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Upstream Looking Down |
| Written by Chris | |
| Friday, 01 August 2008 | |
Upstream Looking Down
It was a quiet, quaint sort of day and I had decided to drift downstream on the titanic Yangtze. As I drifted my mind returned to the pleasures and pains that associated themselves with the mighty Yangtze and I, with all my higher education, ended up beached on one of the many narrow beaches stretched along the cliffs. I, and all my higher education, had decided to tell one of the village children to fetch me help if my trip transcended the sunlight. So rather than tempt the Yangtze I decided to keep to my craft and wait for help.
As I sat stuck on the riverside, I was carried to my childhood.
My first experience with the Yangtze was not a pleasureful one. In fact it nearly killed me, but I suppose most of China can claim that so perhaps that is not the best way to begin my tale: My parents were descended from farmers, but they decided, like the rest of China, that perhaps life in the city was the best life could be, and so I lived on the outskirts of Hongqing.
No one knew what was coming out of those pipes at the time. Maybe I shouldn't have swam downstream of them, perhaps my family should have stayed on the farm...I didn't know that the red ‘water' was bad, how could I, as a child, know that if no one else in the entire town knew it.
I suppose that was the government's fault. But what could we expect from a town with a fading sign that read: The mayor Li Ching welcomes you to our great town. The sign did not change until I was 15.
I remember falling into the river once as a boy. I was wearing my new white sneakers. When my father fished me out my sneakers were no longer white. I was very upset by this; it was the first new pair of shoes I had ever owned. From that day on I hated our red water.
As a child I never thought my life would be endangered by cancer. In fact, as a child, in my backwater town, I had never even heard of cancer until it poured into our town like the once mighty Yangtze had been known to do. Thinking back on it, the Yangtze was at its mightiest then.
I had cancer of the esophagus. Some of the elders of the town had already contracted this disease, you could tell by the scars running the length of their esophagi. Now I would have one. When the cancer first started the town's people often descended onto the person like the cancer eventually would descend on the town. But by the time I contracted it, the cancer was common.
My parents concluded that there was no other treatment but the absolute best. So in late July, a month after being diagnosed, I was shipped downstream with my father, on a series of boats and trains, to the river's end at the city of Shanghai.
I was fascinated by the Maglev that I traveled on into Shanghai. But I suppose I should have hated it as much as the red water. When I reached the hospital they immediately admitted me in as a patient and I had surgery to remove my cancer.
As a child I had observed the ocean only once. I could remember the rolling waves and the endless expanse, but now another site greeted me: The China Shipping Group. As a boy who was raised on one of the world's longest and most powerful rivers I was no stranger to boating, but the ships in Shanghai's harbor were not boats, but my attention was soon captured by the city itself.
At a distance the city had been obscured by a bubble of smog and now, once inside the city, the sheer magnitude of it became apparent especially upon my looking up. Everything soared to the heavens, defying everything I had ever known; the skyscrapers stretched ceaselessly into the stratum of smog, never seeming to end.
While recovering from my surgery, the doctors and nurses, whenever in my room, insisted on having the television on the Olympics. At first I was simply in awe of the television, in my village television was an infrequent luxury. However, once I became aware of the nature of the Olympics I was as tied to the TV as I was to my medicine.
Two weeks after my surgery the doctors were finally satisfied with the results and they allowed me to venture out and breathe the air. The doctor said I was lucky that the cancer was small enough to be operable and told me I was fortunate that my village was so in tune with modern medicine.
I agreed.
(This is just the first part of the story...Just wanted to see how it would be recievd). Copyright 2008 Chris |
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