Several months ago around the beginning of the Chinese summer, my partner and I took a short trip to visit her grandma in Yanji (延吉), a small city (by the standards of this country!) in the province Jilin (吉林). It’s a curious little area of China, home to many of the country’s sizable Korean minority to which my partner belongs to. Yanji is the capital of what is known as the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region. The area is sometimes referred to as the “third Korea” and for good measure: about a third of the population is Korean and it is required by law to have signs written in both Chinese characters and Hangul (the Korean alphabet). As a result, travelling here feels rather different to other places in China and I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a little bit off the beaten track.

The city of Yanji is quite underdeveloped, having not really experienced the massive economic boom that’s affected much of the country. And due to its proximity to North Korea it’s a trading hub with isolated country. Rather notoriously Yanji provides the first stop for a lot of the methamphetamine that is produced in North Korea and then smuggled and sold off to the rest of China. Apart from that you can see a wide range of North Korean restaurants and other more beneficial areas of trade and cultural exchange.

Aside from visiting my partner’s grandma, I also wanted to visit Changbaishan (长白山), a famous mountain that borders with North Korea, as well as one of the border towns so I could get a glimpse of the last Stalinist regime in the world. So on the first day of the trip we took a long bus journey down to Changbaishan national park. It was pouring down with rain as we first caught the bus and then a taxi into the forested mountain slopes, even hailing at one point. We had no option but to keep going, given our very severe time restrictions. After arriving, we had to push our way through the heavy rain, our raincoats becoming soaked within seconds.

Miraculously, however, almost as soon as we’d bought our overpriced tickets, the rain stopped and even the clouds began to scatter revealing the sun over the pine trees surrounding the mountain. I remember saying a little prayer of thanks for the blessing before we hopped on another bus towards our destination.

Unfortunately, the national park has been rather built up for tourism, with little hiking opportunities and lots of buses to take you to different sections of the park, taking you a little way away from the magic of the place. Nevertheless, we found ourselves rather quickly scaling the mountain, the forests giving way to a barren rocky landscape, increasingly covered with snow.

Upon reaching the top, and emerging out of the warm bus, we were struck by freezing temperatures and blistering winds, the clouds who had left us earlier had regathered at the top of the mountain. Being the beginning of summer, we hadn’t exactly worn very warm clothes, making things even colder for us. But when we made the short hike towards the main sight, the legendary Heaven Lake (天池) it was all worth it.

This was one of the most breathtaking things I’ve seen in my life, and the name is well deserved. It sits right on the border with North Korea, the lake being split between the two countries, so I was actually gazing directly into the hermit kingdom. Jagged peaks lined the shores of the lake and despite being summertime, it was still completely frozen over. It looked like it came from Norse mythology or fantasy. I was left in a rather speechless state of awe and I found it difficult to draw my eyes away from it. The very sight made the biting cold and wind tolerable. Incredibly, there was a such a deep penetrating silence of the lake that cut through the wind. A sheer emptiness that brought a profound peace alongside its beauty, even though there was a hoard of tourists along with us.

It’s moments of such incredible beauty where I sincerely wonder to myself how someone cannot believe in God or at least something beyond this universe that fills us with such wonder, awe, beauty and serenity. Surely, this isn’t just the product of random forces, but instead there is a Great Artist behind it all. To me, these feelings I have when looking at things of such beauty can’t be just an illusion, a product of biology to help me cope with life. There just has to be something deeper behind it something greater than the material world.

But what I saw the next day reminded exactly why people have difficulties believing in a loving force behind the universe.

We went with my partner’s grandma and her cousin to the border town of Tumen (图们), a small town that sits on one side of the Tumen River, gazing over onto a small North Korean settlement. The town was very underdeveloped by Chinese standards, but compared to the other side, it was an advanced metropolis. The only developed part on the North Korean side were the apartment blocks made for customs officials.

After arriving, we soon reached the riverside by taxi and almost immediately after getting there, I was approached by a few soldiers who seemed quite surprised about my visit and confused on exactly what to do. They checked my passport, mumbled things to one another, tried to contact a senior officer, and after some hesitation let me go my way. Quite a humorous situation overall.

Left to our own, we wandered the riverside that was heavily fenced and barb-wired for as far as the eye could see, so as to deter people from fleeing North Korea. Despite this, my partner’s grandma told us that people would still jump the border to China at night and eat some barbecue before heading back home. One of the most noticeable things was what we could hear: propaganda blasting from the other side of the river roaring about how great North Korea is, how powerful it is, and how amazing the Kim family are. This happening in total view of a far more developed town on the other side of the river.

We soon climbed a nearby hill that gave us a sweeping view of the whole area. On the Korean side, beyond the small town were nothing but farms and rice paddies that looked as though they were from hundreds of years ago, with very little modern technology to be seen. You could also see dozens, perhaps even a few hundred people, all dressed in the same black clothing sitting by the river banks. My partner’s grandma explained to us that they were waiting. Waiting for relatives living in China who could give them food, clothes, basic necessities for survival or just to make their life a little more tolerable. Having very limited contact outside of the country, all they could do is arrange a rough time and wait for their family to come help them. Sometimes they would wait for days, sometimes as long as week for them to come. Other times their family member wouldn’t even show up. It was truly tragic to behold, and I felt horrible for those poor people, who for whatever reason were given this wretched hand in life.

This is why I can understand how people don’t believe in God. The suffering and injustice in the world seems so overwhelming at times. What did these people do to deserve such a fate, why am I so lucky? The question of suffering and evil in the world, to me, is the strongest reason to not believe in some sort of Absolute Reality. It’s a question I still don’t really have a solid answer for. All I’ve read still leads me to cast doubts from time to time, and it’s here where a leap of faith is necessary and I’ve just got to hope that there is reason behind the madness.

But perhaps this strong objection that we feel towards the evils plaguing the world points towards a moral order behind the universe where our sense of goodness and justice originally came from. From a purely materialistic perspective, there’s no such thing as good or evil, justice or injustice. They aren’t real, just a matter of opinion or feeling – the universe is indifferent, and there’s no real reason why we shouldn’t act the same way. But we’re simply not like that, so maybe this in itself points to something.

But anyway, back to the main topic. My travels along the borderlands were brief, perhaps a little bit rushed, but nonetheless, it was an unforgettable experience seeing the sheer contrast of two North Koreas between the awe inspiring spectacle of Heaven Lake and the saddening life of everyday Koreans from a small border town on the edge of China.