Mao to Maglev: A Malayali journey through China

Our smart young guide in Shanghai introduced himself as Thomas. Explaining that it was only his English name, he said his real name was Wang.

No, it wasn't because we were all from Kerala that he had chosen one of the most common names among Malayalis. Nor did the Chinese Thomas know that a large Malayali community traces its origins to St Thomas the Apostle, who is believed to have arrived on Kerala’s shores two millennia ago. Yet the name was enough for our nearly 40-member Malayali senior-citizen tourist group to begin our 10-day tour of China—still viewed by many as India’s traditional rival—in a familiar comfort zone. Soon, many were affectionately calling him “Thomacha”, while others merrily shouted the famous Malayalam film line: “Thomas Kutty, vittoda!”

Unlike most tourist guides, Thomas was not overly diplomatic. Someone in our group, consisting largely of retired space scientists, asked where China’s space-launch facilities were located.
 

“What? Do you think I am going to tell you that? Are you guys spies or what?”

His response reminded us that India and China remain competitors in high-end space research and its strategic applications. Coincidentally, it was also the day China launched its Shenzhou-23 mission, a major step towards its goal of sending astronauts to the Moon by 2030.

This was my second visit to China, a country that had occupied a curious place in my life largely because of my father, a lifelong admirer of the Chinese Revolution.

I first heard of China when I was about six years old. During the Sino-Indian conflict, my father, along with many Communist comrades, was arrested on allegations of being sympathetic to China. Too young to understand the politics involved, I was traumatised. I could not comprehend why my father was in jail or why he lacked a proper office and job like the fathers of my classmates.

I vividly remember asking my mother what I should write under “Father’s Occupation” in a school application form. “Farmer,” she replied. Perhaps she thought that, in a sense, he was indeed sowing seeds- for a revolution.

My second encounter with China was again through my father. During the Emergency, he faced disciplinary action from the party for sheltering the Maoist leader K Venu in our home. I still remember the small wooden study table that Venu left behind after his arrest. Scribbled on it was a slogan from another era: “China’s Chairman, Our Chairman.”

The third episode came in 1989, when the party censured my father for condemning the suppression of the student movement at Tiananmen Square.

It was with these memories that I first visited China in 2009, along with my friend, Dr Muralee Thummarukudy, the UN disaster management expert and author. We travelled to Sichuan province to witness the massive rehabilitation effort after the devastating Beichuan earthquake. We also stood in Tiananmen Square on a freezing December night, recalling how events that had unfolded there two decades earlier had reverberated even within our family in faraway Kerala.

That visit came in the shadow of two extraordinary events. China had just hosted the Beijing Olympics, which it used to showcase its emergence as a global power. Yet less than three months before the Games, an earthquake measuring 8.0 had struck Sichuan, killing nearly 80,000 people and wiping entire towns off the map.

The tragedy triggered one of the greatest rescue and rehabilitation efforts in modern Chinese history. Paradoxically, it strengthened China’s international standing. The Olympics proceeded almost flawlessly, becoming not merely a sporting spectacle but a symbol of resilience and administrative efficiency. Global attention shifted from criticism over Tibet and human-rights concerns to admiration for the scale of the humanitarian response.
 

My current visit, 17 years later, was purely as a tourist. Though 10 days are too short to make a detailed assessment, the astounding advances of the past two decades were too visible to miss even at first sight.

These years saw China move significantly closer to its ambition of overtaking the United States as the world’s leading economic power. It became the world’s largest trading nation in goods, emerged as a global leader in e-commerce, built the world’s largest high-speed rail network and renewable-energy system, and achieved historic success in lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Massive investments in research and development have propelled its universities into the ranks of the world’s best. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence, space exploration, autonomous vehicles and rare-earth technologies have been remarkable.

Though these achievements owe much to the market-oriented reforms initiated after 1978, they were also built upon foundations laid during the Mao era in education, public health and social development.

