The Fish Tank

If you think people aren’t damaging the environment, you haven’t lived in Shanghai.

Even the seabirds don’t fish in the Huangpu River.

Today I saw ten dead fish floating in the water.

I know fish live there; I’ve seen them jump from the water and make little splashes, sending ripples larger than themselves into the muddy, slightly greasy flow around them.  But they don’t live very long.

I’ve also seen a single plastic sandal, capsized like a boat in that river.  I’ve seen cellophane wrappers from cigarette packages.  Styrofoam packing material, floating like fake Hollywood rocks.  A brightly colored Gala apple, dancing on the surface like a sick Halloween invitation to bob for apples.  Bamboo shoots like Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s stakes.  Aerosol spray cans.

The water is unclean.

Oh, it flows.  Pristinely white cruise ships dock along the Huangpu's entire length, huddling conspiratorially together like gossipy fur-clad heiresses.  Short boats carrying coal float just feet above the river's surface, chugging up and down the river all day and all night under their burdens, proudly flying their Chinese flags.  Their laundry is hung to dry on deck, and it flutters in the toxic breeze like Tibetan prayer flags.  Hulking ships from Australia or other locales carry steel car parts, clothing, Siemens refrigerators, Nike shoes, iPhones--nearly everything the world buys and sells.  

But it’s not clean.

 

The air smells and even tastes like burnt metal sometimes.  Coal smoke sends its toxic fumes into the already deadly air.  Sometimes the air smells of dust or smoke.  It’s worse at night when I come out of the metro and head for home after work.  I wonder if this is why the government shuts down the metro between 10 and 11 pm:  Are they trying to limit the people out in this airpocalypse?  Or is it a secret curfew to keep crime down?

Sometimes my throat hurts for no reason.

I have recurring rashes:  one above my collarbone and one in my left armpit.  Sometimes the skin at the corners of my mouth and nose is raw and peeling.  I get painful canker sores inside my mouth more often here than in any other place I’ve ever lived, but that could just be my body reacting to the   24 million person germ pool!  I have tried Tiger Balm, hydrocortizone cream, and my go-to in the Peace Corps, bacitracin ointment.  I take allergy pills regularly.  Nothing works.  Just when I think I've had my last canker sore, I suddenly find myself slurring around another one.  The rashes go away for a while, but then they come crawling back like cockroaches. 

Whenever I talk to my students about the environment in China, I force myself to admit that the U.S. isn't perfect, either.  Spokanites used to push their broken down cars into the Spokane River.   Yellowstone’s Grand Prismatic Spring, that beautiful rainbow of steam and water, was once treated like a garbage pit.  It’s hard to believe that America the Beautiful, Home of the Hippy, once treated its natural treasures this way.  But it's the truth, and if I can, I want to save my students from making some of those same mistakes.

Still, health is the number one reason why ex-pats leave Shanghai.  (http://www.echinacities.com/expat-corner/Get-Out-of-Dodge-5-Reasons-to-Leave-China)  When PM 2.5 (the particulate matter portion of the air quality index) reaches 50 micrograms in the U.S., they caution parents to keep their children inside.  An average AQI in Shanghai is 150.  Daily.  You can't keep your kids in all the time.  Some ex-pats talk about the fact that their formerly healthy children now have asthma. And according to The Atlantic, even some Chinese want to leave.  

But leaving China doesn't mean you'll escape the problem. The Weather Channel reported last year that air pollution from China has reached California.  This has been confirmed by UC Irvine.  Some reports claim that a quarter to a third of the pollution in California can be traced back to China.  Not that California isn't producing its own share, but China’s problem is not isolated.  It’s on America's shores.  We can't point a finger and say, "It's over there.  It's not us, it's them," because it is us.  Pollution doesn't stay inside political borders.  It doesn't need a passport or a visa.  No border patrol is keeping it out, or putting it on a truck or a boat back to wherever it came from.  Its master is the wind and the tide.  And us.  But we've let it get out of control like a spoiled child.

I get so angry when Americans say climate change or global warming is a hoax, because they are straight up lying to themselves.  Suicidal individuals suck on a tailpipe when they want to die.  I don't want to die, but I'm huffing emissions from cars and factories every day no matter where I live.  Scientists in every country have concurred:  the weather all over the world is increasingly extreme.  A co-worker from the Philippines told me they just had hail for the first time in history.  Hail.  In the Philippines.  In the tropics.  What the hell is hail doing there?!

