In Hong Kong.

Flew to Shenzhen this morning, and took the bus over to Hong Kong for a weekend visa run/see friends.

Beijing was smoggy (HUGE SURPRISE) and you could barely see anything as we flew out, so I closed the shade and promptly fell asleep for 2 hours despite the massive coffee I had guzzled not 15 minutes before stepping on board the plane.

30 minutes before landing in SZ, I woke up and opened the shade again to the bluest blue sky and the tallest, whitest cream-puff clouds ever seen. It was diamond-bright soaring along in that sea of sunshine with the patterned clouds spread below us.

But then, flying lower, a paper-thin layer of dark grey matter became visible at the level of the tops of the cumulus clouds. Pollution, marring this beautiful cloudscape! Worse still, once we came lower and flew through that awful gunk, it became clear that in and among the white of the clouds were pockets of yellow-brown smog lurking, brewing, smearing the clearness of the air with a gloomy, glum tinge of grime. Once we had flown even lower than that, below the clouds, we entered the TRUE pollution, an almost imperceptible mist of yellowish, whitish, grayish particles hovering just over the Earth that obscured the ground and, once on the ground, obscured the sky.

So beautiful up above, so oppressive down below!

Anyways, bus to HK--HK is lovely--air quality not so bad once away from industrial Shenzhen. What a refreshing change from awful, crowded, dirty, cement Beijing. Feels so civilized and cosmopolitan here in comparison.

Tomorrow, sailing around the New Territories. There may just be a God.

Workers use bare hands to clean up oil spill

Everyone's all over the US for the Gulf Oil spill (as well they should be) but when similar horrible environment catastrophes occur in China, nobody even hears about it or cares. Bet you haven't seen these pictures of the recent oil spill in Dalian (NE coastal China), have you?

Because it's not just environmentally horrifying but socially as well.

Gated migrant communities in major Chinese cities

Keeping dangerous elements away from the rest of the civilized population

Do you know that China spends as much on "public security" as it does on national defense?



What does that say? That it has to protect citizens from themselves (or the government from citizens?) just as much as it has to protect the nation as a whole from outside enemies? Who is the REAL enemy here?

Another good name: Mariel says that through work, she has recently been in touch with someone at the Ministry of Commerce, and the woman's name is Fancy Hou (yup, that's pronounced ho).

What's for dinner?

Seasons

by Sinmay Zau

First time I saw you, you gave me your heart; and inside it there was

a spring morning. Second time I saw you, you gave me your words, but

unspeakable was the raging fire of summer. Third time I saw you, you
gave me your hand; inside it you held the leaf-fallen deep autumn.
Last time I saw you was my short dream; in it was you and a flock of
winter wind, too.