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Upstream Looking Down (Completed) |
| Written by Chris | |
| Tuesday, 05 August 2008 | |
It was a quiet, quaint sort of day and I had decided to drift downstream on the titanic Yangtze. As I drifted my mind succumbed 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 town 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.
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 as a factory worker 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. 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.
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 to match. 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 week 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, 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; however, 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. But the awe was short lived as I was soon subdued by an anesthetic.
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 town 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 town was so in tune with modern medicine.
I agreed.
That was my first experience with the river. But this was dwarfed by the flood, not the flood of cancer, but the flood. As an ecologist examining the past, the flood appears to have been almost inevitable: Cloud seeding, overflowing rivers in the South, increased glacial melting, the Three Gorges Dam, monsoonal climate...It was only a matter of time.
But this flood dwarfed all known floods in China, and that was a colorful history, to say the least.
It rained relentlessly from July to August...nearly two months of rain. It was nearly 8 years after my contracting cancer and I had moved into Hongqing to support myself. My apartment was located along the river, the poor section of town.
Perhaps I shouldn't say town. My family was one of the original families in Hongqing, at that time Hongqing was still a town. It was conceived as a ‘factory town' and by the time I was twenty it had reached city status, a status it achieved in fewer than twenty years.
So when the flood waters threatened the city for the first time, there was...panic...
However, I do not wish to insult the Chinese and in particular the residents of Hongqing. The facts of this flood were astonishing, even to the oldest residents. The rainfall and glacial meltings combined to coerce the Yangtze to an unbelievably unascertainable level. This was enough to cause panic everywhere, not just Hongqing.
At the peak of the rainfall, in the middle of August, the levees finally were leveled by the vengeanceful Yangtze. I watched from a terrace overlooking the city, surrounded by the populous: We saw the red water pursue the remaining inhabitants ruthlessly out of the city. The water level rose continuously as the levees emitted the red water.
I glanced towards the riverbed and was startled to see that it was gray, mimicking the overcast sky above it. I watched as the curative Yangtze continued to purge itself of the red water, sending it into our city, chasing its inhabitants into the hillside.
Later I would learn the entire riverside community suffered the same fate. The whole of the river valley was decimated from Shanghai to the Qinghai. Every single semblance of humanity was flushed into the Pacific Ocean: The factories, the towns, the cities, the boats, the military bases, the garbage, the sewage, and the red water.
"Whoah!"
My boat rocked as the refurbished Yangtze rammed a wooden rod into my boat's side. As I settled into my boat again, I glanced across the river and spied the still seeding tree line. I spotted one of the trees that had been planted to preserve what remained of the fertile river valley. I studied it for a moment and decided it was an olive tree.
Copyright 2008 Chris |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 05 August 2008 ) |
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