A Quick Trip in a Slow Culture

In the past 10 days, I had the luxury to travel home in China with my husband. It was a quick trip, and we stayed in multiple Chinese cities, such as Beijing, Luoyang (Henan Province), Huizhou (Guangdong Province), and Hong Kong. From north to south China, we chose to take train rides (passing seven regions/provinces). I am very grateful for this somewhat slowing-down of our expeditious trip; by riding on the train, I had the opportunity to look outside of the window and breathe in the culture.

I appreciated seeing the traditional housing types at the countryside. Different regions have different architectural style, and they made me contemplate on the lifestyle that shapes the way how people build their house, architecturally: how they work in the farm land, how they come together as a family or a community, how they cook the family meal and what is the relationship between those people with their animals, etc. Yes, “their animals” are not just their dogs and cats, but also their buffalos, their sheep, their chicken, the birds in the sky and mice in the earth so on and so forth that they interact with on a daily basis.

I consider it a true luxury to be away from internet, Facebook, even photo taking, and take a break experiencing the culture that has been building upon itself for thousands of years. There is a sense of tranquility and calmness in letting the community to grow on its own, based on its own innate qualities. When it comes to building community, I am skeptical of copying something that is not original to the local, in order to speed up the growth. However, “copying” and “borrowing”, as common as it is today, could just be another form of culture, a manifestation of the current fast culture. Nevertheless, I also believe, time will settle instability and filter out things that are not sustainable.

Fast culture and slow culture are both cultural phenomena, and it is not my place to judge which is good and which is bad. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said “What is reasonable is real; that which is real is reasonable.”

(Created by author)