The Smoggy Mountain Principle

A rusty van filled with college students hurdled along a southern China expressway in spring 2007, whipping past fields of mustard seeds flowering yellow and farmers in woven straw hats harvesting grain. Inside, I baked slowly in the sun and tried vainly to see the mountains surrounding this fertile plateau through the smog. We were driving to the city of Tonghai to spend our orientation period picking carefully through overgrown temple ruins and exploring a warren of crumbling back streets.

Tonghai’s sights were fascinating and my classmates friendly, but the image of the smoggy mountains kept returning to my mind, unbidden. The farmland on the way to Tonghai had been picturesque, with horses and donkeys wandering on terraced hills, but had felt incomplete without the mountains that I only recognized by faint, grainy outlines in the gray-blue air. Thirsty for more landscape, I had strained to glimpse the point where the land humped into peaks on the horizon. But the harder I tried to see, the more frustrated I became. I felt that with this smog China had, in some way, let me down. Why wouldn't she let me see her? I was here to understand, to experience. Even though I knew about Chinese overuse of coal, about the proliferation of cars, and about how rarely the sun comes out in Beijing, my ideal of China had no room for air pollution.

That week I was preoccupied with one question. Was the “real China” the students I met whose favorite TV show was "Friends"? Was it the naked glances of curiosity I got while walking to buy steamed buns for breakfast? Perhaps China was in its history, in the temple courtyard where an old man gave me an erhu lesson. Or maybe it was in the Internet cafes filled teenagers subsisting on cigarettes, ramen, and World of Warcraft. Where could I find this “real” China? Where was she hiding?

Now, when I think of that trip I return to the Tonghai van ride. I knew those mountains were there, even as the smog hid them from me, and I felt I was missing something essential about the landscape. Those of us seeking to learn about another culture often encounter the same problem: the smog is there, too, rendering everything hazy and vague, keeping us from reaching out and touching what appears just beyond our grasp. Instead of a crisp mountain view, perhaps the goal of travel is just to keep looking, in hopes of glimpsing of a peak or verdant flank. Maybe the object is not to see but to continue to try to see.

On the ride back to the capital, the weather had improved, and I discovered that what I had thought was smog blanketing the landscape had been, at least partially, haze. I still couldn't see the mountains clearly, but they had color and depth that had been absent on my first viewing. We stopped for a bathroom break, and I took a photo. Then the van rolled on.