Nomads in China

We’ve been traveling to China for nearly 30 years and have seen great changes in that time. Most of those changes have been for the better. Here’s a brief list of some of the changes we’ve noticed:

• In 1989, our first time in China, there were not the numbers of Americans visiting that there are now. One result of this is today’s lack of Chinese staring squads. In 1989, large groups of Chinese would surround you on the street and, pressing very close to you, would just stare at the strange alien in their midst. This happened everywhere we went, and was a little uncomfortable until you got used to it, which eventually you did.
• In 1989, approximately 99% of the population spit everywhere they went. They spit on the streets, in trains, on buses, in restaurants, shops, etc. Since that time, the government has made huge progress in stopping that habit. While not gone, it is reduced to the point that it isn’t noticed unless you look for it. You will see lots of “No Spitting” signs, which generally seem to be obeyed.
• In public spaces, smoking has decreased dramatically since 1989. There used to be no refuge from it, and riding on a Chinese bus or train was a real challenge. Today, all trains, buses, airplanes and subways are non-smoking. On occasion, we got into a taxi where the driver was smoking and he immediately extinguished his cigarette without even being asked. All the hotels we stayed in and all the restaurants we ate in, either had non-smoking rooms and seating or were all non-smoking. Never once were we assaulted with unpleasant smoke.

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When we were having dinner in Dunhua at our friend’s grandfather’s home, I was asked a question about filial responsibility. I knew that culturally, the Chinese felt a great responsibility toward their elders, and children took care of their parents as they aged. I’ve always admired this and thought that, many times, the same cannot be said of American children. When asked, I explained that in the U.S., most children did feel a responsibility to care for their parents, but it was not required that they do. I said that there were examples of children that neglected their parents, and that this was bad and generally not viewed favorably by most Americans. I learned that while most children in China do voluntarily care for their elders, it is actually law there that they do. This surprised me and I explained that there was no such law in the U.S., and it was strictly voluntary. Boy, was I wrong!

When I got home, I looked up filial responsibility and was surprised that fully 25 states in the U.S. have such laws. I never knew that! Bad on me for that ignorance. If you didn’t already know, now you do too.

This is probably no big revelation to many, but it is something I need to keep in mind when taking photographs. For years, as camera sensors sported relatively modest pixel counts, I felt it important to use my zoom lenses to fill the frame with the subject. If I didn’t do this, the number of pixels covering the subject in my frame would necessarily be reduced, and with limited pixels available, this would result in the lose of image quality. I’ve done this since I started seriously using digital cameras over 15 years ago.

With the advent of full-frame sensors and pixel counts into the 20+ megapixel range, there is now a bit of margin for cropping the photo in post-processing and still retaining adequate detail for whatever output (digital photos, prints, web display) you wish. In the process of editing my photos from this China trip, I encountered a problem that could have been easily rectified had I been aware of it before I released the shutter to capture a picture. Continue reading →

China is full of these sorts of signs. Had I been a little more determined, I could have had ten times this many. Most are understandable, until the very last one. If anyone can tell me what it really means, you get a free trip to Venus on the first commercial flight!

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I recently ran across a reference to the Hu Line, referred to as the Heihe-Tengchong Line in China. This line bisects China from the city of Heihe, on the Russian border due north of Harbin to Tengchong on the border with Burma due west of the Chinese city of Dali. This imaginary line was conceived in 1935 by Hu Huanyong, a Chinese demographer. It separates the populous areas of China from the sparsely populated areas. As of 2015, 57% of the area of China lay west of the line while only 43% lay to the east, yet 94% of the population of China lived east of the line and only 6% lived west of it.

There are lots of ways to measure the size of something, such as length, width, area, population, etc. One of the ways I like to compare sizes is to superimpose two maps on top of each other. It is easier to visualize distances if compare them with the known. A little bit of web searching found an interesting site that does just this. Truesize.com allows you to select any country on earth and drag it over any other company to see how they compare. It even corrects for projection errors that mislead some into thinking Greenland is larger than the United States because, on a Mercator projection, it appears so. If you drag the map of China to overlay the United States, you see this:

Now it is easy to see that the distance from Hong Kong to Harbin is about the same as from Havana to Quebec City, for example. Another fact discernible from this map is that China spans about the same longitude as the Lower-48 states of the United States, and hence should have four time zones. In fact though, all of China is on a single zone based on the time in Beijing. It’s easy to keep your watch set correctly, but don’t expect the sun to rise at the same time in Kashgar as it does in Harbin!

Another interesting map of China shows the travel time, by train, from Beijing to other parts of the country. Since the advent of China’s extensive high-speed rail system, travel times have shrunken dramatically.

Remember when looking at this map that it only applies to cities that are on one of the high-speed train lines and times are only approximations.

If you look at a world map or globe, you can compare the latitude of China with parts of a more familiar North America, allowing you to make some educated guesses on climate. For instance, you will notice that the extreme northern tip of China is at about the same latitude as Edmonton, Albert in Canada. Likewise, the southern-most point on Hainan Island is at about the same latitude as Kingston, Jamaica. On this same scale, Shanghai is at about the same latitude as Mobile, Alabama, Hong Kong is about the same as Cabo San Lucas on the extreme southern tip of Baja California and Beijing is about the same as border between Missouri and Iowa.