Olemiswebs

Hoy he vuelto a la oficina después de unos días de asueto, y me he encontrado con un mail de un compañero chino diciendo esto:

I am sending my mourning of Mr. Samaranch to you, since you are the only Spaniard that I know.

Mr. Samaranch is the most famous Spaniard in China I would say. His contribution to Olympics games impress all the world. Also, he was the person who announced that Beijing would host 2008 Olympics. I think all Chinese will remember him.

It is a honor for Spain to have so great people.

Llevo unos cuantos días oyendo y leyendo un montón de cosas desde España sobre Samaranch, pero pensaba que era como tantas otras veces: un montón de epítetos positivos sobre alguien con mucha relevancia a nivel nacional que acaba de fallecer.

Pero este correo de mi amigo desde la otra punta del Mundo me ha dejado sin palabras. Es decir, en China, cuyos Juegos Olímpicos fueron históricos, consideran que Samaranch fue clave, no sólo para Beijing 2008, sino para el Olimpismo en general. Es decir, lo mismo que dicen aquí todos los medios de Comunicación, pero en lugar de con Barcelona, con Pekín…

Pues va a ser que sí era un grande.

I just read this post in a spanish economy blog regarding the Index of Economic Freedom. Apart from checking where Spain is as the original blogger did. I got surprised for one thing: Hong Kong is the leader of this index… Wait! Isn’t Hong Kong part of China? Yes, politically, but not in an economic sense. Together with Macao, they have a special status named Special Administrative Region, and do not follow many chinese policies, including economic.

So, if Hong Kong is not China, and Hong Kong is the leader, where is China? In the position 132, which is normal based on the lack of correlation between a communist system and economic freedom.

Isn’t it ironic that two parts of the same country have such a big difference? The S.A.R., which gives Hong Kong independence in almost all fields, will be valid for 50 years, and then the idea is to have “one country, one system”, and not “one country, two systems”, as per today. Will this time be enough for reducing the huge gap? In which way will it be reduced?

Hong Kong was born thanks to the commercial exchange and this is still a very important business in the area (according to the Wikipedia, it is the eleventh largest trading entity in the world). You can easily notice it due to the huge number of cargo ferries in the area.

As the area in the city is scarce, and the coast line has also limitations, they have found a new way to increase the capacity of the cargo port: cargo platforms. This is another example of “If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain“…

Pretty interesting, isn’t it?

The Terracotta Army is the main reason for going to Xi’an, but most of us take another day to visit the rest of the city. One of the main spots of this city is the complete wall surrounding the old city, and with a total length of 12 km. They are also open for the public to walk or ride a bike on them.

Apart from that, I liked the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in the south of the city, and the Drum Tower, an impressive building in the center of the old town. The Drum Tower was normally placed in the center of the ancient chinese citiies, together with the Bell Tower, and were used to announce the time.

I found also people in Xi’an quite more talkative and funnier than in Beijing, and even more English-speakers. Of course, I guess the fact that there was some festival happening in the city on December 25th night helped me in having a nicer feeling about the citizens.

But what I did not like at all, and will be difficult to forget about, is the pollution. In Beijing there was also pollution, but not at Xi’an’s level.

An image is worth more than one thousand words, but I will say that at any time, you could actually see the pollution at a few hundreds meter distance from you. Just amazing, but easily understandable after seeing from the train or the bus the heavy industrial area around the city.

Pollution is one of the hot topics China should focus on. It is well known in the world the issue with the pollution, and it has appeared in many occasions in the news, like its impact in the Olympics, but they really need to do something with it… for the planet, but mainly for the Chinese. It cannot be healthy when you actually feel and see you are breathing pollution.

Right after Beijing,  I took a night train to Xi’an. In China, it is very common to find night trains between main cities, and it is a very convenient way of travelling for many reasons. You do not need to got the airport (normally far away from the city centre), you can sleep reasonable well, you do not need to sacrifize afternoons in going to the airport, and waiting times and so on, as the train departure is in the evening… And it is cheaper, and you save some accomodation nights.

Any way, I got to Xi’an. You might not know what Xi’an is, but it is one of the ancient capitals of China, and is now hosting one of the most important archeological treasures in the World: The Terracotta Army. This is important not only for the size of this army: more than 6000 thousand soldiers and horses, but also because of the quality of each sculture, and their uniqueness: there are not two equal soldiers. Each one has a different face, so the amount of work needed for this is even bigger.

I wondered what the origin of this army was, and here we meet again with our friend Qin Shi Huang. I wrote about him in the previous post about the Great Wall. He did lots of good things… and he also loved himself too much, apart from being afraid from death. So, as he was soooo great, even his tomb needed to be protected by an army… I guess he realized that maybe such a large army could not be a real one, so he created a fake one.

This army was found in the 60′s by some farmers from this area, and the excavation works are still on going in the three different buildings covering this amazing finding. It can be fully visited and lies a couple of kilometres from the actual tomb of the Emperor they are protecting…

Call me stupid if you want, but I would not be surprised if this is just a small part of the army..