The Road to Cathay

In the Middle ages when Europe was in the doldrums and America was yet to be discovered two great cultures dominated the world space: India and China. They were the super powers of their age. It was the mission of every traveller and tradesman to set his sails to these two lands and harvest the dividends of opportunities they offered. 'The Road to Cathay' as Marco Polo famously used to call his journey to China was a turn of phrase that was prevalent everywhere as the great land beckoned people around the world.

In a way the narrow label of 'Country' does not befit places like India and China. It seems too inexpensive a box to place somethings so precious. I have always identified these two great places more as 'Lands'. The word Land encompasses something of a larger area in the mind space containing the exotic, the enchanting  and the enigmatic. It is to this great Land of China or Cathay as the medieval Europeans called it to which i set my sails.

Imagine a culture that gifts the world among other things Tea, Silk, Paper, Gunpowder, Compass, Printing and Porcelain. Even inventing anyone of the above would have been enough of an achievement but inventing all of them and some more really boggles the mind. Apart from these the peaks to which artistic and aesthetic beauty were taken to in the various fine art forms also confounds one. Also unique among the ancient cultures it was the only one that summarily dismissed the idea of divinity and emphasised on rationality rather than superstition, any culture that can do that so early in history had to be special. Add to this a turbulent and interesting recent history and its comeback into mainstream world affairs it does make for a very interesting place to observe and commentate on.

My earliest memories of China were from the late 80s as i remember Rajiv Gandhi - the then Indian Prime Minister - along with his dainty Wife Sonia strolling through the vast expanses of the Forbidden City. This was a historic visit as it was the first time in more than a quarter century an Indian PM met his counterpart. It was indeed the beginning of the thawing of the relations between the two great neighbors. The 25 years interregnum was enforced due to the frosting of relations due to the Sino-Indian war of 1962 during the time of Rajiv Gandhi's grand father Nehru. These 25 years were an unusual impasse as it went against the grain of history wherein for millennia the two great Asian giants had been culturally bonded together , first by Buddhism and later on by a fraternal anti-imperialist mindset.However Rajiv Gandhi was determined to reverse this back flow of history and set its flow in the right direction. However the thawing has ebbed and flowed over the years and even as we come to our times the two giants if not dancing together are at least holding their hands in peace.

There were other brushes with China later on especially when reading Marco Polo's accounts of it. During the same time i remember a great documentary on Discovery Channel i think about China and its traditions that completely changed my view of it and awakened me to its glorious civilization. A little later i remember viewing the Oscar winning 'Crouching tiger hidden tiger' movie which again increased my fascination with Chinese culture, so much so that i went onto read a whole lot about Chinese culture and history.

The travel to China came as bit of a surprise and at the end of a roller coaster 'am-i-going-am -i-not' few months. At one point the trip looked certain to be cancelled so finally when i came to know that the trip was back on, i was happier than ever. Once the trip was confirmed the mind leapt back to the memories of the place in your mind space and dug up all the hidden remnants. Finally when the day of departure came it was a feeling of deja-vu as this was my fourth foreign trip and brought back memories of the previous ones.

This time however i was flying East. The first flight was till Chengdu which is in the center of China. As the flight got underway my thoughts went back to Ancient times when intrepid Buddhist monks from both India and China travelled several harsh months and miles braving the weather, the mountainous terrains and brigands to reach their destinations. How strange is it that nowadays lesser mortals like me get to cover the same journey comfortably in a matter of hours!

Finally it was time to get down at Chengdu in the overcast cold morning. When thinking of Chinese cities i usually thought them to be coastal cities either on the north or south of the country's eastern coast. So i was surprised to find that Chengdu was quite a big city even though it was miles away from the eastern coast. The airport seemed to match the size of the city with the number of departure ports running into 180. Used to as i was with port numbers in their double digits this number was astounding. What made it even more painful was the fact that our port was 160. As i walked through the airport i began to realise how big it was.

The exoticness of the place was unmistakable. The people looked different, and spoke a radically different tongue, the signage and shop hoardings were in a different script. That is something i dread as well as i look forward to on visiting a foreign country which is far removed from India. Its as if the grammar and rules of life that i am used to in India do not hold in such places and i needed to learn newer rules of life as it were. China was certainly one such place, it seemed more exotic than Europe where at least there was a semblance of familiarity. One thing striking at first was the fact that there were hardly any people on view which seemed a bit ironic since this was the most populous country in the world. But the people started to come later on and it became a quite noisy place so that it resembled India in a way.

Next i boarded by flight to my final destination, Tianjin. The journey was quite uneventful except for the bland airline food which made me miss the food back home. On arrival at Tianjin, it seemed to be a much bigger city than i thought. There was a number of construction sites dotted around the city proving the economic boom in China. I was surprised at how much similar to India the place looked. The people looked genuinely cheerful and wanted to help us but the language barrier prevented any real interaction from happening which was a real shame. The sense of urgency and the feeling of things moving around was also there similar to India.

The journey had just started and promised a lot more in the days ahead. More adventures abound in the next few days and i was eagerly looking forward to them.