China Guide
Introduction to China
The first thing that strikes visitors to China is the extraordinary density of its population. In the Han Chinese heartlands of central and eastern China, towns and cities seem to sprawl endlessly into one another in a world of chopsticks, tea, slippers, grey skies, shadow-boxing, teeming crowds, chaotic train stations, smoky temples, red flags and the smells of soot and frying tofu. Move west or north, however, and the landscape begins to dominate: green paddy fields and misty hilltops in the southwest, the scorched, epic vistas of the old Silk Road in the northwest; home to scores of distinct ethnic minorities, from animist hill tribes to urban Muslims.
China has grown up alone and aloof, cut off from the rest of Eurasia by the Himalayas to the southwest and the Siberian steppe to the north. For the last three millennia, while empires, languages and peoples in the rest of the world rose, blossomed and disappeared without trace, China has been busy largely recycling itself. The ferocious dragons and lions of Chinese statuary have been produced for 25 centuries or more, and the script still used today reached perfection at the time of the Han dynasty, two thousand years ago. Today, the negative stories – of runaway pollution, the oppression of dissidents, and imperialist behaviour towards Tibet and other minority regions – are only part of the picture. As the Communist Party moves ever further from hard-line political doctrine and towards economic pragmatism, China is undergoing a huge commercial and creative upheaval.
While travel around the country itself is exhausting rather than difficult, it would be wrong to pretend that it is an entirely easy matter to penetrate modern China. The main tourist highlights – the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army, and Yangzi gorges – are relatively few considering the vast size of the country, and foreigners are regularly viewed as exotic objects of intense curiosity. Overall, however, you'll find that the Chinese, despite a reputation for curtness, are generally hospitable and friendly.