MINNEAPOLIS TO TOKYO
The flight to Minneapolis passed quickly and after my conversation my spirits became a little calmer. Soon I boarded the 747 bound for Tokyo flying north over Canada and Alaska. I was in the middle section with no window to look out and the movies were terrible, so I took out a book and started reading about China. I really had had too much to do to get ready to go to China to have time to read much before today. I started getting in my mind a brief sketchy history because the actual one seemed very complex and so confusing.
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JOAN’S BRIEF HISTORY OF CHINA — PART I
Separated from India, the Middle East and Russia by great mountain ranges, wide deserts and open steppe, China’s early contact with Europe and Western Asia had never been more than marginal and sporadic. Until the nineteenth century, very few Chinese had visited Europe, and those travelers who came to China by land or by sea came primarily on embassies, trading missions and only occasionally for small-scale settlement. The one exception was the Arab traders who had visited Guangzhou since the eighth and ninth centuries.
When China was part of the Mongol World Empire which stretched across central Asia, the Pope sent embassies from the Vatican to the Khan. And of course, the famous Marco Polo, the Venetian, had traveled to China, served as an official of the government and recorded his real and possibly some fictitious adventures for posterity. (p12)
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries China’s isolation ended when educated Jesuits came as missionaries. More important than the faith they taught was the knowledge of scientific techniques from Europe. “For most of recorded history the civilization of China had been the equal and superior of any contemporary culture in the world, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth century it happened that the Christian nations of the West obtained the advantage in various practical fields.” (p13)
Later, energetic and aggressive Protestant missionaries were more successful with actually sharing religion with the common people by emphasizing personal salvation and Bible-reading.
But at the end of the eighteenth century another import to China was competing with religion. Opium was first introduced as a medicinal drug, but without control it became increasingly popular as a narcotic. By the 1830’s opium represented half the value of British imports into China. In a moral sense the trade was indefensible because the British had prohibited opium within their own territories.
After 1839-1842, the time of the Opium War, China lost even more to the British with the cession of Hong Kong, besides agreeing not to prohibit trade in opium in the future. Opium remained a problem until trade in it officially ended during the early years of the republic in 1917.
“This first European war, and the treaties which followed it, established a pattern of relations between China and the West for the next hundred years. Very seldom was China able to mount a convincing or successful show of force, and each defeat was followed by a dictated ‘unequal’ treaty with indemnities in cash, transfers of territory and further privileges for foreigners.” (p14)
Despite this weakening, the Empire of China during the nineteenth century was one of the greatest and most extensive in the world. It was rivaled in power and size only by the British Empire, which was not one land mass, but had parts spread around the globe; and the vast territory sweeping across Asia into Europe governed by the Russian Czars. (p.1)
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I certainly was headed for a place with a most amazing history. I could hardly take it in and in the future, I would read and reread about the history of China each time I needed to figure out the background for cultural incidents or unusual patterns of thought or other differences that I encountered.
I must tell you about what I thought is a brilliant technique, besides reading, that I used to maintain my sanity on this thirteen-hour tortuous flight from Minneapolis to Tokyo. Whenever I needed a break, I would get in line to use one of the lavatories. I didn’t actually take up time in the precious rest room because the lines were always long. Rather, I would constantly give people behind me skips so I could continue to stand up and move around a little rather than sit in the horribly cramped seats. I felt that I could stand in a line for about twenty minutes at a time without calling too much attention to what I was really doing. Then after I felt uncomfortable standing too long in the line for the lavatory at the back of the plane, I moved to the line in the middle of the plane.
After eating our first of three meals on this flight, the shades were drawn and it seemed most people were able to sleep. I was still too wired and so after a bit of reading in very dim light, to get some exercise, I went to the back of the plane and lifted the curtain to look out the window. The sky was absolutely clear and sunny and below us were mountains, maybe hundreds of them. It was like a magnificent sea of snow-capped mountains. I had never seen such beauty. But, there was one mountain that stood above the rest. I made an educated guess from having seen photos of it and said to one of the children who was also standing in the back of the plane that we were looking at Mt. McKinley, which was the highest peak in North America. The native name for it was Denali. It was absolutely breath taking. A stewardess heard me talking to the children and called the captain to verify my statement. I was thrilled that I had managed to come for a view at the best possible moment and was able to identify Mt. McKinley. Unfortunately my camera was packed away so that I could not get a photo. I just stayed and looked in wonder. It almost made the thirteen hours on an airplane worth it.