It’s a couple of weeks since the sand storm in northern China. In my earlier blog, posted in the aftermath of the storm, I described the situation around Beijing. Since then I have been in the southwest.
I was expecting to find a depressing scene of devastation down here, but at my first stop, Xi’an, a name that should be familiar to all those who followed the story on the news. A local guy even had to point them out to me, ‘look’, he said, ‘our disaster’ and pointed to a couple of dust-capped trees.
I am in Beijing to research the next edition of the Beijing guidebook and must make it very clear that I didn’t go to the northwest in search of sand storm damage – I am only reporting what I saw in the areas I needed to cover. Yet I couldn’t help but notice how, despite what the newspapers said, the real destruction always seemed around the corner.
That got me thinking that the only news story you’ll see about Beijing is one of disasters. Looking around me now the country I see is not the basket case of myth but is instead a beautiful, forward looking nation deserving of a better portrayal.
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