Chautauqua: Finding freedom on China’s highways

“Born to Be Wild” is the most American song ever recorded. It is, of course, a road song. The most American song ever recorded has got to be a road song.

The road film “Easy Rider” is, similarly, American canon – as are road novels and memoirs like Nabokov’s “Lolita”, Kerouac’s “On the Road” and Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

America’s highways have long defined, beckoned and indulged the nation’s ultimate desire – absolute, delirious, incandescent freedom.

“Freedom is another word for nothing left to lose,” sang an American songstress who left us much too soon and, like her, our “Easy Rider” heroes went out in a blaze of glory on freedom’s highway. No amount of road, however, would have been enough to outrun Humbert Humbert’s moral horrors against Lolita.

Fame got the better of Kerouac, who succumbed to a downward alcoholic spiral and died young, ranting against the beatniks he created. And Robert Pirsig’s fragile son Chris – adopted by the nation in “Zen” – was taken from us as a young man in one of those random but all too common American tragedies.

But oh say does that open highway yet wave, over the land of the free and Americans won’t have it any other way. Now, though, the open road does not only beckon in America.

Unbeknownst to many is that in addition to 48,000 kilometers of high-speed rail, China has also built 190,000 km of highways, more than twice that of the US – all of it in the past 30 years.

This piece will not lament America’s inability to build high-speed rail. Americans have nothing to be ashamed of – high-speed rail is an affront to freedom’s ethos. This piece is about what now beckons 1.4 billion people on a scale the world has never seen.

There are currently over 350 million cars and trucks on China’s roads (versus 277 million in the US) and 81 million motorcycles (versus 8.8 million in the US). This is still far from saturation.

Every year, China adds about 20 million more vehicles onto its roads. That’s 20 million more potential Steppenwolfs, Kerouacs, Humbert Humberts, Henry Fondas, Dennis Hoppers and Robert Pirsigs. The open road is freedom and, once built, will beckon.

Pirsig structured “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” around a series of discussions – what he called Chautauquas – on weighty topics like “quality”, technology, reason and the nature of reality.

Pirsig’s Chautauquas were the internal dialogues of a man recovering from a psychotic break, still haunted by Phaedrus – his schizophrenic self – with the added poignancy of seeing early signs of the illness in his young son, Chris.

Han Feizi just returned from a two-week road trip through Xinjiang. China is definitely on the move. The mountains, steppes and lakes of China’s far northwest were teaming with holiday makers in all manner of vehicles – from SUVs to campers to the latest EVs to, yes, motorcycles.

The retired-uncle motorcycle gang on months-long excursions is a common sight on China’s highways. Young vagabonds finance their journeys with mobile espresso bars built into SUVs and campers. Affluent yuppies swarm the hiking trails around Lake Kanas in candy-colored outdoors wear.

As a tribute to Pirsig, this piece will be a Chautauqua – a Chautauqua on freedom.

Tied with “Born to Be Wild” for the most American song ever recorded is “Desperado” by the Eagles. It is, of course, another road song. “Born to Be Wild” and “Desperado” are, in fact, the same song about the same road dog – one young, the other old.

“And freedom, oh, freedom, well, that’s just some people talkin.’ Your prison is walking this world all alone.”

Freedom exacts a price; every road dog from Janis Joplin to Steppenwolf to Don Henley to Kerouac to Nabokov to Pirsig either understood this instinctively or were made to understand it tragically. A price must be paid. The allure of the open road beckons, but with both menace and malice.

China now has a road dog. A Kerouac. A Steppenwolf. A Pirsig. At this very moment, Auntie Su Min is likely barreling down the highway somewhere in China in her recently purchased camper SUV and documenting her travels in the 21^st-century medium – the social media short video.

Five years ago, at the height of the Covid epidemic, Auntie Su Min ditched her abusive husband and grandmother childcare duties to drive around China in a tiny Volkswagen hatchback with rooftop camper.

Su Min posted Douyin videos along the way (e.g. eating road-cooked meals, sleeping in the rooftop tent, repairing her Volkswagen) and reminisced about her life choices, regrets, her decades as a dutiful wife and mother, her abusive marriage and the freedom of her new life.

The backdrop to her late-life video bildungsroman was the new China, now all fitted out for road warriors, offering vistas of transcendent beauty and cities of infinite variety.

Su Min became a viral sensation. This unsophisticated auntie of modest means, with no particular expertise, just decided to go ahead and do it. A tiny car, a tent, portable cooking gear – all highly affordable on Taobao – and off she went.

And China. Oh China. “Yeah, darling’ gonna make it happen. Take the world in a love embrace.” When you are in Xinjiang, you reminisce about Inner Mongolia. When you are in Inner Mongolia, you wish you were in Shanghai. When you are in Shanghai, you wonder if you should have chosen Chongqing. When you are in Chongqing… “Fire all of your guns at once and explode into space.”

