by Juan Carlos Aguilar García
Photographer and Reporter of China Hoy Filial Latinoamericana, Mexico
Since I can remember, for me it has always been literature, photography and cinema; That’s how I got to know China. I have read Journey to the West, and much of the philosophy of Lao-Tzu, which has guided my daily steps in life. I have accompanied Bruce Lee through the streets of Hong Kong, and deep down I saw a society that was slowly awakening to modernity.
I have been dazzled by a vegetable seller in a remote village in Sichuan and by the passage of the steam locomotive through regions whose beauty is unreal, and also by the amazing adaptation of rural Chinese society to the inevitable technological changes that today are a reality in China.
Images of an ancient country that for centuries remained hermetic to any outside influence, but when it finally wanted to open up, it reached a splendor that many cannot even imagine.
Now China is unrecognizable to many: it is a megalopolis with Artificial Intelligence services, driverless buses, 5G broadband services and first-class architectural projects. Intelligent skyscrapers that coexist with cities more than three thousand years old, preserved for posterities as in amber. What are you without a past? The Chinese understand the answer perfectly.
Now I imagine Chinese citizens traveling on bullet trains, like the CR450, which can reach up to 400 kilometers per hour, and whose technological precision seemed like a dream only forty years ago. When China wanted to wake up and open up, it did so by reconciling the newest with what gave rise to it.
Now progress is for everyone. They are all included in the grand development plan to build a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, and culturally advanced. We talk about the revitalization of China.
When Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in 2021 that almost one hundred million people were lifted out of poverty, it was clear that China is the future, and an example for many other countries that want to achieve the same successes.
The great Chinese miracle
I already want to see China, with its skyscrapers that exceed the conceivable, with its vision of a city of the future and its postcard images. The cosmopolis gradually emerging from the heart of an industrial city of yesteryear; this is the great Chinese miracle in a snapshot. It’s something I want to check and capture with my camera.
I started writing eight years ago about China and I know that when I see it with my own eyes, anything I have been told about it – that I have read or seen in videos and photographs – will be little. I will have before me a vigorous, stable China, with a full and happy society.
Since childhood I have known that it is one of the most powerful nations, but now I have no doubt that it is also one of the wisest, because it is a country that shares cutting-edge technologies with its allies. Something else: China values the produce of the land, where the important thing is agricultural production and food security, “feeding those who feed us.”
The first time I visited China…
This is an initiatory journey. I would like to see its beautiful natural landscapes, images that I learned to love in my work at China Today magazine. I would like to see the bullet train that crosses the fields of yellow flowers; also to that wise but implacable river that has molded the clay of this unparalleled civilization. But I know that this first visit will have to be measured and prepared for many others.
This time I want to know a small part of this immense country that has resisted many calamities. See its people, visit its colorful markets, very similar to those of Mexico, and speak the language of its delicious gastronomy. I will hear words that I may not understand, but I am sure that I will appreciate those smiles and those sincere gestures, which I will not forget for a long time.
As the Chinese proverb says, “It is better to look once than to listen a hundred times.” As I say, I have read and seen many things about China, but nothing will compare to the first time I see this great nation with my own eyes from the plane window.
Better yet: when you set foot on Chinese soil for the first time and understand the immensity of this ancient country. My eyes (and my camera) will forever save everything I see in my path. That will be a unique and unrepeatable moment. Now back in Mexico, I will be able to share with the Latin American public a little of everything I experienced in these intense days.
China is my idyll and the unavoidable present of the world. When I overcome the jetlag, I want to live my first time in China with the joy and innocence of a tourist who takes his first steps, but with the solemnity of someone who is facing an experience that shapes him for a wonderful future.
*The views and opinions expressed in the articles are solely those of the individual authors and do not reflect the position of the Secretariat of the Belt and Road Journalist Network.