Hunan

So today I made it just across the border into Hunan Province. I have been travelling along a national highway, which I have hated - I don't get nearly as much contact with locals along the side of the road, and there is a lot more traffic. Today it wasn't rainy, which was nice, but it meant that the big trucks were kicking up lots of dust, and by the time I made it into Liling, Hunan, I looked (and felt) like I did back when I was a tar roofer in high school.

Yikes.

Anyways, I did have one interesting conversation along the way with a guy at the restaurant in Pingxiang where I stopped for lunch. He bought me lunch, which was pretty nice of him. But then he brought up something that I've heard a bazillion times from Chinese people - "I hate Japanese people." His point was that he is friendly to all foreigners, just not Japanese because "Japanese are evil." This has always annoyed me. Yes, I admit that the Japanese government should come clean on its World War II atrocities - visiting the Yasukuni Shrine and claiming that no evidence exists that the "comfort women" were forced into sex slavery. However, the blanket statement that all Japanese are evil is really a form of discrimination. I mean - it is ridiculous to think that "all Japanese are evil" - good and bad people are everywhere. I think it would be interesting to compare the experiences of a Japanese person who would dare (if they are brave enough) to do a trip similar to mine - following even the same trip. There have been several times that Chinese have taken me out to dinner, even paid for my hotel room, etc - but I doubt that such friendship would be shown to a Japanese tourist.

In response to this man's confession of hatred towards Japanese, I asked him if he had ever met a Japanese person and talked to them. He said that he had seen some in Shenzhen and that while he didn't talk to them, he still hated them. So, after the nice man had bought me lunch, I told him that people are people everywhere and that while what governments do might not be direct that people are people and that he should treat them as such. It was a little "all we are saying is give peace a chance" and "I hope the Russians love their children too" all rolled into one, and I might have actually just ticked the guy off, but I hope that somehow I helped a random Chinese guy to look at Japanese in a different light.