I wake up contemplating the concept of near and far. I am on one side of the planet, and I feel close to this place even with all of it’s foreign ways. Yet the my people on the other side of the planet also feel close. I am realizing the more we see and experience, the closer we are to understanding what separates us.
Thanks to my host, Mihela, the sustainability community is welcoming me with open arms. Already I am consumed with excitement and invigorated by this place. Mihela asks me what I think of her city, and I say with genuine excitement, “I LOVE IT!” She laughs and tells me to answer that question again next week.
There is a pulse to this city that I find irresistible. I am reminded of the Chinese characters I have tattooed on my hip, “Change is for the better.”
Little did my 19 year old self realize what that meant in China. As a friend would say at dinner, “I have lived in many cities around the world, and no city has kept me running like Shanghai.” But it’s not just busy…they are busy changing things, even if they aren’t always for the better.
The trees tell the story: They brought in trees to create a park like feeling at the World Expo. Large, fully mature trees were uprooted, transported, and replanted in the city. The result is the experience of living with fully grown mature trees, but they are covered in bandage-like material reminding you of the effort and energy put into making things look good on the surface. One one hand you say, “Genius!” On the hand, you question the quality of the foundation. I digress.
Today’s itinerary is packed with back to back interviews. My eyes blur just looking at my schedule, and I am curious to figure out how the heck I am going to get around with my whopping vocabulary of “Ni hao” (hello) and “Xièxiè (thank you).
First stop: Skype.
I am still trying to get a lay of the land regarding how to go about writing about the eco city phenomenon, so I video call (have I mentioned I LOVE Skype?) a trusted and respected colleague who has been doing environmental work in China. I’m going to allow him to be nameless, because there is an important point to be made between what he shared with me based on his experience of visiting and working in China, and what others who have been working and living in China had to say about some of his comments.
He gave me the quick crib notes and intro to the greening of China:
Fundamentally, the government is green. The primary goal is economic stability, and they see pollution as a destabilizing source, and so makes it a threat to their goal. They have created aggressive green targets. The great challenge, is implementation.
But one of the issues is that it is such a massive country, and a large portion of the pollution comes from the East, far away from Beijing. There is a saying, “The mountains are high, and Beijing is very far away.” Meaning there is an inherent challenge in enforcing laws when the distance is so great between the capital city and the provinces.
“If ministers in far counties break laws, they are publicly executed. When they find
factories that are breaking rules, they blow them up. The government is sending a message.
Now if I were on the radio, I’d play that back so we could listen to that last line again. I asked everyone I met with about that last statement, and here are the crib notes on their comments:
+The main issue is that the local politicians don’t know any better. The education level going west is lower and environmental solutions suffer from this.
+There are known accounts of factories being temporarily shut down when they are not in compliance with environmental laws. And there are stories about a factory that produced fireworks that blew up, but no one would tell me accounts on or off the record that supported the above statement.
+ Political leaders have been prosecuted for major issues that have made it into the media, the public milk contamination being a prime example.
+Many officials have been removed/ fired for their roles in covering up environmental issues and not complying with national policies.
Meanwhile, my skype call provided a few good resources and people to follow.
Evan Osnos wrote a series of pieces for the New Yorker.
Hmmm…this was a long day, and this is also a long post, so I’ll let this dog lie for now…and write Day 4 Part 2, 3, and 4!
