My Sino-Victorian Day

The peak of the Industrial Revolution in Britain was in the Victorian era. During this time, Britain urbanized, shifted from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy, expanded the middle class, and evolved a very distinct set of attitudes and social behavior. It's this culture that comes to mind when I hear the word 'Victorian,' though I suppose one also thinks of colonialism and furniture. My point is that China is undergoing a very similar transition right now, and the figures about urban migration and the economy are there to prove it. What's really fascinating is that you can also see the new era dawning in the bourgeois materialism and faith in social progress of the new Chinese middle class.

On Sunday I went to the Fragrant Hills, a regional park on the western outskirts of Beijing. The park has historic roots as an imperial playground and temporary HQ for Mao, but today people use the park in very modern ways.

My day hiking and wandering in the park started out very Victorian. Families were on promenade. How do I know that they weren't just enjoying fresh air and exercise? I saw a little girl in a pink lace dress and matching hat go strolling by (not exactly playwear). I saw a woman in an old-fashioned Anglo-style summer frock wearing high-heel wedge shoes and carrying a parasol climbing a 3000 ft. mountain. Picnics abounded. I experienced a mechanical marvel (rode a cable car up the mountain). Walking down, I encountered an older gentleman sketching portraits. The price was right, so I dawdled and hung out with the various children and other onlookers until it was my turn to have my picture drawn. The only way it could have been more Victorian would be if it had been a sillouette.

The artist had finished one of my eyes and my nose when I looked over and saw a man in a grey uniform holding my backpack. I hopped up and grabbed it back from him, and a fast exchange ensued between the uniformed man, his partner, and the artist. I realized that the artist was getting busted for running his little business in the park, and these guys were here to clear him out. They escorted him off, and I followed. We went down the hills a-ways, and they disappeared into an office disguised as a pagoda. I hoped they were just charging him a fine and throwing him out of the park, and that the fine wasn't too bad. I was shocked five minutes later to see a horde of about 30 men and women emerge from the pagoda - bottle collectors, water vendors, and the artist. They were all herded off down the hill and that was the last I saw of them.

So that's China's Victorian era for you. It's just like England, except they already have women's rights and the state is a lot more arbitrary in its policies. While it's OK for the vendor at the terra cotta warriors to literally punch me in the arm with his piece-of-junk mini-warrior, it's not OK for the bohemian-gentleman artist to draw my picture. I guess we were having too much fun and not generating enough activity in the Chinese economy.

On a final note, in my explorations of the park I found a huge carved stone turtle with a big tablet on its back (a common motif in China, something to do with longevity). The tablet had a bunch of ancient Chinese characters written on it, but someone had individually scratched out each one. Many of the features of the park had signs explaining that they had been burned by the Anglo-French forces in the 1860's and by the 8-Joint-Allied forces in 1900. However, there was no explanation here for the thorough defacing. It's not hard to guess who did this, and that's the creepy undertone of China that prevents one from fully enjoying the Victorian enthusiasm of today.