China is now one giant tourist destination. No country offers the range of destinations from natural wonders like the Kunlun Mountains and Guilin landscape to techno utopias like Hangzhou and Shenzhen. Superb infrastructure, affordable prices and absolute safety are mere bonuses.

Hell used to be Chinese tourist destinations during peak holiday season. Now, it is merely purgatory and, often, even fun. Crowds have thinned as expanded destination options spread travelers out.

More importantly, China has gotten a software upgrade. Gone are the pickpockets, overaggressive touts, unruly crowds and poor public citizenship. Holiday crowds are now well-mannered, stylish, cooperative, even considerate.

China’s roads, once chaotic free-for-alls, have gotten a similar upgrade. Intelligent highways, synchronized with Beidou navigation (China’s GPS), guide drivers with finely detailed information – from when to change lanes to upcoming pedestrian crossings to speed warnings to how many seconds before the light turns green. Once some of the unruliest roads in the world have, like everything else, been gentrified.

Su Min vlogged her way to stardom with 5G, Beidou and a genteel citizenry watching over her. Initial concerns over an auntie traveling solo soon became an epiphany for many – hey, that’s not so hard. And it’s not. China’s brand-new highway system, with all the digital bells and whistles, is supported by a lodging industry with just as much “overcapacity” as any other.

It’s a buyer’s market as budget hotels now have a premium feel, offering services like free laundry, including detergent. To compete, high-end hotels have slashed prices. While domestic travel has surged, tourism industry revenue has not. And profits have, like many industries, collapsed, giving economists much to chew over. Permabears see a calamity while Su Min, fellow Chinese travelers and sharper analysts could not care less (see here).

Auntie Su Min’s life has, of course, been made into a movie, “Like a Rolling Stone.” It is a movie about freedom. Before watching the film, Han Feizi had already mentally directed and filmed it.

It would be a road film, taking the audience through China’s most majestic sights with spectacular cinematography, interspersed with flashbacks of Su Min’s previous life of domestic drudgery and peppered with heartwarming vignettes with online fans.

This is, of course, the embarrassing American version of Su Min’s bildungsroman. The actual movie (spoiler alert) about China’s ultimate road dog turned out not to be a road movie at all. “Easy Rider” and “Thelma and Louise”, this is not. The road is there. And it does beckon. But the movie is a claustrophobic melodrama about family dysfunction and the burdens women face. Su Min only got on the highway in the last ten minutes.

In 1972, comic strip character Joanie Caucus abandoned her husband and daughter, hitched a ride on Mike Doonesbury and Mark Slackmeyer’s motorcycle, joined the Walden commune and became a feminist icon.

Little explanation was given – doofus husband sufficed. Doofus husband was all the reason needed to launch Thelma and Louise on their epic road trip. That is freedom American style. It is wild. It is awesome. Brad Pitt was the best she ever had. Throw caution to the wind. And off a cliff they drove.

Doofus husband does not suffice in China. Doofus abusive husband, demanding grown daughter, good-for-nothing leech of a brother and grandmother childcare responsibilities all interwoven into a life of forbearance and self-denial might suffice.

The daughter was already grown and married. The grandchildren were already attending school. The doofus husband was hopeless. Su Min made a run for it after she had already taken care of everyone and everything. This was freedom earned, not freedom assumed.

“There is no loneliness like American loneliness,” wrote Ryu Murakami, who writes about the atomization and frivolity of modern Japanese society. Although the Japanese are lost and desperate, at least, Murakami believes, they do not suffer American loneliness, a special kind of desolation which Japan’s social fabric has thus far prevented.

“We were born, born to be wild. We can climb so high, I never wanna die.” Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll are part of the American road dog experience. Alienation, nihilism and criminality hover nearby. Loneliness is its ultimate destination.

“Oh you’re a hard one, but I know you got your reasons. These things that are pleasin’ you can hurt you somehow.”

Nobody quite knows what happens to old American road dogs. Humbert Humbert died a broken wretch in prison. Kerouac could not survive fame. America is full of aged road dogs, estranged from family, living alone after a hellraising youth. The loneliness epidemic among America’s elderly takes its toll on health, dignity and life expectancies. Was it worth it? That’s irrelevant. It could not have been any other way.

Like the Japanese, the Chinese are spared American loneliness. The social fabric still holds. Freedom in China is still tempered by responsibility. Su Min had to earn it. China’s highways lack a menacing edge. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, alienation, nihilism and criminality are not part of China’s road dog scene.

China’s travelers have a communal ethos with a wholesome, supportive vibe. Experienced solo female travelers accept lodging in remote villages from strangers (still not recommended). Su Min is the hero – not coked out Dennis Hopper. Is China’s freedom superior to America’s? That’s irrelevant. It could not have been any other way.