Fresh home from the grasslands of Mongolia, I've noticed something.
It strikes me that people who are most at peace with themselves and nature tend to be the ones who have yet encountered material temptations. The Tibetans, for example, who live high up in the deep Himalayas. The matriarchal families living around the isolated Lugu Lake. The nomads on the Mongolian grasslands. The Bedouins at the heart of the Sahara desert... Those people tend to be poor. They live in a often stunning yet punishingly harsh environment where fresh water, electricity, sewage systems remain a dream. Life is bare where they are, yet faith is strong. They practice religion with a great rigour, handing their lives entirely to God's hand.
Every time when I travel to those ends of the earth and encounter those humble souls, it strikes me how bright their eyes are, how warm and generous their heart. Among them, I find an absence of violence, aggression and judgment, instead, an abundance of humanity and peace.
Back to Shanghai, an ultra modern city in every material sense, while riding an underground train home, it saddened me to witness a young man who would not give seat to a frail old woman on a walking stick standing right in front of him. Sadly, such a sight has become a norm in contemporary urban China, where the GDP has been soaring high while morality down the drain. It reminds me why I have so firmly decided to leave this country again. My home country, so familiar yet so alien.
