Saturday, November 13, 2010

Travel Diary - Day12

Took the morning flight to Shenzen. Shenzen is on the Chinese mainland, separated from HongKong by a small strip of water. The two places are now connected by a bridge. In the old days, it was a place used for smuggling goodies from Hong Kong that were not available in diehard Maoist China. After the ceding of Hong Kong by the British to China and acceptance of one country, two systems principle which is indeed very pragmatic and has prevented large scale dislocations, the Chinese thought of copying Hong Kong by building from scratch, a huge city. They have eminently succeeded in this effort. In a time span of 30 years, a city with a population of one crore and forty lakhs has come up. Very modern, with lots of flyovers, wide roads, bridges and parks not to mention the industries of various hues and of course the sky scrapers. Both Japan and China have been unashamedly westernizing their countries, the latter, a bit slowly. They have realized something that I have always believed. What we call westernization is in reality industrialization. Industries of the modern kind did not exist in the East. When industries came to the East, there came along with it the social set up, family reconfiguration and so on suitable for an industrial milieu. As the West had industries earlier than the East, the necessary social transformation took place earlier in the West. If the East is - what is called - westernizing, it is in reality merely adjusting to the industrial milieu. Any change, anywhere is resisted and large scale changes, rapid changes are resisted vehemently. The laggards would like to give a moralistic, an idealistic colour to their reluctance to change. Hence the denigration of the so called Westernization and glorification of the ancient. The eastern most part of our planet Earth viz. Japan understood way back in the latter half of the nineteenth century, which way the future lay and the Meiji restoration – the restoration of the real power to the Emperor from the hands of the warlords - was used to re-orient the country in the desired direction. To make up for the lost time, they adopted workaholism, sacrificing of individual’s interests for those of the collective, productivity as a religion and continuous innovations as their creed. In the process, they developed into a mature society. China, elephantine in size, is indeed slower but they too are very decidedly going in the same direction. I must say that Nehru foresaw the general direction; only the means were not apt. Besides we are slower than even the Chinese. We first went to an ecological park. There were a large number of mangroves in the area. To protect them from the rapid development taking place around them, it was decided to turn a large swathe of land adjoining it into an ecological park and plant all kinds of vegetation in it. It has become a great tourist attraction now. The bridge connecting Hong Kong and Shenzen is skirting the park While others were sauntering around, after getting the general idea of the place, I took advantage of the place and time to get a bit of rest on a bench in a shady grove of trees. Next, we went to a very interesting place. It is a theme park aptly called “ The Window to the World “. All the sights worth seeing in this world of ours, are represented in a miniature form here. There is the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Colosseum and so on You name it and it is there. Go round this theme park and you get the feel of seeing the whole world. African bushes are there, the Inca civilization, European cathedrals, the Greek civilization, the Roman civilization, everything is represented The Niagara falls, both the American and Canadian are there for you to see. It is a practical lesson in World History and Geography. As if this is not enough, there are stage shows going on at various locations to give you the feel of “been there, done it “. If you have less time or want to walk less, you could take a monorail ride that takes you everywhere overhead. We hitched a ride on it and got a bird’s eye view of the whole world in its miniature form. We also went up the mini- Eiffel Tower by means of an elevator that was superfast. In the time that a normal elevator climbs one floor, it climbs five ! I understood how one would feel when going up a hundred storey building..The mini Eiffel tower is nearly one third the height of the original. The view of the entire park from the vantage position of the topmost platform was breathtaking. As if our senses were not satiated enough, as a grand finale, we were taken to an open air sort of theatre. The stage show was spectacular, with a very large cast, wonderful period costumes, dances, songs and what not. The central aisle between two blocks of spectators suddenly came alive during the show and performers as if from nowhere appeared in the midst of us. The whole aisle was bodily lifted by some mechanism and came level with the spectators. It was indeed an extravaganza as it was touted to be. Tired , I hit the bed as soon as possible on reaching the hotel.

Pappa (Ramesh N Desai)

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