However, when I caught the Gulf Air flight, out of London’s Heathrow Airport, for Karachi in Pakistan, my plans stretched just about as far as surviving long enough reach a hotel and close the door behind me.
Once I got past the pre-programmed fear of Asia I enjoyed my three months in Pakistan (even if the guidebook I had was so hopelessly out of date it was dangerous). I found that just because people are poor, they are not a threat. A language barrier is not necessarily a barrier to kindness, either. I was invited to people’s homes, fed, sheltered and welcomed by the people of a country that is derided by the international news media.
I also found that individual people do not always agree with their government or the strictures of their religion. It was an eye-opening experience that taught me pre-conceptions and stereotypical images are not always correct.
From Pakistan I ventured into Afghanistan for a few days, to find that TV coverage can be as bad as reality. The oppression, violence and the destruction of war so easily found in that country are not something I really want to experience again, and the minefield I accidentally walked through almost meant I would never have the chance!
Crossing over the Khunjerab Pass from Pakistan to China I found that the worlds most populous country was more diverse than the Europe I had explored. In Xinjiang the local Uighurs had more in common with their cousins over the border in central Asia than with their rulers in Beijing. The Tibetans have never accepted Chinese rule and with hardly an exception deferred to the Dalai Lama, despite his exile in India. In the huge cities of Xian and Shanghai, Beijing seemed so remote that it might as well have been in a different country. In Guangzhou it was the capitalist ethos of Hong Kong that dominated life.
In Hong Kong itself, the competition between companies was almost as fierce as that between cultures. The search for instant wealth dominated everything, though there was dispute about whether it was best obtained through Western or Chinese methods.
Cultures clash continually in Hong Kong and not just west against east, but American against European against Australian against Indian. The cultures clashed in all walks of life; restaurants competed, businessmen negotiated and corporations marketed. People chose different methods of dealing with the cultural clashes and finding the right approach for them determined their success in learning to live in such an aggressively foreign and culturally mixed city state.
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