To Live

You probably have heard it from time to time. Couple months ago it was the pet food, now it is the toothpaste. These are the stories outside of China. I wonder if you have ever wondered how life is inside that country? According to the laws of business, when quantity goes up, price goes down. So what is the cheapest thing in China? People! Lives!

Tai Hu is the 3rd biggest lake of China. It is so beautiful that it is used to be called 'Paradise on Earth'. This is how it used to look like:








This is how it looked like last week, which left millions of people with no water:








Everytime I go back to China, I feel it is like a giant machine, old, enormous and loud with steam coming out everywhere. It keeps on going, and every step is heavy, large and ground-shaking. If you look closely you can see almost every piece of metal is rusted and every nail and joint is lose. The whole thing might fall apart or explode anytime, but surprisingly it just keeps going...

Everytime I go back to China, I feel 'man, I love this place to death!'. This is almost a heartbreaking type of love. I see how the country and its people are misunderstood by the rest of the world and are portraited as some communist monsters. I see how hardship shapes personality, how growing up without privacy leads to rudeness and inconsideration. I see how poverty nourishes ignorance. I worry about the future of the children because their government views its people's life as cheap as dirt. Forget about the glorious history and civilization, the one thing that Chinese are truly the best at is just to stay alive.

PS. I recommend the movie 'To Live' if you haven't seen it already.