A striking feature of today’s China is the sheer number of tourists travelling across the country, with Indians—including many from Kerala—among the largest foreign contingents. Interestingly, most appeared to be senior citizens, reflecting the rapid growth of the global “silver tourism” market. Based on international tourist arrivals, China is ranked 8th in the 2024 global tourism map much ahead of India, placed 39th.

The recent Indian surge follows the lifting of travel restrictions last year and resumption of direct flights to China. The restrictions were imposed by India in 2020 after the pandemic and border tensions. During our trip alone, we encountered at least four tourist groups from Kerala, including several friends and neighbours. One visible consequence was the crowding at Indian restaurants, where waiting times often exceeded half an hour. Indians seemed to dominate many of the hotels we stayed at.

Naturally, we ticked almost every box on the Chinese tourist map. We rode the levitating Maglev train in Shanghai, sped from Shanghai to Beijing on a bullet train travelling at 350 kilometres an hour, cruised along rivers lined with dazzling skyscrapers, wandered through meticulously preserved water towns, walked in the rain atop the Great Wall, and explored Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the imperial summer palaces.

As with all guided tours, however, we were shown only what was bright and impressive about China. I recall experiencing something similar in the “democratic” United States when I visited under the State Department’s International Visitor Programme many years ago. It was therefore hardly surprising that in a country that makes no pretence of liberal democracy, we saw only what the authorities wished visitors to see.

Our guide in Beijing, Anjela Xulee, joked that her name sounded rather like Angelina Jolie. Like most guides, she spoke eloquently about China’s ancient dynasties and monuments but remained silent about much of its modern political history. Despite the extraordinary transformation China has undergone in recent decades, public political discourse remains remarkably absent.

Apart from red flags and portraits of Mao Zedong at symbolic sites such as Tiananmen Square, the Communist Party’s pervasive influence is not immediately visible to a casual visitor. Anjela informed us that Mao’s mausoleum had been closed for renovation. My efforts to find a copy of the Little Red Book proved equally unsuccessful.

Yet the absence of visible political discussion does not diminish the reality that China’s human-rights record and its treatment of minorities such as Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists remain among the most debated issues in international politics.

What struck me, however, was a greater willingness among ordinary Chinese to discuss subjects once considered taboo, at least in private. While Anjela carefully explained the historical significance of Tiananmen Square, she avoided mentioning the suppression of the 1989 student movement. But when I raised the subject privately, she acknowledged that such matters are rarely discussed in public. She nevertheless described both the Tiananmen episode and the persecution of groups such as Falun Gong as unfortunate chapters in China’s history.

Yet our group was remarkably unanimous on certain impressions. Many felt that long-held Indian prejudices about China had been challenged by what they saw. Some even wondered aloud whether concerns about authoritarianism mattered as much if a government could deliver such dramatic improvements in living standards. Others lamented that Kerala’s Communists had learned so little from their Chinese counterparts. Even in crowded places, people moved freely without the forbidding presence of security forces to remind us of the ever-watchful Big Brother. Yet, when an 82-year-old member of our group fell ill while roaming around, two young policemen appeared out of nowhere and politely offered to help.

Almost everyone was pleasantly surprised by the warmth and friendliness of ordinary Chinese people towards Indians, despite the tensions between the two countries. Several remarked that the casual racism often encountered in parts of the West appeared largely absent. At the same time, many noticed that Pakistan seemed to occupy a far more prominent place than India in Chinese public discourse. Some were irritated to see the Chinese and Pakistani flags displayed together in Tiananmen Square, unaware that the occasion marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

One remark by Thomas seemed to encapsulate the confidence and ambitions of contemporary China. Impressed by his fluent English, someone asked whether more young Chinese were learning the language these days.

“Actually, Chinese youngsters are no longer as keen to learn English as before,” he replied. “We now believe that, before long, more people outside China will feel compelled to learn Chinese than the other way around.” It was a casual remark, but one that captured the spirit of a nation convinced that its moment had arrived.

Travel, after all, rarely changes geopolitics. But it often changes perceptions. For many of us, China turned out to be far more complex, contradictory and intriguing than either its admirers or its critics would have us believe.