A Tale of Two Countries

A Wide Lens View of Two Asian Cultures

Written and Photographed by Nirvana Bhatia

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A quiet morning on Asia’s widest boulevard. Tiananmen Square Beijing, PRCThere are 1.3 billion people in china and another 1.2 billion in India. With such figures, one would expect the allure of these nations to lie in their bustling, chaotic, sensory overloaded cities. Most of the time, photographers come to India to capture multiple media: the blaring sounds, the masses of people, the luscious pinks and oranges, and the fast dances. These same photographers go to China to find images of community: dozens of bicycles waiting at a traffic light, morning Taiji routines, and old friends chatting at a teahouse. These images exist, and they do represent their respective cultures, but there are quiet moments as well, when each country gathers up all its brilliance and reveals a sliver of it to you alone.

Guards pose in front of the male lion that protects the gates of the Summer Palace. Yiheyuan, Beijing, PRCOne Saturday during my first trip to Beijing, a small group of us decided to brave the cold and head over to the outskirts of the city, where we planned to spend the day in the Summer Palace. There were no lines at the ticket counter, no groups loitering around the front gate, no hawkers, and really, no one else around. As I entered the palace grounds, I was immediately struck by the isolated sections of color. It was hard to imagine that beyond these walls lay the city where the same colors streaked by in green, red, yellow, and blue flashes. Occasionally, we saw a group of school children or an old woman, but for the most part, we were alone with our musings. We felt it wrong to speak, so the four of us wandered along on our own paths, enjoying the resilience in the air.

I returned to the Summer Palace a few months later with my family, this time in the height of summer. The difference was immediately recognizable. A whiteboard outside one of the gates informed us that some 13,000 visitors would pass through the palace that day. Furthermore, I never found the milky garden with the decorative portals, or the gazebo where we saw a woman using water to paint a calligraphic poem onto the pavement. In fact, I did not see one thing that resembled my earlier visit. We spent more time by Kunming Lake, ferrying from one side to the other to see the Marble Boat. We went over to Suzhou Street, to sidle along the buildings that overlook the canal below. We ate bowls of long noodles in a crevice along a bridge, and my grandmother, in her traditional Indian dress, had her photograph taken with dozens of smiling Chinese citizens. There was life and happiness and vibrancy here, but still, something made me wistful for the pleasant sense of reluctant awakening that distinguished my winter visit.