Leaving the Homeland

Well, here it is. We are about to jump on our flight to Beijing. Here's the route according to united.com:

We are taking the direct route--no stops in Chicago or what looks like Philadelphia or D.C. I think the flight is about 14 hours. 14! Yikes. I thought that the flight path actually went farther north and closer to the Pole. I'm not sure how exact this map is. It is interesting to me to think about going up and over the planet rather than around it to get somewhere, but I guess that all depends on perspective...

Well, these past two days have been so full of new learning for me. Before I got here, China seemed like this big, red, threatening monolith of a country. Of course I understood that wasn't entirely true, but  in the limited media I've consumed about the place, that's how it was presented. After spending two days learning about education, economics, history, and modern life, I have a new perspective (one that will likely continue to change and develop over the next month.)

I now understand that modern China has done something that no country in the history of the world has ever done: millions of Chinese have moved out of poverty in the past 30 years. It's unprecedented. Of course, this movement has been brutal at times, but I'm not sure any revolution has avoided brutality of some sort. Aside from economic growth, the human migration, pace of change, and development are also unprecedented. There are huge differences between rural and urban China, eastern and western China, and even large changes between the various generations of Chinese living in the country today. What is true and real for a young person in China today is vastly different from her parents' experience, and probably unthinkable to her grandparents'.

I'm curious to see the scale of everything when I get to China. From the numbers we've heard to the pictures we've seen, it sounds as if they do nothing small over there. Three of the cities we'll visit while we're in China have populations of over 20 million people. Chongqing, a city I'd never heard of, is the world's largest city with over 30 million people. Unbelievable.

So, we're in the airport now. We take off in an hour. Next stop, Beijing!