A lot of people in Spokane and in the U.S. don't believe the scientists.  They seem to think science itself is one big hoax.  Well, if you don't believe the scientists, then talk to the oldest man or woman you can find!  Ask them if the weather in their hometown has changed in their lifetime.  I guarantee they will say yes. 

 Notorious for denying anything negative about itself, China admits that the pollution here is extremely hazardous.  In addition, they are perhaps starting to be even more concerned about the effects of environmental degradation on their economy.  The English language China Daily newspaper states that pollution costs equal about 10% of China's GDP.  Whether the Chinese want to or not, they are paying for pollution.  They can choose to pay for organic food and electric cars, or they can sacrifice their GDP.  But they will pay.

 As a whole species, we will pay.

Stephen Hawking, not usually a glass half empty type, has just predicted that humanity won't last another 1000 years on this planet, and that finding another habitable planet is the only thing that will save us.  (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/28/stephen-hawking-humanity-1000-years_n_7160870.html)

When I've talked with my students (teenagers in danger of dropping out, adult English Language Learners) about pollution, I get them to think of a fish tank.  Some of my students have kept fish as pets, and most know that when the tank gets dirty, you need to clean it.

 “Why?”  I ask.

 “Duh.  Because the fish will die if you don’t!”  a high school student answers.

 “Okay, so what does the cleaning involve?”

 “You must have new water,” a Chinese student answers.

 “Exactly.  Now imagine that our Earth is our fish tank, and we are the fish,” I say.  “What happens when our tank gets dirty?  Where will we get new water?”

 This is when the room falls silent.  This is when even the lippy teenagers get genuinely thoughtful faces.

 I don’t want to scare my students.  I’m usually positive and light.   

But they all need to hear this.

 “There IS no other water,” I tell them.  

Sometimes I show them a picture of our beautiful sapphire and emerald home at this moment.  It's suspended in the black loneliness of space like a lost child.  Unique and limited, precious and finite in an infinity of God's stars. 

“This is it.  If we continue to pollute our fish tank--our planet...We.  Will.  Die.”

Huŏguō 21 December 2013 Mingyue (bright moon) Charcoal Hotpot (huoguo)

I'd been put in charge of organizing the staff Christmas dinner/Secret Santa gift exchange.  We had a generous budget of 2000 RMB.  My Chinese still isn't good enough to make reservations over the phone, so I had to ask one of my awesome coworkers to do it for me.  Only two of my coworkers couldn't attend--one was ill, the other was on annual leave.  I have to admit the Secret Santa thing was kind of exciting.  I'd drawn my boss, a lovely Filipina lady who is Catholic like myself, so I grinned as I tied a red "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" ribbon onto her gift bag.  I'd gotten her a lovely tropical plant and a seaweed mask, which I thought was fitting for an islander.

Saturdays tend to be a bit rough for me sometimes.  I usually start at 10:40 am with three classes in a row.  The good thing is that I'm usually done one or two hours before most of the other teachers.  Two of my American coworkers joined me down at Mingyue for a quick "pre-game" beer while the staff took their time prepping the table for two large hotpots.

There were these big ceramic bowls with sort of metal chimneys sticking up in the middle--like a volcano or something.  Full of charcoal, the chimneys had waves of heat and tiny trails of smoke coming out the top; the water in the ceramic bowls was at full seething boil.  One bowl was the spicy one, and the other one was flavored with milder stuff.

We trooped out to make our own dipping sauces; there was a buffet of ingredients:  chili sauce, vinegar, scallions, Chinese parsley, chopped nuts, sesame seeds, sesame oil, sesame paste, garlic, etc.  Literally 30 small salad bowls full of different things to create your own potion.  I'm a fan of sesame oil, so I loaded up on that, among other things.

I know it sounds obvious, but the hotpots were REALLY hot by the time we returned to the room.  They made our faces turn red.  In broken Chinese, I asked my coworkers to name many of the ingredients, cold and/or raw on their plates waiting to be cooked.  It was fun to throw in thinly sliced beef or pork, prawns, lotus root, yam, winter melon, pre-cooked quail eggs, and lots of other stuff--and then fish it out!  It was like camping, in a way, which I adore.  Just trying to get the eggs, for example, out of the boiling, oily water with chopsticks took more skill than eating should have to take.  We giggled or groaned, trying to help each other.  Eventually, we all had to get plastic Chinese soup spoons, and even my Chinese coworkers used them. 

