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A WRITER'S IMPRESSION

Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Mattathias Schwartz.

Mattathias Schwartz is a writer. He contributes to the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Good Magazine, Megawords and other publications, specializing in long-form articles in which fundamental philosophical questions arise in conversation. In late 2001, he founded the Philadelphia Independent, a monthly broadsheet newspaper. We spent a few moments with him to talk about his recent trip to China and being a writer. Click Read More for the interview and to watch the video.

People speak freely in China. I think they’re willing to be critical of the government in conversation. I think people write fairly freely. You don’t see any public protests, or even the beginning of public protests, because that stuff gets shut down pretty quickly. The kind of general state of law in China is that everyone’s always breaking some law but it doesn’t really matter. But the moment you start to infringe on the interests of the Communist party or the government— then it will matter.

I think almost everyone in China is incredibly psyched about the country and the government, and the renminbi which is growing, and the number of people who have been brought out of poverty. And to the extent that this society isn’t free by Western standards— I heard very few people complaining about that at all. Even people who you would expect to complain about it, like people who hold passports from other countries and have gotten Western educations at American universities or at Oxford or Cambridge. Even they’re very sympathetic to the Chinese government. They respect what they’ve done to bring millions of people out of poverty. They see these restrictions of freedom as a form of social engineering that are necessary to keep such a huge country stable and moving forward.

The extent to which we enshrined the idea of individual rebellion in the United States is amazing. The amount of pro-rebellion propaganda that we all kind of thoughtlessly ingest. Everything from The Catcher in the Rye to The Matrix to Star Wars to Jesus Christ. Every single story we have is about some sacred, knighted individual who overthrows the system. And I think a lot of people grew up with individualist fantasies residing in their heart that they’ll be the person to do this. The sort of cliché, Thomas Freedman theory of Chinese culture is that it’s more communal and spread out among family and community. But I think I really did see some of that—they just haven’t ingested so much propaganda telling them to rebel. I think that Western media model expects there to be some form of controversy around a great public work like the Olympics, you have to set up some sort of oppositional relationship between the government and the people. But I didn’t see any of that. At the same time I really do believe in basic First Amendment rights as fundamental human rights, and those are not rights that people in China enjoy.

People were excited that China got to show off the country to the rest of the world, and they were excited about the opening ceremony. I talked to someone who was a stringer for the New York Times — a Chinese kid who was maybe nineteen, he was very, very bright— who had interviewed some of the people whose homes had been reclaimed and bulldozed to make way for one of the stadiums in Beijing. And he said that even they were like, “Oh man, it’s bad that I had to lose my home and I’m not happy about this, but nevertheless I understand that this is a great, significant event for my country, to the world. I understand that this is necessary…” and it’s like happy and sad at the same time. So, I think sort of Western media models that are around, and the great public work like the Olympics, there has to be some form of controversy or you have to set up some sort of oppositional relationship between the government and the people, but I didn’t see any of it.

Please note WEJETSET nor Mr. Schwartz in any way condone the practice of animal fighting. The story told in this video is a honest account of an actual experience Mr. Schwartz had while with his native host in Ecuador. The story’s sole intention is to recount the particular and specific events he witnessed, and should not be taken as an endorsement, sanctioning of, or approval of such actions in general.