Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [48]
The rage that the Chinese unleashed against Japan had become so unhinged that, finally, the government felt compelled to impose a media blackout. Nationalism, of course, is the trickiest of dragons to ride. The protests eventually burned out, but not before revealing that for the vast majority of people in China, Japan is enemy number one.
To learn a bit more, I thought I’d head toward Nanjing, which had been the capital of the Republic of China early in the twentieth century. It’s the war, of course—the long struggle of World War II—that lies at the root of anti-Japanese sentiment in China, and no place suffered more under Japanese occupation than Nanjing. During what came to be known in China as the War of Resistance Against Japan, more then 20 million Chinese soldiers and civilians lost their lives. In 1931, Japanese forces had seized a broad swath of land in the bitterly cold northeast of China and installed Puyi, the last emperor of China, as the puppet leader of what they called Manchukuo. China, lost in its own struggle among Nationalists, Communists, and assorted warlords that followed the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, could do little to resist. By 1937, in a quest for more resources to fuel its war machine, Japanese forces turned south toward Shanghai and Nanjing, where in the winter of 1937–1938 they committed one of history’s most unparalleled atrocities, brutally murdering upward of 300,000 civilians. Inexplicably, not even today has Japan managed to say sorry, much less very sorry.
If ever there was a place to grasp anti-Japanese sentiment in China, Nanjing was it. I considered my travel options. I could take a fifteen-hour overnight train—hard seat only, I was confidently informed—or I could fly. For all the hours I’d spent in rickety tin tubes elsewhere in the world, I remain a fraidy-cat when it comes to flying. And yet, as I contemplated a night wedged into the fetid space between two train cars, an airplane suddenly seemed a little less terrifying. I took a taxi from Qingdao and arrived at the airport, where I soon found myself marveling at the polished sheen, the courteous English-speaking check-in people, the lack of lines, the broad, expansive views, and wondered, Why can’t we have airports like this in the U.S.? I had expected the anarchic tumult of a train station, and yet this glimmering, multilingual, hyperefficient airport reminded me of Singapore. Of course, I’d never been to Singapore, but when I think of Singapore, which isn’t very often, I imagine something very like the airport in Qingdao.
I wandered around the departure terminal. The majority of passengers appeared to be businessmen in trim, dark suits. At a bookstall, I perused the books for sale. Most were concerned with management and leadership and effective team-building and all sorts of other topics to help the businessman get ahead, including Wine for Dummies. There were biographies of Hu Jintao, Mao Zedong, and Ronald Reagan, and for the randy businessman, the bottom shelf offered a selection of soft-porn DVDs.
As I watched the aircraft pull into the gate, I was pleased to notice that it was a new plane, an Airbus of recent vintage. Excellent, I thought, trying to settle down my preflight butterflies. New Airport. New Planes. And then I looked at the pilots. New pilots too, apparently. In the United States, pilots tend to be in their fifties, ex–fighter pilot jocks, comfortable flying a plane upside down. In China, pilots are barely old enough to shave. Earlier, I had read an article in China Daily that noted that while aviation in China has grown exponentially over the last few years, there were now acute shortages of mechanics, aircraft controllers, and pilots, and that flying today,