It’s okay if you can’t go abroad, let me be your cloud leader and take you around the world.
The Capitol
After leaving South America, our last stop was in the United States. In fact, I had come across American culture before, mostly in cultural and entertainment products, which felt familiar, but when I actually arrived in America, there was a big gap between imagination and reality.
The picture above is of the Capitol in Washington DC. When we first arrived in Washington DC, we looked for a Burger King. We had a good impression of Burger King in China before, but when we went to the Burger King in Washington DC, there were many homeless people inside and the environment was not very good. One homeless man asked us for money and we were a bit scared because he looked so vicious so we gave him a dollar US and since then we have never dared to go into any fast food restaurant. There is actually a gap between rich and poor in every country and often when we get to know a country we have some stereotypes and when we actually go there we are bound to find something different from what we thought, and for me that is one of the things that travelling is all about.
Before Christmas
And then this picture, when they are nearing Christmas, in New York in December, there are a lot of sales on the streets and you can see people starting to buy gifts, the festive atmosphere is very strong and everyone is happy to be ready for Christmas and New Year, just like we are for New Year.
Broadway
This photo is from Broadway in the USA, where there are a lot of musical performances. I saw one of my favourite musicals, Phantom of the Opera. The room with a mask on the left hand side of the picture is the exclusive theatre for Phantom of the Opera.
I don’t know if you have seen Phantom of the Opera, as I have loved the show since I was a child, so I still felt excited to see it live. There is a scene in the play where a crystal lamp falls off the stage, and this live version literally has crystal lamps flying over the heads of the audience and landing on the stage. Although it is a very sad story, I still enjoyed it and felt particularly moved to be able to see this play on Broadway.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The next thing I want to tell you about is the photo above, which I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States. It is actually the first in this series of articles, and I mentioned it once before, a mural dug out from the walls of Dunhuang. It was quite a mixed blessing to see this fresco. In some European museums, you can also see many relics from Dunhuang or other parts of China, and you often see many Chinese people standing in front of these relics for a long time, and I think they feel the same way as I do.
On the other hand, I felt sad that I had to travel so far abroad to see these artefacts, many of which are quite special and cannot be seen at home, and I hope that one day we will be able to see them at home.
Horseshoe Bay
The United States is not very old, so there are no monuments, and most of the artefacts are foreign, but it has many national parks, like the one above, which is Horseshoe Bay in the Grand Canyon National Park. I often think that humans are complex creatures and it is difficult to understand the intricacies of a whole culture and history before people. But when I stand here, I just feel how small humans are, and that it may have taken hundreds of millions of years for this Horseshoe Bay to take shape as it is now. Life is only a hundred years, so perhaps we should all stop and think about what kind of life we want to live when we come to walk this earth.
Alcatraz
This is a picture of a remote island called Alcatraz Island, where they used to lock up prisoners, probably because San Francisco was densely populated. The island is no longer in use and has become a tourist attraction. I used to stand on Alcatraz and look at the prosperity of the city on the other side. This is a tangible prison, and all the shackles we put on ourselves are actually an invisible prison.
I think one of the biggest inspirations from this trip was that although I had heard a lot about different countries before, it was probably more about my own prejudices or ideas. Someone once said, “How can you have a world view without having seen the world? I think that after seeing the world, we may still have some limitations, but at least learning to be more tolerant of different cultures and peoples is also a reward.
