Alright, Let's Talk Pollution:

Me 4 years ago in Qufu with sweet ass hair, contemplating the processes that had occured to transform this waterhole into a cesspool over the time I lived there. All that green and trash is covering water. I immediately tore off my clothes and went swimming.

Campus businesses start pumping the coal early in the morning to power their shops.

Yesterday I was walking down the street in Zaozhaung central just to get out of campus, which is becoming a bit claustrophobic as I meet more and mroe people. As I was walking down the street I looked up and saw a girl riding her bike, crying as she pedaled along. I felt terrible. Really, is there anything worse than seeing a lonely soul by themselves in public who are so overcome with grief or frustration that they cannot control their emotions? It seems to be a fairly habitual thing in NYC, as I have seen separate people on the same subway trip crying to themselves as they ride. Yet I can't help but feeling terrible everytime I see it. What could possibly have happened that would make their emotions so uncontrollable that they can't simply wait to get home and cry themselves to sleep as I do nearly every night(Oops, did I just let that out?)?

As I was pondering the misery of that poor girl I continued to look at on coming traffic and noticed something peculiar. Many people were covering their mouths and reaching for their eyes in pain. For a moment I was really concerned before I began to realize what was really happening. The local bike commuters were not having problems combatting their emotions, as I had originally thought, they were instead combatting a much more sinister foe, the particualte matter in the air itself. I often wear sunglasses during evening bike rides here also just to shield my eyes from all of the dirt and debris.

This episode got me thinking about the environment here, like a lot of things do. In the months leading up to the Olympics Americans were treated to thousands of news articles about the terrible environmental problems of China. I have been a little hesitant to talk about the environmental problems here. Too often when referring to the environmental issues of China people talk about it as though this country is singularly brazen and malignant in its actions. This ignores a few important facts.

One is that China and the US are ranked 1 and 2 in the world respectively in coal consumption, with the US trailing China by a relatively narrow margin. They are also ranked one and two in oil consumption, with the US being number one, consuming more than three times as much oil per day as China. It is pretty hypocritical for Americans to talk about China's voracious appetite for energy. The US got away with developing its country utilizing unlimited amounts of coal and oil simply because it did it first. Second, Many of the drastic problems that China is facing is more related to the population issue than their environmental policies, and it is simply childish and stupid to blame a largely agricultural based society for having a large population(Especially when they were encouraged by the Mao government in the 50's to have more children, saying, "the larger the population China has, the stronger it grows." That is a healthy vision). And Thirdly, many of the Chinese people, in some ways, are more environmentally conscience than Americans. This doesn't come from any innate sense of respect for the earth so much as it comes from the realities of economics. Poor families tend to conserve more because they understand limitations, and often conservative use of materials saves money. People here care about using very little water, turning off lights in a room they are not occupying, and fully utilizing all parts of animals for food, because it is the most economical way to live. I have literally talked with some people here for half an hour about the environmental problems of China, and then heard them say, "oh, you know what I miss so much about home, is being able to take, like, a 20 minutes shower without running out of hot water!!" At this point I fail to control the reflex to give them an open palmed slap to the face.

These misunderstandings aside, I think that it is important to discuss the environmental problems around here because the situation is pretty critical. Most of the focus in the western media has been on the large metropolis' of Shanghai and Beijing, since those are the regions with the most westerners, and also a region in which Beijing claimed to be having the first ever "green" Olympics. Everytime I heard that I wanted to laugh or cry or spit or something. Anyway, what I think is even more telling about the environmental situation here is the life in smaller towns. Large cities all around the world have problems with pollution, what is startling here is the obvious environmental degradation that is occurring even in the countrysides, where it even seems that the greens are a little less green and the water seems a little, well...

To be honest, this is Shanghai, the rest of the pics are all Qufu and Zaozhuang

There are so many clear examples, and so I will go over the major issues and just try to show some pictures to illustrate it. The most obvious problem that I see is the incredible accumulation of garbage that is everywhere. Littering is normal here and when there is as many people as there are here it can be devastating. Just yesterday I was riding on a bus back home after walking around town and saw a college student open up the window of the bus and toss out the wrapper of the chocolate she had just eaten. No one looks twice, because many people do it, there are no fines or even advertisements to prevent littering in the provincial areas. and it has its clear effects. Here are two pictures taken from the exact same field, one from a distance, the other up close and personal.

A street right beside the campus here, well outside of the city limits:

Everything that is not green or brown in the picture is all garbage, and the smell of this area convered in wet garbage is priceless. Here is a random street corner as I was walking to a friends house one evening.

and here is my personal favorite:

The sign on the tree says on it, "Disposing of garbage in this area is prohibited." This illustrates perfectly the success of the limited efforts at controlling littering in this area.

But garbage on the streets, while gross, is not the only form of pollution that I am confronted withon a daily basis. This last weekend while in Qufu I was discussing with the other American teachers apartment maintenance, and one of the biggest problems plaguing everyone trying to keep our floors clean. Dust accumulation happens at an uncanny rate here, all thanks to the fact that all of our campuses are powered by coal!

Isn't that gorgeous, our local coal fields at the University

Coal, what a wonderful thing, just looking at it you know that you are looking at something that is meant to make you sick. Not only does it power your college campus, but I also go down there when I don't have anything good to eat in my apartment, put it in a bowl, pour some milk in and have a delicious breakfast treat. My first year in China I was plagued by a cough that wouldn't go away, and would occasionally cough up balls of phlemb with specs of black in it(MMM). Three years later I can take solace in the fact that my body, like that of a smoker, has adjusted to the levels of coal dust in the air. I still, however, wake up and have to blow my nose almost every morning, and am amazed by how black the kleenex is after blowing. It is really mindlblowing to live in the countryside and still be concerned with air pollution. Yet I am reminded of the difficulties every morning when I wake up at 530 am to the sound of men shoveling coal into the back of their truck to use to power their restaurant for the day. It is even clearly visible, take a look of these pictures. One is taken the day after a rain storm cleaned the air a bit, and the second is taken on a random day this fall that I decided to climb the mountain:

The building in the lower right hand corner of the first picture is the same building as the large one in the middle of the second picture. The finger in the upper left hand corner of the second picture is reference to my incredible ineptitude in picture taking. Both days have a bit of sun, and you can see that neither is perfectly clear, yet the second picture is clearly murkier. Another look:

One more look directly at the campus:

And there are other issues also that I have mentioned before and will surely continue to mention, such as the water pollution that doesn't allow me to drink tap water here and has me eating worm medication, or the insane noise pollution that has me more annoyed than anything else.

I hope that people can see this and not just think, "Whoa China's pretty f$%#ed up." The problems that are occuring in China occur everywhere, and the methods by which China becomes polluted are learned from the countries that pioneered modern industrialization. The environmental difficulties in China are only more clear because it is a rapidly developing nation that is heavily overpopulated. I hope that the clear signs of environmental degradation in China can more be a wake up call for everyone to pay more attention to environmental issues rather than a catalyst for criticism of a country, a people, or a political system as it often seems to be when I read about it through certain media outlets.