Wiping up More Pollution

Over a year ago the Chinese government decided to ban giving away free plastic bags of a certain thinness to cut down on pollution. However, those who decided to go to the supermarket at the last minute without a cloth bag could still buy a plastic bag that was thicker. However the inexorbinant charge of a few pennies in RMB has done little to really make people change their consumer habits.

 

Nevertheless, last month the National Development and Reform Commission proudly announced there was a 66 percent reduction in the use of plastic bags, saving China 1.6 million tons of petroleum.

 

Before the ban the NDRC estimated 3 billion plastic bags were used daily, creating 3 million tons of garbage a year, and using 5 million tons or 37 barrels of oil to produce the bags.

 

This is all fantastic, but can I move my complaint now to napkins at restaurants?

 

Why do they make the ones at Chinese restaurants these tiny cocktail-sized things, when you really need a decent-sized one that also isn't so flimsy that you need more than one?

 

Now this is a waste of paper resources... why hasn't someone complained about this?

 

As I'm in Xi'an this week, I've noticed some restaurants are taking to CHARGING customers for a small box of napkins, which are really small tissues.

 

Last night I went to a slightly fancy restaurant, one with multicoloured tablecloths and numerous servers.

 

I asked for some napkins and the waitress asked, "One portion?"

 

I just said yes, thinking, yeah, one napkin is fine.

 

Only when she came back with a small box and opened it up to reveal some tissues did I realize I was going to be charged for it.

 

While it only cost 1RMB, I could have been forewarned about it as I already had my own tissues in my bag!

 

So I took the box of tissues with me after dinner as a souvenir and am carrying them around and using them whenever the need arises. My 1 RMB will go a long way...

 

 

Traveler's Nightmare

The Beijing Airport Express is almost a year old and was built in time for the 2008 Olympics. Meant to ease congestion to the airport by providing a fast train to the newest terminal, Terminal 3, the concept was good, but the execution was not.

I recently moved to Dongzhimen, which is the terminus for the Airport Express, called ABC or Airport Beijing City.

Today I flew to Xi'an for a business trip and thought it would be convenient to take the ABC. Not.

As I live across the street from the station, I had to drag my suitcase and carry-on through the subway underpass which has no escalator and then back up stairs.

Then I had to go to the ABC entrance, which could have been connected to the subway, but wasn't.

Even worse was that there was only a stairway going down to the train, not even an escalator and again I had to carry my baggage down.

Finally below ground there was another escalator that took you to the security check and then ticket booth where you could buy the 25 RMB ticket at a booth or at machines. And just our luck only one window was open, but two other staff manning the other booths, but just not feeling like serving anyone.

Thankfully one of them decided to ease the line-up and I jumped ahead and got a ticket from him.

Yet another set of escalators down and then there were some benches available for people to wait and watch silly entertainment on the TV screens.

After a 10 minute wait I get onto the train, but there is no extra room made available for suitcases, like the Hong Kong Airport express, nor much legroom either.

We finally get on our way and after 20 minutes make it to Terminal 3. The train then backtracks a bit before heading in another direction to Terminal 2.

I had been told that my flight was at Terminal 2, but I couldn't find it on the screen and it turned out it was in Terminal 1 which was another 10-minute walk away. Luckily baggage carts were available and after a power walk, I was able to get there in less than the estimated time and check-in.

Needless to say, once I sat in the plane, I quickly nodded off, sleeping off some of the stress I'd had to deal with and physically lugging all my stuff around.

The ABC is like so many other infrastructure projects here -- great idea, but not much thought gone into details or long-term planning. By the same token, I find many people here are big on ideas, but not quite sure how they're going to achieve the goal, or the logistics of getting there.

So while many people take the ABC, the Airport Bus is still doing a brisk business. I used to take it all the time as one of the routes was near where I used to live. It took you straight to each of the three terminals and only 16 RMB. The only wild card is the traffic. But if you're not in a hurry, it's pretty much stress-free.

Stunted Growth

Tonight my friend took me to a Yunnan restaurant near Sanlitun. Luckily he'd made reservations earlier as many hungry diners were sitting in the entrance waiting for a table.

