Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 7:08 AM
Subject: Asia 2007 - Day 12
I woke up very congested and had to take an antihistamine and a decongestant. They helped, but not much. The air pollution in this part of China is notoriously bad and I suspect I am feeling its effects. I checked out around 7:45 and waited for Larry to arrive for our trip to Wuxi. After Wuxi, Larry is taking me back to PuDong Airport where I begin my roundabout journey home.
Larry was late, traffic was cited as the reason. I believe him. The trip to Wuxi takes around 2-hours on a good day, even though it is all highway and only around 70 miles. I call this a trip, but that really doesn’t properly describe it. It was really a two and a half hour white knuckled string of near collisions. For a culture that claims to value harmony, they are the most combative drivers I have ever seen, anywhere. All of us who drive have been involved in near misses; the person who changes lanes without looking, the cell phone talker who cuts you off; the car that pulls out in front of you when they should have waited for you to pass. If you drive a lot, maybe you have one or two of these incidents per day. But for the most part, the majority of Americans drive in a reasonably defensive and courteous manner. Here all the rules are different. It is normal to veer left or right forcing the vehicles next to you into another lane so you can pass – sometimes people make three lanes out of two, the center car straddling the white line. People try to squeeze into impossible openings often, counting on the others to avoid them, which they mostly do. Cars pull out into traffic with no regard for vehicles approaching, you are expected to change lanes or slow down. Bicycles and scooters share the road at times with cars and pedestrians. In Wuxi, which is famous for peaches in China, farmers set up stands in the road to sell peaches to passers by. We are on a four lane road with no shoulders and the right lane had a fruit stand on wheels in it every couple of hundred yards. Cars are attempting to pass others on the right and have to veer sharply left to avoid running over the farmer, sitting on his crate in the right lane showing no sign of concern. I could go on; there were far too many similar incidents to recall. I am totally bewildered by this. I am also not exaggerating.
During this thrill ride, my eyes begin to get irritated. Sometimes when I am having some environmental allergy issues, I have noticed that my eyes become overly sensitive to bright light; maybe yours do too. It is a sunny hazy day and I can barely keep my eyes open at times. Along the way I see small clusters of mostly two-story concrete houses with gray tile roofs and upturned finials at the corners of the eaves. These clusters, maybe 20 or 30 buildings in all and separated by only a few feet from the neighboring structures were in the middle of farm fields. Most looked occupied, some looked abandoned, all looked shabby. There were similar clusters every three or four-hundred yards. Larry told me these were farm houses. This didn’t make sense to me, you rarely see two farm houses near each other in America. Then it struck me – collective farming – one of the hallmarks of Marxist-Leninist Socialism, and one of its greatest failures as well. These were farming collectives where the people shared and worked the land together for the benefit of the group. It never worked well, productivity was poor and many starved. The entire trip to Wuxi, at least in the rural areas, but even in the outskirts of the cities, these collectives were everywhere. According to Larry, the farms closest to the city are rarely worked by more than a few people. The children have gone to the city for work, the parents stay behind and wait for the rapidly-growing city to come to them. If someone wants to build on their land, they have to pay the farmer for the remaining lease. According to Larry, these lucky few farmers are getting rich. The rest are still quite poor, barely raising enough food to live on. He asked about farming in the US. I explained the history of family farms and how most farms are owned and run by large corporations today; the family farmers driven into foreclosure and the kids gone to the cities for a better life. In retrospect, I’m not sure which story is worse.
Wuxi is a city of 4 million people, not an unusual size in China which has over 300 cities with greater than 1 million inhabitants. Wuxi made international news last week. The city has drawn its water supply from a nearby lake for centuries. Last week, due it appears to low water levels and high levels of pollution, an algae bloom filled the lake. The water turned green and slimy, foul smelling and toxic. The entire city of 4 million was, and still is without drinking water. People could not even cook or shower, the odor of the algae would remain on their skin. Drinking water was brought in by the truck load, the lake was treated, the water treatment plant filtered and cleaned. It may be weeks before the water is safe to drink. I was intending to spend last night in Wuxi until I read this story. I opted for a second night in Shanghai.
I visited two of my company’s plants in Wuxi, very clean and modern, brand new. Not a sweatshop, I am glad to say. We needed to stop for gas on the way out of town. We drove through an older part of town, looking for a gas station. Larry asked a local who pointed us to a gas station that I doubt has been painted since the Red Army rolled through in ’48. They had gas, which was pumped by one of three girls working there. You don’t pump your gas in China. I was the only westerner around in a part of town off the beaten path. There was a lot of staring and talking going on. I didn’t need a translator to know I was the subject. Strange feeling!
The ride to the airport took a painful 2 ½ hours. My eyes were burning the whole time. I realized part way through that this was not due to allergies; something in the air was burning them. The air quality is truly awful. I suppose you probably get used to it. Larry and I talked more about life in China. The subject of traffic violations came up. Shanghai uses radar-equipped traffic cameras which snap a picture of your license plate if you are traveling over the posted speed limit. Some places in the US have adopted this system, but most have been dropped because the camera cannot identify the driver, only the owner of the car from the license plate. In China, they are not so picky about details. Larry receives a bill in the mail monthly from the police. The bill includes no detail about places, times, speed, nothing; only an amount due, and no mechanism to challenge it. You have to pay or suffer the consequences. Larry pays. He became angry as he told me about this. “Chinese Government is Bitch!”, he said angrily several times during this conversation. His English is improving. I related some of my speed related experiences, but they pale. At least I had a semblance of due process, except in Buford County, Tennessee, but that’s another story.
I am Flying Dragonair back to Hong Kong, where I am spending the night. The flight was late departing (Dragonair? Draggin-ass more like : ) ). So we did not arrive until after 10:00 PM. I found the hotel shuttle after some difficulty and checked in. They gave me a complimentary upgrade to the business floor. It was the nicest looking hotel room I have ever had. Only bad part, you need a degree in Electrical Engineering to figure out the light switches, or maybe I’m just tired. No alarm clock (I don’t get this) so I set a 5:30 wake up call. Tomorrow the trek home continues
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| Hotel view from Hong Kong |
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