From the day we hiked the Great Wall, near Beijing
I question so much about China. Everything here is shrouded in a mist of confusion. No other country I have ever been to makes me more suspicious. I can’t say it is always out of fear, because my team hasn’t been accosted by the police or blatantly followed. But I feel this pervading sense of mistrust. How much of what I hear can I really believe?
The students say things, or tell me things, and I wonder. I wonder if they’ve ever had a single original thought, or if they are all programmed to think the same way and say the same things. In wondering about them, I begin to wonder about me. I wonder how much of what I believe about freedom and choice and everything we’ve been taught about the United States is real, and how much is puffed up propaganda just filtering through our government.
In China, religion is highly regulated. In an effort to ‘look good,’ China has allowed Christian churches to form. But if you attend one of these churches, your name goes on a list, and if you are a member, you must register. You can find the Bible in China. But it is a highly edited version, missing whole books. Apparently there are things the Chinese government doesn’t want their people to know about Jesus. Those people who choose to follow Jesus and eschew these restrictions are a part of a vast underground church network. If they are caught, punishment is swift and severe.
One of the things that kills me is that of the students I have talked to, they are all under the impression that they are free. Free to say what they want, do what they want, go where they want and believe what they want. The little ‘clues’ that abound, suggesting otherwise, are often packaged in such neat little propagandized boxes, that they are all but ignored.
Even something as simple as traveling to Hong Kong, a city that is supposedly now fully Chinese, is difficult. In order for an average Chinese citizen to go to Hong Kong, they have to first get a passport, something that is not available to every Chinese citizen. Telling them that in America everyone can have a passport utterly shocked them. To imagine that each person in the country could travel abroad was beyond them. And they had a happy little excuse about if everyone could travel, the airports would be too crowded… blah, blah, blah. Once they acquire a passport, then they need to get a very expensive visa to Hong Kong, a waiting list that is rumored to be three years long.
Who knows if that is true, or just rumor? This is what I mean… how do you know? How do you sort reality from the governmental veil that covers everyone’s eyes? And when the truth does shine through, how do you know?
Also hiking the Great Wall, near Beijing
