Appooppanthaadi -43

Did I sing too much of paeans to China? Okay, nothing was delibrate. I have been simply reporting what I saw there (of course with a pinch of my imaginations and exaggerations!) Now, here is the flip side of everything that is rosy in China (anyway, there is no need of writing so much about the flip side. The outer world knows only the flip side of China, per se!)

 Look at the photo on the right side. This is a street right inside the Shanghai city. As I have been walking past this area, I had to close my nose to escape from the stink. It looked just like a slum area in India. So pathetic indeed.  People were seen washing their cars on the foot path just closer to this street. There are so many automobile and cycle workshops functioning on the foot-paths all over China cities. One has to just deviate from the flashy big roads to a bye lane or a smaller road to see the other side of life in China

Look at another picture. A beggar in front of the Jing'an Buddha Temple, Shanghai. There were so many like him there.

When I looked from the Panjabi restaurant's back side, I was really surprised. Behind the beautiful facade of decorated buildings, there hide the old and run down buildings. Almost everywhere, these old buildings are smartly hidden. At many locations, I could see dirty places, though they were so extensive like we see in our cities. 

Here is another photo. Look at the trash can there. Just a few minutes before, a man just rummaged through this trash can, picked some waste food and ate it! I watched the action in dismay. Though I had a camera in my hand, I could not muster enough courage to take a shot of this scene. I was convinced about the phrase Indo-Chini bhai bhai at that moment! There are so many similarities among us rather than contrasts. Do we need Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles to distroy the similarities?
 

It takes just twenty minutes drive from the city to reach the outskirts. There we will find the real China that will definitely not at variance with what we see in our country’s city outskirts. There are damaged roads, dilapidated and run down dwelling places and buniness establishments and people making a living with whatever little things they have.

The railway level crossing at the outskirts of the Harbin city has no flyover bridge. We had to wait at the gate for half an hour to come out of the traffic jam at the gate one day. Here too, the drivers of the vehicle push themselves ahead, ignoring the traffic rules. So, it is not right to be carried away by the pomp and pageantry of the city’s arterial roads and posh buildings. We shall visit the outskirts and the villages to realize that China is nothing but an improvised India…

Click the link to see more Photos :  TheFlipSide



One morning, as I was just reaching Harbin Electric Company gate, a lady was standing in the middle of the busy road in front of the gate and singing some songs. She looked so sad. She was pointing her finger to the factory as she was singing. I walked in and after a few minutes, out of curiosity came out to see what was happening at the gate. By that time, she reached the gate, sat there and started blocking vehicular movement to and from the factory.


The security guards were trying hard to remove her from there. What happened after that was not known. I tried to eleicit the reasons behind this incident but communication problem let me down. One thing I learnt, these types of incidents are quiet usual here.



Another day, a few people were seen lining up across a busy road, apparently taking out a 'road rokho' agitation. There were just a handful of people in action and more onlookers and a few policemen . What followed was not known as I moved away from the scene soon. What I could understand from the happenings there was that this had something to do with their jobs and wages.