Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Coastal Overbuild




The coast has potential.  Writing to you from the coast of Huangdao south of Qingdao.  Not unlike Hong Kong, every effort has been made to capture every imaginable view of the sea.  Out to my right is Lingshan Island, which is attractive, if solemn.  On the side of the road are some people who’ve laid out some gnarled sacks of oysters to sell.   A dozen cars are pulled over to check out their catch. Fresh oysters sound nice but I wonder about the water.  They seemed to have had more luck than the people I saw this morning who were digging with hand rakes for clams at the seaside.  The sound of the phrase has more punch in Chinese than mere “digging for clams” as you must say we are out: “wa ga la.”




This makes me think of a tour I might do, called the complete make over tour of all the Chinese cities I knew from the 90s and haven’t really had a chance to revisit like Chongqing, Chengdu or Lanzhou.  Major cities I’ve watched change up close.   But I haven’t been here in Qingdao for at least ten years. I’m still not there, approaching as I am from the south.  The barren rocky coast has some pines and shrubs and other tasteful plantings.  To my left across the highway four, five, story apartments set before towers of flats with thirty stories and more.  We’re still many miles from the city itself.

Everything has a vaguely ersatz German, red finish to the roofs.   These finishes are the preferred imperialist meme.  Nothing suggests Japan besides the fancy touches of coastline walkway detail.  Japan does antiseptic coastlines well.  The pulsing, frenetic sense though of expectant wealth is undeniable.  Build, build.   They’ve left at least 100 meters from the highway to the coast for public land, which I suppose we should be thankful for. 

The hotel just sent a weixin note to my wife.  We left something.  A small purse with my daughter’s phone.  Now we’re on our way back.  Now I’ll really get a view. 

Not really.  I dozed off.  But we’ve yet another chance heading north once more to Qingdao itself.  Well, once again, it’s confirmed the faux German mode dominates.  It’s confirmed: every possible inch of space on the left side is now taken up with villa developments in front and towers in the back.  I guess this strip is hopping in the summer when its truly crowded and the beach is wall-to-wall people.  For now it has that dominant theme from this trip of comparative emptiness; crowds pending.  It’s New Year’s season.  Things are closed.  It’s winter in a beach town and nobody’s around. 

China, of course, isn’t famous for it’s beaches.  The long tidal plane of shallow water we saw this morning wouldn’t draw much of anyone back home.   My wife was talking with the bar mistress who suggested that it is a veritable swimming pool in the summer, completely packed with no room whatsoever to do much beyond occupy some plot in the shallow water.  Ninety-seven million people along this coast line, and one can imagine.  Meanwhile back up along the coast near my wife’s village, there also a beach, that this no better or worse than this one here.  But throw a factory up and then another, which pollute egregiously and it becomes quite a bit harder to imagine any tourist development.  Some place, most places, have to bear the brunt of all this build

We’ve been driving for many miles now and the development doesn’t stop.  There are buildings now on the right side.  Enormous projects involving thirty separate towers that march down to the sea.  These are all necessarily second home or thirty-eighth home investments for someone who just must have a beach home or who figures this will be the next great place to flip property.  Has everyone just played the property game so well to turn houses over and over and over and over and someone have sufficient amounts of the country’s money to buy these by the dozens?  Huangdao may be empty, but its ambitions are, 龙腾[1]



My wife reminds me that this is the town that had the oil pipeline explosion a few months’ back that resulted in the death’s of at least fifty-five people.  The oil pipe must have been on the other side of town.  This posh strip has no signs of explosion aftermath.  I’m not usually one to go on and on about the overbuild in China.  It’s a fact of life but this is truly absurd.  It isn’t stopping. 

Off to my left is yet another collection of, say, fifty or more glistening new towers.  I know what it finally reminds me of . . . Dubai.  Dubai had this remarkable new tower overbuild that made Shenzhen seem quiet.   I do think I have just passed over ten thousand or more new buildings built, or constructions begun in the last few years. Imagine that if you will. I haven’t gotten anywhere near the city of Qingdao yet.  This is the cement and the steal that kept the Australian and the Mongolian and how many other raw material provider economies booming right through the world financial crisis.  And overbuild, and this brings us up to . . . music. 

As suggested ,I followed the thread from pianist Myra Melford back to one of the people she played with, Henry Threadgill.  The great alto player and composer’s most recent band is called Zooid and I was listening to “This Brings Us Up To: Volume 1” Recorded in 2009 which feels like almost yesterday compared to most of what we listen to here.  “To Undertake My Corners Open” is broad, and complicated but groovey, anchored and playful. I can remember struggling with “avant garde jazz” listing to albums like Threadgill’s in the 90s but it feels pretty straight up and embraceable in a vast sort of way.  The guitar playing on these compositions, is the work of one Liberty Ellman.  He’s fabulous.  What’s credited as tuba but on this tune must be a trombone is the work of Jose Davila. Gorgeous.  He’s credited as playing acoustic but this is definitely some electric guitar work.  Perhaps I’ll follow the thread on to his work tomorrow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Threadgill


I’ll have to look up the story of the explosion when I head back.  Yes, here it is, it was last November.  Fifty-five people killed and apparently this isn’t the first time Huangdao suffered such a mishap.  24 years earlier lightening struck an oil tank setting off a chain of explosions that killed 19 and injured another seventy eight:  http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1365162/work-safety-lessons-not-learned-qingdao-oil-pipeline-blast  This time, however Zeus was not to blame and “human error” was sighted as the problem: Sinopec blamed by the central government and the petroleum giant in turn blamed the local government’s protection of the sewage system.

Finally we’re going under the water and the buildings have, it seems, stopped.  Now there is only a shipping company monstrosity or two and finally a straight show down into the sea under through a tunnel.  This is a very deep tunnel. Got my wallet out to pay the thirty kuai to pay the tunnel but its New Year’s and it’s free.

One last thing, last night at the hotel in Huangdao, the corny band they’d hired did a pretty tired version of Hey Jude.  But then, afterwards, I saw a little boy running around singing the melody.  This made me very happy.  Then, a man before me at the self-serve buffet was also on about “nah nah nah nah.”  What a power the Beatles had among other things to simply generate catchy melodies.   This brings us up to, the end . . .   





[1] lóngténghǔyuè lit. dragon soaring and tiger leaping (idiom) / fig. prosperous and bustling / vigorous and active

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