While I often wonder what Jose Rizal or Apolinario Mabini would have done with text messaging, e-mail and the Internet, I cringe when I realize that if they had a cell phone, they probably would not have written half as much and I would be left without a career.
Moving closer to home, it was quite surreal to travel around China last week with a diary I wrote on my second visit there in 1985. Was I more disciplined then? Or maybe I don't take down notes as much these days because I can keep friends abreast of my travels through SMS and e-mail. Writing longhand in a notebook seems so Jurassic in the age of the palmtop.
My mother was the first in our family to visit what was then referred to in politically incorrect Cold War language as "Red China." She and a group of friends like Rose Laurel Avanceña and Ileana Maramag visited China in the late 1970s. They were among the first foreigners allowed to visit after that famous and very destructive earthquake in 1976. China seemed so foreign to us -- a cold, unknown, and forbidding place -- yet mother had wonderful stories about her trip, so my father took me along in 1981 when package tours were available.
I did not keep a diary of that trip, but I can remember that my uncles and aunts had a great time visiting the land of my paternal great-grandfather who was Chinese. What I remember from that first trip is quite hazy now; memory has a way of filtering the past.
Fortunately, on my second trip in 1985, I took down notes and actually preserved the notebook. I was the youngest in a five-man official delegation led by Serafin D. Quiason, then chair of the National Historical Institute (NHI), that was given a two-week tour of historic sites by what was then the Bureau of Cultural Relics.
Twenty-one years later, I returned as head of delegation and NHI chair, and the host was now the Chinese State Administration for Cultural Heritage.
China has changed in the past two decades. People used to wear uniforms and the only three colors you saw on the street were bottle green, working blue, and official gray. Then as now, the Chinese were curious about tourists, but in the past, people not in uniform stood out like sore thumbs. To walk around the city at night unnoticed, I slipped away from our guide one afternoon, went to the local department store, and bought myself a green uniform.
Foreigners were given foreign exchange certificates instead of the local currency and shopping was confined to a so-called "Friendship Store." Life seemed much simpler, though restricted. I remember watching a couple in one of the secluded spots of the Summer Palace taking pictures. The woman shed her blue coat and pants and revealed a very colorful floral outfit underneath. She hurriedly took a scarf and hat from her bag, posed, and the boyfriend took a stolen snapshot before she donned her uniform again.
Today Mao-era uniforms are sold in antique markets, with ceramic busts of Mao, the "Little Red Book," and posters showing the people's march to progress or even those that tell citizens to refrain from spitting everywhere.
Everyone seemed to travel on foot or on bicycles then; the only vehicles on the street were green military jeeps or trucks, and almost all the cars were black and very official-looking, with curtains to hide the passengers in the back seat.
Today China has many cars on the road and traffic has become a major problem. Car colors are still dark and solid and one wonders how the Chinese would react to our jeepneys’ riot of colors and aluminum horses on the hood that might remind them of those ancient Tang horses made of colored ceramic. Their airports are huge and there are so many small airlines with names we’ve never heard of, like Hainan Air and China Eastern. There used to be only one state airline, with second-hand Russian propeller-driven planes and tea as the only refreshment served on board.
While most hotels now have HBO, BBC, and CNN, you have a lot of Chinese channels to choose from, unlike the days when there were only one or two channels usually screening something educational. My diary says that to help me sleep at night, I would tune in to a television program on calculus and chemistry and fall asleep without popping sleeping pills.
People were generally honest then. In some hotels, they didn't clean your room if you locked the door. You could leave your camera and other valuables on the table and know that they would still be there when you returned. Today you have hotel safes and notices telling you to be careful.
The Chinese love to smoke and expectorate all over. This hasn't changed; it’s a custom older than Chairman Mao.
Reading my 1985 diary and comparing China then and China now, I cannot help but wonder what happened to the Philippines in the march to progress. One can only be awed by China's development and the great strides it is taking in diplomacy. It really is a place to watch in the future. The term "sleeping giant" really means something in this country.