The food there is pretty good -- we'd ordered mashed potatoes with tea shoots, prawn salad, cold tofu with a bean sauce, baked eggplant with cheese, and the best dish of all -- roast veal that was succulent, juicy and delicious.

We just barely finished our food, but it seemed others around us had similar experiences, ordering too much food because it all looked so good.

While we were eating, there was one table in the corner that had grandparents, a granddaughter, parents and a friend.

The grandma had the child in her lap as they ate dinner, while the parents and friend chatted away, periodically interacting with the toddler.

After they finished, the little girl started wandering around, playing with long ribbons that were quasi-curtains, yanking them.

The grandmother did nothing about it, not even disciplining her right away, condoning the child to continue playing and wandering through the restaurant. Meanwhile the father smoked a cigarette, the wife continuing her conversation with her friend with hardly a look of concern.

This is a typical family scene -- the parents uninterested in their child, while the grandparents look after their precious bao bao.

My friend remarked that today's grandparents are used to hard work, having raised their own children and been through tumultuous times in the past several decades.

But what will happen later when these parents become grandparents? Will they be as devoted and physically willing to look after their grandchild?

It also reminded me of my ex-colleague who recently got married.

She's 24-years-old and talented, hardworking and good at what she does.

However, she'd rather just stay in her low-paying job and not try to get ahead because she is now in the supportive role for her husband than trying to achieve more in her career. The other main reason is that now both parents and in-laws are expecting a grandchild soon...

I've met many young wives who seem content to continue with their work and not try to get ahead even though they are qualified or have ambitious aspirations.

Coming from the west, it's very difficult for me to understand or accept their belief in their station in life, when I see so much potential around me that will be stagnated or even diminished.

The pressure to get married at a young age (in their 20s) is so strong here, that it is difficult for a woman to focus completely on her career. China needs not only men, but also women who can forge new paths for the country in whatever field they excel in. And why not let them? Why must society force its familial obligations on these young people when they have only recently reached adulthood?

China could accomplish so much more and possibly have a less male-dominated society that would inspire more girls to realize that it is possible to have it all, whatever they define that to be.

Wondering What's in the Air

In a recent report from Xinhua, there were 146 blue-sky days in Beijing in the first six months of the year, the best air quality in nine years.

 

"Air quality in the capital has improved steadily over the past six months," said Du Shaozhong, deputy director-general of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau.

 

In the first six months of last year, only 123 blue-sky days were reported.

 

However, how a blue-sky day is determined is not quite clear and now the city has a competitor that is bringing not so optimistic readings.

 

The US Embassy quietly began giving its own air quality readings every hour on Twitter.com/beijingair that are either meant to shock your lungs or is a realistic picture of the city's air.

 

For instance, at 2pm today (July 3), the reading is 0.135, 192 (unhealthy) and today's average is 0.090, 168 (unhealthy).

 

Beijing prefers measuring particles less than 10 micrometres in diameter (PM 10) which are things we can practically see with the naked eye. Its readings also include statistics on sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide.

 

But the US Embassy's readings are more focused on PM 2.5 or particles less than 2.5 micrometres that can go into people's lungs and blood stream, causing things like cancer and asthma.

 

Granted the embassy is located in the downtown area, still, many people live and work in that area.

 

Meanwhile last year Beijing started manipulating its readings ahead of the 2008 Olympics by taking readings from stations outside the city core so it looked like air quality was good, but in fact now we find that it was not.

 

According to new research in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, particulate pollution levels on an average day in Beijing last year were between two to four times higher than that of Los Angeles.

 

Researcher Staci Simonich, an Oregon State associate professor of environmental and molecular toxicology says pollution levels in the Chinese capital in 2008 were 30 percent higher than reported by Chinese environmental experts. Needless to say these levels were considered excessive by World Health Organization standards.

 

"The athletes and visitors were only exposed for a very short time," Simonich said. "Millions of other people there face this air quality problem their entire lives. It was unlike anything I've ever seen -- you could look directly at the sun and not have a problem, due to the thickness of the haze."

 

Having lived here for over two years, I hope the air quality doesn't have too drastic an effect on my health...

