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, 龙腾虎跃[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.
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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