For the second Monday in a row, Shanghai’s air has been deemed unfit for human consumption.
Yesterday was declared hazardous, but I was in Nanjing, breathing in their particular combination of hazy chemicals. Maybe it was the kids I was testing, or maybe it was the air, but I came away from that weekend with my brain full of disjointed half-remembered comments about Van Gogh painting scenes from WWII and chickens being a favoured room in one’s home.
I was stuck at the Nanjing railway station for several hours on Sunday afternoon, due to work finishing much sooner than expected. My ticket was for 6 pm but we got there by 3pm. Usually you can go to the ticket hall and swap your ticket for an earlier train, but after half an hour in the hot, noisy, claustrophobic queue, elbowing furtive queue jumpers, I learned everything to everywhere was sold out.
If you’ve ever been to a Chinese railway station, you’ll know that unless you hold soft-seat tickets or are skilled at blagging your way into the VIP lounge (it helps to be a white man in a suit), your best bet for a pleasant 3 hour wait is not in the station itself. In fact, there was a 30+ minute queue just to enter the station, as they’ve decided to suddenly start enforcing ID checks for passengers, a year after they started making people show their ID to buy the tickets at the booking offices. Foreigners bearing passports along with their tickets were given only a cursory glance (apparently we don’t fake our tickets) still had to queue alongside the migrant workers and other locals whose ID cards were scrutinized at length.
When I finally made my way into the station a few hours later, the only seat I could find was a ledge at the side of the Gate 2 Waiting Room, with my back against the glass wall of a fast food place. I should also note that this spot was probably free because on the other side of the glass was the restaurant’s collection of garbage cans. The glass on that side was sopping wet and streaked and drippy with all sorts of textured, oddly hued, greasy wetness. If you looked out of the corner of your eyes, you’d swear you were leaning back into a toxic waste spill. Every few minutes, new greasy, lumpy water was sloshed at the glass as the cleaner in the restaurant emptied out some new pail of awfulness.
It was that fun, yes.
So for the first few hours, I waited down by the lake, opposite the station. It was also so crowded that every available place to sit was occupied, and then some. Road block pilons, steps, curbs, the whole walking path itself, as well as actual benches were all occupied by Chinese bums. The buttock type, not hobos.
I finally found a seat on the welcome mat of a closed-Sundays police kiosk, several levels removed from the actual scenic part of the lake front. I got to watch scooters drive past, narrowly avoiding hitting people. Also, in addition to scooter fumes, I got to breathe in the fresh, clean air of Nanjing.
You know, this air. The air you can see. Hazy, grey, with just a hint of sepia for the artsy touch.
My view from my hotel room Sunday morning was 32 floors of white-out.
Shanghai, this morning, wasn’t a white out but it has been officially deemed Unhealthy since 8am. I’m debating when to go out and buy much needed groceries. Should I wait for it to be Unhealthy for Sensitive Types? What if it just gets worse, as it did last Monday? Is there any point in doing a 30 day detox diet if you’re going out to buy your pesticide laden veggies, whilst breathing in Hazardous air?
It makes me think about the life I lead in Shanghai. Since I stopped drinking alcohol (temporarily, but still, stopped) and started the low-key but strict detox (no dairy, no sugar, no grain, no processed crap), I’ve come to realize that 79.3% of our diversions here are related to food, drink or food and drink. The other diversions include reading in bed, blogging about mops, and watching downloaded episodes of Fringe. Non-diversionary time is spent working. You know, those 3 jobs. The jobs I kept piling on because I got it into my head a few years ago that I needed to save money. For something. Not sure what, but something all the same.
Without the distractions of lovely chatty long lunches over wine (which are now slightly less exuberant, with soda water and a rumbly tummy) or comfortingly easy pizza deliveries on late work nights, I feel strangely dissatisfied. Is this the sum of my life here, if you take away a few happy carbohydrates and some fermented grapes? Work and mops. Travel twice a year. Too tired to write anything interesting or new. Too distracted to hone new skills. Too lazy to make an effort to find a nice big green park to exercise in (Fuxing Park doesn’t count as it’s still smoggy and small). Too uninspired to go out at night and do night-type things.
My brain has started cheating on Shanghai, seriously contemplating other options.
This morning I started looking up short term flat rentals in Cork. Last week, I had pages open for Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, and Belize. I wondered if I had enough money saved up to buy a house in Sicily. Hell, if Ebriel could do it, maybe we should too. I have scoured the internet for courses to take- cooking, art, writing, language. Wracked my brain for sources of inspiration. Something to pull things out of this rather restrictive view I’ve installed over the past few years here.
Maybe it’s seasonal. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and feeling a lot less tolerant of stasis and stagnation. Dunno. All I know is that I’m feeling very ready to catch a taxi out to the airport and do something completely different.
I’m open to suggestions.
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