The city of Wudi has,
like nearly all Chinese cities an “old city” and a “new city.” We are driving around now in the dusty
expanse of the “new city.” We’re lost,
trying to find the entrance to the collection of new buildings where my brother
in law lives. Everything looks dusty and
new and precisely the same. “New City’s”
are necessarily uniform. To the right is
one of the enormous government office buildings that stands like an invitation
for challenge. It is so big. It is irrefutable. Inside is, among other offices is the county court. My brother in law works in the building on
the seventh floor. It is apparently
nicknamed “da ku chao” just like the more famous “underpants building” in
Beijing built by Rem Koolhaus. Certainly, it stands astride the new city.
Earlier in the fall a government office building or two were
attacked: one in Shanxi, one in Fujian. I
wrote about these attacks. Isolated
incidents. Futile but symbolic. Taller, august by far than any other building
in town, the government buildings of a tier three city like Wudi can only
attract attention. They are so
commanding, they simply dare you to challenge them. How could you even think to?
We had lunch with my brother in law’s family. They are lovely. I remember them from last New Year. An older mama, an older brother, a younger
brother, each of their families in-tow.
My brother in law once removed is retired from government work. His former boss has come to wish the family
well with a visit. It takes me a while
to realize that he too is retired. No
one seems willing to say anything intelligent about the town or the challenges
it faces. I prompt them. They smile and say things are improving. Everyone just mimics paeans to the peaceful
rise of the township and the province. This
is my family. I know them well. They are 勤政廉政[1], and they know better than anyone, there is
nothing they can do.
It pains me to write this assignation in English, which hasn’t
the proper vocabulary, but my brother in law’s wife’s brother’s wife, who is
maybe 10 years my elder and who used to work at a bank is suddenly beside
me. We begin with pleasantries. Clearly she is smart. We talk about her relations to me and quickly
move on to pollution. Out it comes, like
a deluge. A small town like Wudi, has no
power to defend itself against deals that allow factories to come. We only have the land to sell. Sell it we do. And the pollution has become unbearable. Look at my husband’s face. He has a skin problem. Look at your sister in laws face, she has a
skin problem. I would advise you and your
children to leave the country in the next year or two. It won’t get better. It will get worse.
Like a sudden clearing of the pollution it is so refreshing to
have an honest, non politic conversation
with another person. I look outside. She
looks outside. It is awful. I tell them of my mother in law’s most
sentient memory from her year in San Francisco.
It is breathing, deeply. She was
floored by the freshness of the air. (Though
when we visited the Muir Wood redwoods, she wondered at why they hadn’t yet
been turned to furniture.) Isn’t
everyone in Wudi talking about this?
Isn’t everyone frustrated? Aren’t
the people whose duty it is to protect the people vexed about this or at least
all the dissatisfaction? Clearly this
individual beside me is fed up. But the
prevailing sentiment must simply be “endure.” Chinese people are champions at
endurance. The prevailing sentiment, like sentiments in many places is about
prosperity first and in that regard the local government has delivered. But increasingly middle class Chinese may not
be so patient.
Good. Good. Good.
Final toasts. Final
greetings. Final farewells. It has been lovely. I toast my brother in law’s wife’s husband in
honor of his lovely sentient wife. He
seems perplexed. I remind her to push
their kids and their grand kids to keep up their English. “You always have a safety net if they choose
to go to America.” I remind them that I
hire people all the time in Beijing and simply because a candidate speaks
English it is possible to double their salary.
One young man is studying to be an engineer. It’s unclear to me precisely whether this is
an electrical engineer, or a civil engineer or a software engineer, but no
matter; don’t give up your English. It
will, for better or worse, stay your earning power, well.
Now we are on the highway.
This is, as most highways are, a rather dull highway. The countryside couldn’t be more filled with
history. If I wanted to imagine angry
Boxer Rebellion recruits uniting in righteousness in towns like this one we’re
passing now, or Li Bai passing by and tipping a bottle and penning a poem, or
Qianlong’s entourage passing through with the great coinsurer sampling the
scenery, it would all be quite reasonable to conjure. But instead, we have a broad, flat polluted
plain of farmland that extends to the sea.
A haze is everywhere over the land.
Occasionally we pass some plots of land that have oilfields;
the old-fashioned types that spin up and around like big hammers pulling globs
of oil out. I should be able to see for
miles. Perhaps if I were Qin Shi Huang
passing through my newly conquered country of Qi, I might be able to gaze out
to the sea from here and be mystified by its enormity.
Instead I can see for one-mile maybe. Particulate dust, film completely covers the
land. There is no escape from all this
washcloth of pollution. We are nearing
Dongying, where the U.S.A. has apparently invested a considerable amount of
money in joint development of local industry.
I think we will pass this great oil town by but the factories of its
outskirts are plotted near and far. The
effects are inescapable, unavoidable.
Shandong is rotten. The proud
province of 97 million, a country itself by any other estimation, is gasping.
This proudest, most traditional, most noble part of the
country is steeped in the tradition of endurance. And endure they do. You will put up with unparalleled smells,
toxicity, breathing compromises, olfactory compromises because clearly all of
this is better than chaos. That you
can’t deny. Chaos was worse. Occuption was worse. And it is better than poverty. You must admit. Who could blue skies and grinding poverty for
their kids. So regardless of whether it
is a horrific compromise of your birthright to the soil you hail from, you have
to admit, it is a form of progress. It
was hard earned and won’t lightly be traded in.
So chalk it up for an investment in a time to come when your kids’ kids
will be able to breathe again. For now,
be thankful there is peace in the land, you drive along highways that are in
everyway the equals of those in the US or Europe, and you have more than enough
to eat.
Certainly though, if you can, get out.
Pulling in to Wei Fang now.
A “real” city with 1.4M or so. No respite.
The air is chalk.
Perhaps Horace Tapscott complained about the air. He moved to L.A. in 1943 from Houston Texas
when he was the same age as my younger daughter. In 1961 he formed the Pan Afrikan Peoples
Arkestra. I hadn’t knows that there were
other Arks besides Sun Ra’s and Lee Scratch Perry’s. But perhaps he complained or watched L.A. get
worse as a child. Perhaps we was too
busy. I’m listening now to his thoughtful
piano composition “As a Child” from the album “Thoughts Of Dar Es Salaam” which
I’ve thought of, but never visited. He
was to pass two years after this recording with his smiling face and hands, on
the cover.
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