Vacation - Chinese Country Life

Log start: 11:24pm (Chinese Time) December 25th 2008
Christmas Day

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

So after a long...long...time sitting in between my brother and a random korean stranger on an airplane, I'M FINALLY HERE! my butt hurts and im sore, but it's ok. No jet lag! since my sleeping times in college are so messed up anyway. So our plane's final destination (no pun intended) landed in Guangzhou, which is near Hong Kong. Then we drove up to Naning, which i believe is a majority in mandarin speakers. On the way there all you can see on the newly built highway is the effects of Chinese Modernization, and it's the part where people don't see.

Old villages that have an old modern-ish style housing with the traditional village gates (such as the ones in TVb dramas!) try hard to modernize and somehow they aren't quite there yet but you can see the progress shift and when you look into the eyes of these people, they look like they're living a happy life, and they are.
Someone once said to me that the more simple your life is, the more happy you are. In China, in this very day, in the old villages that are just starting to run into modernization, this is almost too true.
On the way to Nanning, we went drove by a particular village that sent me thinking a lot. I saw a young couple riding on a bike. The guy was riding and smiling while the girl was sitting behind him, hugging him and also smiling. I asked myself, why are they so happy? Don't they see the news? don't they care about what happens worldwide?
The answer is, they probably don't. These people, they are so oblivious to the outside world, yet their lives are so.... peaceful and happy.
I'm a modern child living in New York City, i can't see myself living that lifestyle. But even to a city kid, i can understand their feelings through their facial expressions. And that's what really sends the message out. Children walking beside the road to school riding bikes for fun and making play with a pile of rocks. Until you see them, you wouldn't think it's possible to live life like that. To a modernized person, you would be like "WOW! they're so poor, how to they manage?" Money is not the case in this matter at all, people in the villages help each other out anyway they can and is always there for support. There is no crime, the police station for the whole village is about the size of a medium sized house in New York, they only have 2 scooters to patrol the whole town. Yet, they live peaceful. Country people are not as barbaric as people may seem (unless you're in AMERICA and you go through a hick town, they're really messed up in the head).
So much to tell and yet... so lazy to write, yeah, im on vacation so im more lazy than usual, but i want to get the point across that a simple life looks like it's better than a modern life. You ask how they can go on without technology and things that make life more simple. The answer is that Chinese people have been living like this for thousands of years, and they're not about to change.
My brother said to me that a lot of them have chances to go to America to start a new life, but he said afterwards that they don't because a lot of them just want to live a happy and simple life.

Truly amazing.

From the...well... desk of a jet lagged,

HakoneDayDreamer, a simple life is a happy life.