ethnically ambiguous). Now, let’s imagine Sid to believe many of the things commonly believed about China. He thinks the middle kingdom is a faraway, mystical land full of desktop-screensaver-beautiful natural features. He thinks China’s government is diabolically communist. And he thinks that the average Chinese person is robotically diligent and is capable of about as much independent thought as a panda. All in all, Sid’s a pretty worldly guy.

In his travels to Beijing’s great wall, his beliefs are confirmed by the symbolism he sees. The huge endless mountains signify to him China’s unadulterated natural beauty. He revels in his cheeky wit as he buys a Red Guard hat and Mao poster near the top of the wall. His tour guide whom he met near the ticket stand tells him of all of the people who died building the great wall, dedicating their lives to reverently worshipping their emperor through labor. In this process, Sid smiles to himself as he “epiphanically” realizes that what he had seen was a metaphor for what China is like, namely what he believed China to be like. Finally, at the end of his trip, he returns home to his Macbook Pro to blog about his experience. He links to it on his new Facebook profile picture, featuring Sid pensively staring into the distance near the top of the wall. He gets hundreds of likes, people back home message him excitedly asking about his trip, and he lives happily ever after.

Now that we have told Sid’s side of the story, let’s get some facts straight. He happened to visit the Wall on an unusually clear day, so he had no idea of the revolting smog that many Chinese have to live with; never mind the mass deforestation and destruction of coral reefs that is characteristic of the country. In buying his communist souvenirs, he never realized how ironically capitalist it was that he bought them in an overpriced store inside of an ancient cultural site perched high up on a mountain (forget the fact that such products are marketed almost entirely toward foreigners). And of course, Sid neither speaks any Chinese nor knows about any of Beijing’s huge, awesome art districts, so he trusts an account of ancient history fit for American 3-year-olds to tell him what Chinese people are like.

There’s a proverb plastered on a giant rock in front of my university’s campus that goes, “实事求是”, which means “seek truth from fact”. Much of what is observed in going to the Great Wall actually could be taken to represent ideas that are unsubstantiated, unintelligent stereotypes. Given that Sid’s story is essentially one of the first time I visited the Great Wall a few years ago (though I never blogged about it), it isn’t hard to fathom that one’s experience of China can be colored almost entirely by clueless prejudices, and that interestingly, one’s travel abroad actually ends up reinforcing one’s ignorance. But even though the example I’ve described seems to pertain to a uniquely idiotic though well-meaning guy, there is no one who is totally exempt from a level of ignorance, and there is no one who isn’t, to some extent, oblivious to their own ignorance. Thus, the kind of mistakes the character Sid makes can probably still be attributed in some form to me when I travel, and the worst part is that I have no idea what those mistakes are.

No doubt, I am stupendously fortunate to be able to study for a quarter in Beijing. However, what can be difficult about going abroad is preventing my preconceived notions from coloring my perception of this place. Any politics, any culture, any language is full of innumerable subtleties, and what I want more than anything is to begin to understand those subtleties. Of course I will try to acknowledge my own biases, to stray away from the beaten path of foreigners in Beijing, and to strive toward sincere, substantive empathy. But what is even more important is the need to recognize my own limits in understanding a thoroughly foreign world. Yes, it’s great to learn about and travel in other countries. But trying to make essentialist claims about the realities of those countries is just wrong, and I’m going to try and avoid it. Honestly, I’ll still probably be as insufferable as the Sid I described was, but I’d rather have it be because I was pretentious than because I was ignorant.