CULTURAL IDEAS

We came here in search of the rich culture and ancient relics, only to find a destroyed Great Wall which I hardly even climbed for fifteen minutes. Winter season is probably the worst time of the year to climb and besides, most of the walls have been re-strengthened and with path steps to cash in the tourism revenue.

On the other side of the daily scene, a new culture shock existed. It is also the season for arresting prostitutes. Every year around fall, the police are given quotas to meet. The women are picked up and shipped back to their native provinces after a night in the cells without food. But the provincial police are not keen to keep them, so the women's pimps just wait at the station and put them back on trains to the capital. The sex industry, suppressed in the puritan days of Maoism is a huge business in which the police have a major stake. Attitudes to prostitution were mixed.

The reemergence of this industry has brought other problems. Aids is still a taboo subject - the official line until recently was that it didn't exist in China. But there is an alarmingly high rate in the southwest of the country. There are almost no medical services left in the countryside, and as long as Aids is officially denied, there seems to be nothing to stop it spreading.


just experience \| just sights \| just blah \| just write all photos, travelogues and journals are made available for non-commercial use only. © 2000 JSL
*BEIJING - CITY OF THOUSAND AMPITS, CHINA*
Beijing - The Lost City \| 1989 and old city \| Walls within Walls \| Acquaintances \| Life in Beijing \| Beijing's Landmarks \| Cultural Ideas \| Thoughts
	CULTURAL IDEAS We came here in search of the rich culture and ancient relics, only to find a destroyed Great Wall which I hardly even climbed for fifteen minutes. Winter season is probably the worst time of the year to climb and besides, most of the walls have been re-strengthened and with path steps to cash in the tourism revenue. On the other side of the daily scene, a new culture shock existed. It is also the season for arresting prostitutes. Every year around fall, the police are given quotas to meet. The women are picked up and shipped back to their native provinces after a night in the cells without food. But the provincial police are not keen to keep them, so the women's pimps just wait at the station and put them back on trains to the capital. The sex industry, suppressed in the puritan days of Maoism is a huge business in which the police have a major stake. Attitudes to prostitution were mixed. The reemergence of this industry has brought other problems. Aids is still a taboo subject - the official line until recently was that it didn't exist in China. But there is an alarmingly high rate in the southwest of the country. There are almost no medical services left in the countryside, and as long as Aids is officially denied, there seems to be nothing to stop it spreading.