tap water, river water

RIP

My beloved water purifier stopped working last week; it just wouldn’t turn on.  I was tempted to unscrew the bottom and peek into the mechanical parts, but a stern warning on the bottom stopped me.  I think this impulse to take non-working things apart is very DYI American.  Instead, I emailed PC. 

Starting the water purifier is part of my daily morning routine.  It makes absolutely pure water, one drip at a time, taking four hours to produce 1 gallon.  When pouring from the jug, I’m hyper careful not to spill a drop and if I do, it’s a minor crisis, “Damn, there goes my water!”  I will never again view drinking water in quite the same way.  Do we really sprinkle potable water on our lawns in the US?

I use about a gallon of drinking water each day, so by the afternoon, I was getting low.  In our fabulous PC medical kits, between the condoms and anti-fungal cream, is a small jar of water purification tablets.  I eyed them for a second, and then decided to put them into my newly created earthquake evacuation bag.

I go to boil tap water.  I know one PCV who doesn’t use her purifier and just boils all of her drinking water, but she doesn’t live in Chongqing.  Boiled water is available all over China, like on trains, in bus and train stations, on every floor of my campus teaching building.  (As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that I could also just hike my jug to a teaching building for water.)

After I let the water cool, I made the mistake of looking at the water.  It separated into layers: a film on top, suspended particles, and sediment on the bottom!  I can’t believe it, so I do this experiment 3 times with the same results.

I want PC to helicopter over a new purifier from Chengdu; they email back that they can get one to me in about a month, saying my program manager will be coming to Chongqing, “Can you wait for it till she takes it for you or mail you now? We just worried the damage during the process of mailing.”  Understandable.  PC staff is concerned and responsive to PCV needs, but they have their limits.

Then, I get on the phone to get a jug of water delivered.  Speaking Chinese face to face is challenging enough for me, but on the phone, my elementary language skills can create all sorts of problems with both sides repeating when and where several times.  This call goes smoothly, and I’m saved with a jug about an hour later.

walk along the Jialing, from Ciqikou to Shapingba

Water is still on my mind a few days later when I found myself walking along the Jialing River after a huge thunderstorm the night before.  All of the side creeks were running, dumping who knows what into this 740-mile long river, now brown with silt and I can only imagine what else.  In March, 16,000 dead pigs were dumped into the Huangpu River which supplies water to Shanghai, but the local officials reassured everyone that the water is fine.

I don’t see any dead things in the Jialing.  I pass people at the river’s edge fishing, flying kites, washing clothes, all things I’ve seen before.  But, then I see something moving in the river.  People are swimming!  I look at barges chugging up river, I think about my tap water, and I wonder how safe and sane swimming in the Jialing is.

swimmers

side stream running 

is this exercise worth the risk?

fishing

this couple was ahead of me for about 1 mile,
the girl is wearing a typical outfit,
including high-heels

go west, buy apples, smile

a really patient person bought these apples

I pushed my shopping cart by 2 older women at a table of apples on sale.  One woman, a store employee, was unwrapping individual apples that were packed in paper and some cushioning wrap.  The other woman, a customer, was loading a bag, and they were chatting.  I stopped to grab a few apples, and they stopped talking to look at me.  This is so common that I hardly notice it anymore.  They started talking again, clearly wanting some information from me.  I told them that I don’t understand the local dialect, that I only speak a little Mandarin.  They persisted, so I gave them the usual spiel about where I’m from and why I’m here, thinking that’d be enough, and moved on to another produce table.

keep: wolf berries for tea

The store employee followed me, still talking, even though I clearly had no idea what she was saying.  She was inspecting the stuff in my cart, looking at and poking my arm, frowning with either disapproval or great concern or both, and continued talking with what seemed to be some (ironic) motherly diet advice.  I smiled, said “I’m ok.”   Her interest in me is understandable; I’m a foreigner- the locals are extremely curious about us …and I may have had some different stuff in my cart, including some western items. 

This is going to sound really sad and pathetic, but to entertain myself, I spend some time in the grocery store.  I buy interesting looking, random stuff, go home try to figure out what it is, and then decide if I’m willing to eat it.  Some stuff ends up in the trash, but I don’t feel like it’s a waste because every morning a woman sorts through all the garbage left outside our apartment doors.  That’s another post.

toss: supplement for breast enlargement?

As I was leaving the grocery store, I saw some other foreigners and I did a double take; there are so few foreigners in this part of China, so I had that typical Chinese response, wondering, “Who are they?  What are they doing here?”  All of the foreigners I’ve met here are either teachers, international students, business people, or occasionally tourists. 

I expected to see more foreigners in a mega-huge city like Chongqing.  Everyone talks about China’s rapid economic growth over the last 35 years when China opened to the west, but most of that growth and development occurred, is occurring, in the eastern provinces.  In response, the Chinese government looked for ways to help western China catch-up with eastern China:

"In 2000, China launched its "Develop the West" campaign. The western region includes nine provinces and autonomous regions, i.e., Gansu, Guizhou, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shannxi, Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Yunnan, in addition to Chongqing Municipality. It accounts for two thirds of China's total area and 22.8 percent of its total population. Western China is rich in minerals, energy (including hydropower), tourism and land resources."

