The Feet of the Rooster- China and National Day
I caught around a half-hour of China's National Day pagaentry from a small television set in a tiny Dai village somewhere between Baoshan and the Salween River. I only came to the village in order to re-stock on water and mooncakes*, the latter perfectly suited for bicycle energy food.
(Unfortunately I missed the exciting bits; the mini-skirted women marching in lock-step that forced old Comrade Hu Jintao to crack a smile, the display of military might, and the various other processions of attractive people moving gracefully that seems an essential part of any large public event in Asia. I caught only the banal procession of people carrying portraits of leaders past and present as well as giant characters spelling out support for 'Mao Zedong thought' and other such anachronistic slogans that nonetheless remain firmly entrenched in Chinese propaganda. )
The Chinese are fond of saying that their country is shaped like a giant rooster. If this is so, Beijing lies at the rooster's heart, while the coastal cities face farthest forward. In this analogy, the town in which I stopped- scatologically named Pu Ping （铺平) by the way- would be somewhere near the rooster's feet, being dragged along by the rest of its body.
Viewed from outside of China, the pageant seemed designed to reinforce stereotypes Westerners hold of the country. Namely, China is a rising power both economically and militarily and has leapt into modernity at a frightening pace. The China on display in Beijing that day is the China that we're told will soon dominate the world and perhaps threaten our security. This is the China that is supposed to be the bee in our bonnets.
Yet from the perspective of a small town in China's rural hinterland that image of China seemed laughably lopsided. What I saw were tiny villages without running water and scores of poor agricultural workers, many of whom were tawny-skinned and scrawny. Pu Ping is simply one community out of many scattered across China, and the villagers I spoke to were part of the country's 700 million strong peasantry- a population more than double that of the entire United States.
When viewed from the front, the Chinese rooster can appear a menacing animal. From underneath its belly, though, reveals a broader image of the country's full demographic reality.
*Mooncakes are little biscuits traditionally served around the mid-autumn festival in China, which this year fell on the 3rd of October. Their popularity is ordinarily far from universal but after strenuous exercise I gobbled them up unreservedly.
