As much as I love travelling through China and find it a mesmerizing place, there is one thing that I find really troubling. It is impossible (ok, very difficult) to find any place that has not been disturbed by humans in some manner. Rob and I first talked about this in terms of soil disturbance, and I thought it would be nearly impossible to find a truly well-developed natural soil profile, except in really remote areas. This doesn't apply to all parts of China, but there is a stunning lack of natural landscape. Even places set aside as parks or preserves tend to be groomed or landscaped, as Kate pointed out about the Stone Forest.
And it's not just the clearing or land that is disturbing. If the land isn't being farmed or is built upon, then it's generally covered in rubble. Rubble, rubble everywhere. Bricks, broken rocks, bits of scrap building material - everywhere. I went to a small village on the banks of the Yangtze a few years ago where at least they were growing watermelons amongst the rubble, but in most places it's just piled up waiting for who-knows-what.
1 comment:
In my experience, and what seems like most travellers to China's experience, is that we go to the same places. Or, at least we stay on the east coast, for the most part, or go to backpacking destinations like Lijiang. Tibet and Xinjiang, which make up a huge portion of China geographically, have large pieces of land that are uninhabited or scarcely so. But Xinjiang and Tibet might be an exception since the CCP is in the early stages of the Han-ification of those two regions.
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