Blacking Out and Blanking Out

Last night after 9pm, all of a sudden the power went out in my apartment. Everything stopped and went pitch black.

But outside in the hallway there was light and I checked my electricity metre which still had plenty of units left.

I called the management office and a repairman came and turned the electricity back on, but soon after he left, the air conditioner stopped working. Just my luck.

Another call to the management office led to another repairman, this time apparently an air con expert.

But as soon as he saw the error message on the air conditioning unit keypad, he said this wasn't something he could fix. He said he would call the air conditioner company, Haier, to send one of their technicians over, as this air conditioner is a huge machine that sits outside my tiny balcony.

Luckily I'm not one of those people who must have air con on and was able to fall asleep, probably tired from having to deal with all the drama of not having power.

The next morning the management office called the company for me and said the technician would come between noon and the afternoon.

So I sat around and waited, working from home. Surprisingly the young man arrived just before 11am. But after he unscrewed my giant air conditioner and took the cover off, he immediately found the culprit after testing the voltage -- three parts malfunctioned, one causing the other two to die. This is probably what caused the blackout in my apartment.

He didn't have the parts on him, and wasn't sure if they were in stock, but promised to call me later tonight to let me know the status.

I didn't hear from him all day and when I came home from work I called him on his cell phone.

He seemed to be out carousing with his friends, and had temporarily forgotten his promise to me, some 8 hours earlier.

He'd forgotten who I was and that I needed to know if the parts were available and would he be coming tomorrow morning to fix the air conditioner?

And because of his lack of interest in letting me know the situation, I had to get tough with him on the phone, demanding to know exactly when he would be arriving. He quickly made up an answer and it made me wonder if he would remember, hearing him chat with his friends in the background.

I don't like having to sound angry on the phone, but sometimes it seems people like this don't mind being berated like children. Why is that?

I'm sure they don't enjoy being treated like that, so why be so unprofessional?

It just shows someone who doesn't really care about their work. While I can understand being a repairman and being dirty most of the time is not the greatest job, it's one where people are grateful when you are able to fix things for them.

So I will see what happens tomorrow... if this young man remembers our last conversation...

 

Continuing the Fight

Today marks the 12th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China.

Chinese state media are trying to spin the city's return to the mainland as a good thing economically, as Hong Kong has learned its lessons from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.

But earlier today tens of thousands of people, from blue-collar workers to professionals marched from Victoria Park in Causeway Bay to Central's Legco building.

They held black banners with white characters, voicing a variety of grievances from democracy to unemployment, to demanding the government push the banks that sold people financial products related to Lehman Brothers to compensate them all their losses, not just part of it.

While the chances of getting all their money back is slim, the chances of full democracy seem even more remote after the Chinese government said it could possibly happen in 2017, not 2012, the year most Hong Kongers were hoping for.

At the march, veteran democrat Martin Lee declared, "Hong Kong people will always fight for democracy and never give up, no matter what."

Earlier this year Chief Executive Donald Tsang angered democrats when he delayed a highly anticipated consultation on tweaking the electoral process for its leader and legislature in 2012, saying the government needed to focus on the economy.

While police estimate some 26,000 people took to the streets today, unlike the half million who protested July 1, 2003 against Article 23, it still shows Hong Kongers are still passionate about fighting for what they believe in, and why not when they can in a peaceful manner and not be arrested?

Some may think it's a lost cause protesting in Hong Kong, but it's really an exercise of freedoms that need to be preserved too.

Not Quite Shelving Green Dam

News Flash -- The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has just announced China will delay the mandatory installation of the controversial Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software that was supposed to have been installed in all new computers sold in the country starting tomorrow.

The ministry explained the delay was due to computer manufacturers saying such a massive installation required more time. But there were no further details on when the postponed deadline would be.

This is a major loss of face for the government, as it had insisted there would not be any delays and that the software maker would patch up the program that was found to have numerous security flaws. Opponents also complained that it restricted freedom of information and speech, even though the government had pitched the software as the latest tool in anti-pornography.

Green Dam Youth Escort is also costing the government 41.7 million RMB ($6.1 million), an amount people are now beginning to realize is their own hard-earned money many feel is going to waste.

The People 1, The Government 0.