Give Me One Day in the World and Now I want China

Hong Kong

This weekend, my friend and I went to a little theme park called “Windows of the World.” It has sized down models of the different sights of the world up by the border town between Hong Kong and the mainland called Shenzen. I have always wanted to visit although of course no one is that interested in cheesy renditions of architecture and symbols from other countries when most of my friends and family are intrepid travelers. Why go see things that are fake when you can do see the real thing? But I always wanted to go, so I convinced my friend to accompany me.

The tagline in Chinese is, “Give me one day I will give you the world.”

We thought it was very cool. But the cynical part of us said what it really is saying is, “Since we don’t allow freedoms of travel. We bring it to you.”

But like every time I even touch base in China, I get a feeling that I am very closed up by Hong Kong. How I really am extremely ignorant to the experience of the people in my now seven years old motherland. How in my mind America is so big and how it has a relatively long history compared to my home when we are an only 150 years old entity. When in reality, Hong Kong is now part of China, and in terms of vastness and history, where I am in is more than comparable.

And as I think, I realize how as much as I struggle with capturing the Hong Kong experience in photographs, and how I get so frustrated with my lack of finesse in capturing home. I forget that I am but one measly little photographer/writer/person/thing trying to make sense of a vast vast country and that I need to open my mind up to the idea I am one person in one city in a country of a billion. Just because I grew up in a closed up territory of infinite smallness it does not mean I am not part of something bigger.

And that I need to go to Beijing and live for a while soon. I need to accept that for me to be young and vibrant and have the energy to learn I must accept that the place I am most interested in experiencing will not have free speech, will not allow me to read the paper, that I will have to shut up and change Glutter (for the time I am there anyway), and change myself. It’s a compromise I must make, otherwise I will continue to be ignorant of the China experience. Once I have some of it under my belt, then it is only then can I come back and write about it with any kind of relevance.

I don’t know when that will be. But I decided. I must make a trip sometime in the next two years and go to school up there and learn to read my language properly. I must learn to speak the dialect of put tong hua (mandarin). I must walk the land of China for over three weeks at a time. Must suffer the questionable government, certain lack of freedoms, and deal with the harshness of experience of that of my countrymen do every day.

My friend and I was talking, and she said, how her co-worker was born in Beijing, went to college in Shanghai and now working in Shenzen. How so many people in China have experienced a huge range of topography, cities and towns, much more than anyone who has lived all their lives in Hong Kong. Even if it meant they haven’t been outside.

As I walked along the windows of the world, I realized how much of the rest of the world I have seen, how many of these models I have had the luck to experience in real life. I had been to the Red Square, I have been to Buckingham Palace, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, the Vatican, but I have seen hardly anything of my own country.

That place gave me the world. Now I want my home.

The World Right Before Your Eyes