The Chinese government asked the US government’s Peace Corp program for university English teachers for western China (in these provinces: Gansu, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Chongqing).  University English teaching is the only Peace Corps job in China.  English teachers are in great demand, but not all foreign English teachers have a PC attitude. 

mystery solved: powdered soybean drink

PC has a set of 10 “Core Expectations,” number 9 says: ”Recognize that you will be perceived, in your host country and community, as a representative of the people, cultures, values, and traditions of the United States of America.”  PCVs live and interact in the community, work on secondary projects, and talk about the US.  For one of my secondary projects I go to 2 or 3 English corners every week, hopefully changing some misconceptions and misunderstanding about American people and the US.  And, it’s an opportunity for me to learn more about and understand China too.

Every time I’m out and about, I try to remember that I'm a PCV, keep my patience, and tolerate the sometimes intense scrutiny in the produce department, or wherever. 

no mystery: thank you for the English

earthquake

When the earthquake started, I thought it was my washing machine, which does a pretty good earthquake imitation on the spin cycle but then with ultimate humor spits out dripping wet clothes that I have to wring by hand.

What caught my attention was all the noise from the student dorms; they were yelling and pouring out of the buildings.  A jolt of adrenaline hit me as I realize what was happening, “what am I supposed to do?”  I remember the PC advice to stay inside; I open the front door- just in case the doorframe shifts and jams it shut; I find my passport; I look up earthquake advice on the Internet.  In the US, we’re told to Drop, Cover, Hold, nothing about yelling and running out of the building, an impulse the Chinese follow, one that’s hard to resist.

A magnitude 7 earthquake hit Sichuan Province about 300 kilometers from Chongqing.  I’m fine, no apparent damage to my apartment. My apartment building is solid concrete, but it still shakes.

As I left for English Corner an hour later, I vowed to pack an emergency, grab-and-go bag with my passport, money, whistle, water, Tamiflu, facemask, and other stuff to get me safely out of the country.  With threats of nuclear weapons, Avian flu, earthquakes, and God knows what else, I better be prepared to flee at a moment’s notice.  Who knows why I haven’t done this sooner. 

PC China gave each PCV a 60 page Emergency Action Plan, outlining specific emergencies and evacuation procedures.  When I arrived at English Corner, PCV Jeff, one of the “wardens” is on the phone, going down his list of Chongqing volunteers.  I gave him a quick hug and as he turns away from the phone, he asks,  “Are you ok?”  Clearly I am.  He calls everyone in Chongqing and reports back to the PC headquarters in Chengdu.  Later in the day, PC’s director of safety and security sends out a reassuring email, all PCVs are safely accounted for.

Sadly, there is considerable damage and the death toll is rising.

This afternoon, I took the time to collect what I need, and I'm now ready with a packed bag stuffed with survival necessities; my retired Marine father would approve.   

Chinese tour group

With a free Saturday and forecasted nice weather, PCV Stephanie and I decided to finally take a long talked about daytrip to Dazu, a world heritage site.  Dazu is a town about 100 km from Chongqing where the surrounding area has 3 sites of Tang and Song dynasty (892-1245) Buddhist cliff sculptures carved into caves and overhangs.

It’s a trip we had already researched, so we had the lowdown on how to get there, but at the last minute, that Friday night, we made a plan change to go with a tour, booked through one of the local youth hostels.   It seemed like a good idea, the tour promised all we were planning, but with an English speaking guide and without the travel hassles, all for about the same price.  It sounded good.  It turned out to be something else, still we were glad to have a Chinese tour-group experience.  Now we know.

our tour group

The Chinese prefer to travel in groups, using arranged, packaged tours, and with the growing middle class, they have the time and money to travel.  Western, independent travelers contradict their ideas about the value of being in a group and about organized travel in general.  They find solo travelers very confusing.

The first problem of the day was waiting at the Yangtze River boat dock to leave.  River cruisers can take the add-on daytrip to Dazu, but the bus won’t leave until it’s full.  Several buses loaded and left; ours left 1 ½ hours later.  Even before we got on the bus, we were accosted with the “look-look, foreigners! Take a picture of them!”  For about 5 minutes it was amusing to listen to them speculate about where we were from and if we could speak Chinese.   Another problem for the day was the guide only spoke Chinese, very fast Chinese, so we didn’t understand any of the interpretive information.

at the lunch stop, Stephanie show off her tour group sticker

Our first stop on the way was a Buddhist temple where we spent about an hour standing around.  The next stop was lunch.

Finally at about 2:30, we arrived at Boading Shan (1179-1245), one of the sites, and as it turned out, the only Dazu site on the tour.  We had an hour there.

Then, we loaded up, drove about 20 minutes to a knife factory, where the tour unloaded to hear a hard-sell presentations on their wonderful knifes.  It worked because people were buying them.  An hour later we were again back on the bus.  I was feeling disappointed because we could have seen all 3 sites if we didn’t make all of these other stops. 

English interpretive signs that make sense

As we were coming back into Chongqing, the bus drove into my district, Shapingba, so I asked the driver to let me off and thankfully he did.  Stephanie sent me a text 15 minutes later saying they made another stop at a shop of local Chongqing food.  It took her another 2 hours to get home.

We agree no more tours; we’ll do independent travel!  Then just now, I got an email from Stephanie saying that starting this year China changed the restrictions for tourist travel to Tibet, but on the condition that foreigners go with a tour group.

looking forward to enlightenment

oh well, Cave of Full Enlightenment is too full of people

the Buddhist temple at Baoding Sha

next to the angry, evil monkey carvings