China 1988 - the year of the earth dragon
In the fall of 1988 I spent a few weeks in China. I was one of the first private individual travelers who could freely choose their destinations in China. This was possible thanks to the support of the Switzerland-China Society.
In the period October/November 1988 – the year of the dragon 戊 – I took more than 4'000 pictures. 1988 – a China in transition between old structures and modernization: a tension between hope and modernization. The modest mass prosperity, the burgeoning awakening in the midst of millennia – old traditions became visible.
China was a mystery, another planet at the time.
It was a childhood dream. Where it came from, I don't know. As a child, I wanted to be a saxophone player in a small bar in Shanghai and this since the late 1950s.
Sure: there was the jazz music of the late 1950s and early 1960s, accompanying my adolescence – and Shanghai – a place I couldn't even imagine, though: a mythical place, but too far away… Africa was closer, China at the end of the world.
An empire - seven hours ahead of us.
On October 10, 1988 at 12:10 departure from Kloten. In the bag an individual travel program across China, through places I had never heard of before.
On October 11 at 1 o'clock in the morning for the first time from 10'000m altitude a view down to the emerging China: “Kunming” said the pilot. And this was the journey ahead of me :
I’ve started my adventure in Beijing 北京 – the capital of this vast empire – and then to
Tianjin 天津 to Suzhou 蘇州 to Shanghai 上海 to Chengdu 成都 to Mount Emei 峨嵋山 to
Chongqing 重庆 to Jangtsekiang 長江 to Wuhan 武漢 to Guilin 桂林 .…
Jean Odermatt