I begged forgiveness for peeling the shells off my prawns with my fingers--after two years in Micronesia, the idea of eating seafood with a utensil was impossible, but I didn't want to offend my coworkers--who somehow managed to neatly nibble the prawns out of their shells with delicately-held chopsticks.  Every 20 or 30 minutes, a restaurant staffer would enter the room with a huge steaming kettle of water and add some to the bowls, making clouds of steam that evaporated quickly. 

I may have been on my second or third Budweiser (which I usually can't afford) when it was present time.  None of my Chinese coworkers celebrated Christmas, but they'd sure gotten into the spirit.  And they'd gotten some great deals.  Our Secret Santa budget had been 50-60 RMB per gift, and some of my coworkers showed up with huge tote bags full of stuff.  I really don't know how they'd done it--other than the fact that they were locals, of course. 

Another of my coworkers had made a silly paper crown for an American guy who sits next to me in the office.  It had come down to Thai food or hotpot, and he'd successfully pushed the vote for hotpot.  "We have an announcement--the King of Hotpot, everyone!"  We laughed, and the coworker who'd made the crown videoed the King's speech with her smart phone.

My gift was a solid cube of soap from L'Occitane that smelled like linden.  It was from the lone Brit in our office, who would be leaving the next day.  So far, two foreign teachers had left and two had replaced them; the local turnover was higher, with four out and four in.  That's just in the six months I've been working.

I still haven't made any solid decisions about my future here.  My contract is up in July 2014.  I hate the pollution, and there is a painful awareness of just how many people 20 million is when you must push your way through them on a daily basis.  But I've met and/or seen Chinese, American, Irish, Italian, Kiwi, Canadian, Indian, and German ex-pats, just to name a few.  I love the diversity.  There's a Chinese man I met who's been teaching English to Maori children in New Zealand.  I've seen a beautiful Chinese woman speaking German on her cell phone.  I've listened to Johnny Cash and Enya while eating lunch at a restaurant named Southern Belle with an Aussie and a Brit from my Chinese class.  I love knowing THE WORLD EXISITS--something that we don't really KNOW in Spokane, I'm sorry to say.

At the same time, I long for crisp blue skies; for an all-day chat with my sister over a cinnamon roll from the Rocket; for the purr of my cat next to my ear as he sleeps; and for the absence of constant construction noise.  Everywhere I've been, everything I've seen--nothing compares to the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, it's mountains and its trees, its clear streams and quiet hiking trails.  I can't imagine living in Shanghai forever, that's for darn sure!

Shanghai Street Fighter 12 July 2013

It's the kind of heat that feels like it's against you, out to get you, and you struggle against it--to move, to function, to sweat--even to breathe.  The pollution, the horns, the metallic banging of construction, the bicycle bells, the soggy, oven-like air seeping into the pores on your face, your hands, your scalp.  Your pants stick to your legs, and the fabric feels clumsy as you walk.  The air forces its way into your mouth, up your nostrils--the ammonia-like stench of public toilets, the mouth-watering aroma of peaches, the musty, poopy smell of sewer, the sizzling burn of Shanghai fried noodles cooking up on a street cart, the unfamiliar tang of hard boiled eggs simmering in soy sauce--you don't know whether to hold your breath or to suck it all in. 

You can't fight this. 

In other places this hot, people walk slowly.  They refuse to go out from about 10 am until about 6 or 7 p.m. 

In Shanghai, people still hurry.  Hardly anyone wears flip flops.  Ladies wear high heels and risk turning an ankle--all in the name of fashion.  They carry umbrellas when it's not raining, and the women on scooters wear long sleeves and gloves, and even sometimes a visor that looks like the kind of mask welders wear--all in the name of white skin.  Traffic cops swelter in full uniform--hat, gloves, the whole bit--sweating even under the huge intersection umbrellas on each corner.

People, mostly Chinese men, still smoke inside--elevators in hotels, convenience stores; there are cigarette brands with names like Double Happiness; there are still a few men with long nails (cab drivers showing off the fact that they don't have to do hard labor like farming); on the street in on the subway platform, men and women both still hawk and spit, although much less frequently than 25 years ago in Golmud--you hear it only 3 or 4 times a day now.

You can't fight this.

Fighting takes more energy, and that is energy you need to survive--to dodge the car that follows you up onto the curb--to avoid tripping over a cart or flipped brick--to keep moving without passing out--to eat enough without risking illness.

Before being a street fighter, you have to stop fighting the street.