I am home after three weeks away with the girls, mostly out of the country, and despite our neighbor’s joshing about the beer and ice deliveries, the house is still standing, the dogs are well-fed and watered, and Will looks another couple of inches taller. There is nothing like being away to make you appreciate home, and I confess feeling a lump in my throat at the sight of the American flag hanging in the international arrivals area of Newark airport, an emotion I am sure will be experienced many times over when the Olympics finally begin. But being away also puts your country in perspective, and sometimes it can suffer by comparison.
Back to the airport to make my point. In every Asian country I visited, there are those handy-dandy Smart Carts for luggage waiting for you when you get off the plane. They are plentiful and more importantly, they are free. After a 20-hour voyage laden down with the maximum amount of carry-on baggage allowed, compounded by Duty-Free purchases of liquor and cologne, I really could have used a luggage cart immediately after disembarking. Instead, my welcome to the United States included a broken moving walkway, which meant that I had to walk many painful steps with my heavy load.
There are Smart Carts in the baggage claims area, but one will set you back $5. That’s fine if you’re traveling with U.S. dollars, but in every country I visited, I never arrived with the native currency; I had to change it once I got there. There is a presumption that travelers arriving in baggage claims arrive with American currency because the exchange booths are located after you collect your luggage. Welcome to America!
The broken moving walkway is another sore point, mainly because every time I travel to Penn Station at least one escalator just isn’t running. In fact, I can’t remember the last time it worked, the one leading up from the NJ Transit platform to the terminal. Last summer, Bill had to get home on his own after a week at NYU. Carrying luggage thumpety-thump down the stairs is just not what you would call fun.
In Korea, I came upon a non-moving walkway and assumed it was broken. But as I stepped on it, it hummed and started moving again. Ah. In the interest of energy efficiency it was equipped with a sensor designed to turn the walkway off during slow times. Traveling on the Seoul subway, I wondered what it was that appeared so strange to me. It took a moment before I realized that everyone was engrossed in their smart phones. Yes, the subway system is Wi-Fi enabled, as are all the platforms and stations. While sometimes it is good to click off, it is amazing to have that kind of technology so accessible.
Another piece of technology that impressed me was barcode scanning technology to ring up sales. When we go skiing, we give the kids some money to stuff into their pockets so that even if we get separated, they can still buy lunch or a drink. It’s a hassle because you’re afraid they’re going to misplace the bills or drop them on the ski lift. It’s the same thing at places like Great Adventure. In Seoul, we went to a place called Dragon Hill, which is a place straight out of the Twilight Zone; part Disney, part Las Vegas casino, part food court, part beauty salon, part bath house, massage parlor, and spa. I know, it’s hard to imagine. It is very popular with families, but especially with young people, mostly high school students, who take time out of their intense studies to go on group dates at this place.
When you arrive, you change out of your street clothes into their T-shirts and shorts. And then they give you a bracelet that holds a key to your locker but also carries a small, lightweight barcode scanner that tracks all your spending, whether it’s the cool rice drink, your French fries, or your souvenir towel. It’s nice because you don’t have to worry about carrying your wallet around. At the end of your spa experience, you change and then head to the checkout where they scan your bracelet and tell you what money you owe. It’s fast and convenient.
As much as I marveled at the sleek technology that’s improved daily life in Korea, I was dismayed by the explosive growth that has made Beijing a city I no longer recognized. Of course, it’s been 30 years since I lived there straight out of college, but the development has been so rapid, it’s made daily life for the Chinese much more difficult in a different way from three decades ago. Back then, feeding the country of one billion was often a struggle. Today, hunger is no longer the issue is used to be, but that problem has been supplanted by others, namely pollution and congestion.
We arrived in Beijing on a sticky, sultry afternoon in a thick haze of what I thought was fog, but mostly, it was bad air. I am not sure how much blue sky, if any, we saw in the four days we were there. On one evening, we were late to our friend’s home for dinner because what should have been a 15-minute cab ride took almost two hours. At one particularly bad intersection near the Beijing train station, I timed the lights on Chang An Avenue. We had the green light for 30 seconds, then the red light for 10 minutes. I kid you not. It took us three light cycles to get through that one intersection alone.
Whole neighborhoods had been razed. The charming hutongs, the narrow alleys full of homes and people, had disappeared. Beijing is now a city of towering skyscrapers and still too many people. China now has the prosperity and world-standing it so craved, but at what cost?
Much of the construction was done hurry-scurry in advance of the 2008 Olympics as Beijing “cleaned house” to welcome the world to its doors. A scant four years later, we are ready to celebrate another Olympic season, and China is dealing with the aftermath of its hasty preparations.
As much as I love China and adore the Chinese people, I have a renewed appreciation for what we have here at home. Sure, we have our problems, but development is tempered by democracy. People have a voice, and even though it often rises to the level of cacophony and dissent, as least we have a say in our future. And that puts the sweet in “Home, Sweet Home.”
