4. China Was More Than Chopsticks

The Forbidden City

By Dr. Gary McKiddy, 
St. Charles High School/St. Charles Community College

"Honk, honk! Clang, clang! Beep, beep! Crash! -- traffic in downtown Beijing? No, the sounds of bumper cars mixed with the joyful squeals of children and adults as the cars bounced off one another like atoms in a super collider. Nothing I had studied about China had prepared me for this Chinese experience -- riding the Bumper Cars in Thousand Buddha Park in Jinan. This was only one of many occasions during the summer of 2002 when China presented me and the other teachers from Missouri and Illinois with unexpected surprises.

For a year before the tour, we had studied the history and culture of China. We were thoroughly prepared on everything from eating with chopsticks to avoiding bicycle traffic. Still, China proved constantly surprising as we encountered things we did not expect.

For example, when we visited Thousand Buddha Park, I had expected a place of quiet meditation. The concept of Zen, stressing solitude and introspection, that invaded America in the 1960s colored my expectations. What I discovered in Thousand Buddha Park was far from quiet. Thousands of Chinese strolled through the park enjoying the late evening air, talking and joking as they went. After night fell, the noise level of the park only increased. In addition to the bumper cars going into full swing, groups of Japanese and Korean pilgrims gathered in the many outdoor cafes to drink beer and sing karaoke. I was not prepared to see groups of slightly intoxicated tourists singing in Japanese at the top of their lungs in a Buddhist holy site! These Buddhists were there to have fun and everyone got in on the act.

The Chinese were eager to do business with these tourists and treated them with every courtesy. It was surprising to find that here in Communist China, tourism was big business. We saw Korean tourists on Mt. Taishan and German tourists on boats on the Li River. In Shanghai, we encountered Chinese from rural villages who had come to see the sights in this city of the 21st century. They gawked at the skyscrapers (as did we) and were eager to use their English with the first Americans they had ever met. The Bund was awash with people making contact in a variety of languages. The Chinese were as eager to learn about us as we were to learn about them. Politics didn't stand in the way of this "people to people" contact.

Lama Temple at Beijing with basketball hoop

As we joined groups of other foreign tourists at China's cultural and historic sites, we became aware of a shared passion that we had not expected -- basketball! We had read about McDonalds and KFC in China, but we were unprepared for the popularity of basketball. It seemed that everywhere we looked, we found a basketball hoop. After the first few sightings, it became a "Where's Waldo" game to locate the next basketball hoop. Not only did we find them in schoolyards in Beijing and Nanjing, but in Thousand Buddha Park in Jinan, in Beijing's Lama Temple, and even in the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City also had another surprise for us. We had read
that Starbuck's was opening shops in China, but we had not expected to find one within the Forbidden City itself. Yet, here it was within one of China's most famous Cultural Heritage sites, just steps away from the giant portrait of Chairman Mao which adorns the entrance -- Starbuck's, a prime example of American capitalism.

China provided an endless number of unexpected experiences. China
was diverse, dynamic -- it was never, ever boring. Each of the teachers from Missouri and Illinois who spent this time in China returned determined to share their experiences with students. We hope that they will leave our classrooms knowing more about China than the fact that Chinese eat with chopsticks; maybe some of them will even want to go to China themselves, if only to ride the bumper cars in Thousand Buddha Park.

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