Every breath you take...

This week's flaneurial reflection comes from a rather comfortable seat on a rather comfortable train that is comfortably travelling at very nearly 200 miles per hour. All is smooth and quiet as we whisk along the track between the cities of Zhuzhou and Guangdong through the somewhat continuously grey Chinese countryside. The coffee on board is a very reasonable 20RMB a 400ml cup (about $3). The subjective realisation of speed only occurs when one chances to glance out of the window and watches endless hills, roads and rivers flashing past at a truly alarming rate.

          I am on my way back from attending a Tai Chi tournament in the City of Liling. The event was rather successful for my friend who managed to win a gold and a silver medal and come home with an 18” plate and a rather large china vase. We had travelled to Liling on the invitation of the Hunan Tai Chi Association, who generously supplied hotel rooms, meals and transport for the both of us from the Friday evening  to the following Monday morning.

          This generosity was much appreciated, as were the facilities of the four star hotel we stayed in. The food was copious and prepared in the local Hunan style (very greasy, very salty, very spicy) but, unfortunately, was not particularly to my tastes. There was something typically Chinese in the way the food was presented though. The dishes, usually a dozen or more, were set upon a glass revolving disk in the centre of the table and one chose from the offered selection whatever one took a fancy to. This style of eating is very communal in nature which is not atypical of the culture here in general. There is a great willingness, almost an expectation, of sharing. If someone orders a bottle of the local alcohol, an horrendously strong brew that fair took my breath away, it is expected that it will be shared by all at the table.

          There seems to be an etiquette to turning the glass centrepiece, an etiquette that stresses the needs of others at the table above oneself. Generally on such a table there is a huge pale of sticky white rice in the centre. Here too there is an etiquette – one makes sure everyone else is supplied with rice before filling one's own bowl. Even within this there is another level where the status of those waiting is to be recognised, with the higher status individuals going first. In practice, this generally implies a respect for age, with the elders being given preference over the youngsters.

          Toasts are often drunk, complete with the usual expression 'gumbei!' (empty glass) proceeded by a chink of one's glass with all and sundry. Again, one needs to make sure one includes everybody who cares to be included and, as a mark of respect, holds one's glass slightly lower than those of higher status (usually best just to presume everyone else is – my personal 'fail proof' method!).

          Throughout my stay in Liling I was treated with great respect and a rather lovely inclusivity.  This is one of the loveliest aspects to the culture here. Once accepted within a given group, one is treated with a great deal of friendly and good natured indulgence. The Chinese, in this way at least, are a very hospitable people.

          The time spent in Liling was enjoyable on many levels bar one, but that exception makes the thought of my upcoming trip to Thailand a pleasant prospect. The quality of the air in these medium sized cities has to be seen to be believed. I use the word 'seen' advisedly. Of course, as soon as one gets off the train, one is immediately aware that the air quality is not all it should be. My first bout of coughing was on the station platform itself, but what is most noticeable is the dreary grey smog that hangs continuously over the town.

          We arrived at the hotel just before five on the Friday evening and I took a photograph of the somewhat uninspiring view from our seventh floor window. Grey and dank and almost sulphurous, the blocks in the distance disappearing into the smog:

          At nine on the following Monday morning I took a second picture from the same vantage point:

          Comparing the two images, one would think that they had been taken one after the other. This was not the case. In the three days we were there this view did not change at all except for the coming of the night. Just one long, dreary, greyness that hung over the city continuously from dawn to dusk. Never a glimpse of the sun, never a shadow beneath one's feet, unless you chanced to go inside a building.

          Many of the more industrial Chinese towns and cities are like this the whole winter long. Dreary, dirty and, in the air quality sense at least, really quite disgusting. To experience this is really quite oppressive, the feeling of not knowing when you will next see a patch of blue sky or where your next breath of reasonable air is coming from. In Liling's case this was particularly disappointing as the town itself looked to be rather interesting with a huge pottery market and some lovely old architecture.

          Last year, as happens many a year, there was some particularly bad smog in Beijing and Shanghai during the winter months. It became so bad at times that some people, having unwisely decided to venture out for the evening, were reportedly reduced to using the satnav apps on their mobile phones to find their way home again!

          A few years back, the Chinese government became quite annoyed with the American consulate in Beijing for publishing air quality figures on its website. The American staff had become increasingly worried over time with the deterioration of the environment. As far as the Chinese government were concerned, all was fine and there was no problem as long as no one made a fuss about it. The fact that millions of Chinese people were dying prematurely each year because of the effects of pollution was not particularly concerning, but 'losing face' in such a way, particularly at the hands of the Americans, was definitely not acceptable.

          Eventually, they relented and started publishing their own figures but this caused another problem. The PM 2.5 figures (fine particles below 2.5 microns in width that your body has little or no defence against) were truly atrocious. The World Health Organisation recommend that these should be kept at levels below 20 micrograms per cubic meter of air. Hardly anywhere in China could meet these standards so the Chinese government did what the Chinese government does best in such circumstances; it moved the goal-posts. The Chinese national standard calls for a 'healthy level' of 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air. It would appear that Chinese lungs are 1.75 times better than lungs elsewhere on the planet at dealing with this problem...

          Even with these much lower standards, Chinese air quality in most major cities fails to achieve these levels. Examining one of the websites that publishes this data, I see that today in central Beijing the level is 309, ie., some eight plus times their own, rather liberal (nice to see them liberal in some ways at least...) limits and fifteen times the WHO levels. Some Northern Chinese cities are at levels well in excess of 500. Sad to say, this is not an unusual occurrence.

          Back in the train a couple of hours have passed and we are now within just a few short miles of Guangzhou. This technology is very impressive, as is much of the new infrastructure of modern China. At times though, these achievements have been made at a tremendous cost to the environment. Apart from the truly awful air quality, 70% of China's rivers and lakes are polluted, not to mention 90% of their groundwater (which makes up most of the 'potable' water used for drinking, cooking, etc.). The widespread and indiscriminate use of pesticides and chemicals means that the soil is very unhealthy in China too. The pace of economic growth has been truly amazing but, to paraphrase, and slightly amend, a saying from the Bible: What does it profit a man if he gaineth the whole World but cannot breathe the air, drink the water or eat the food?

                      

Beware of drinking hot coffee in close proximity of impatient Chinese train passengers...

          

Risky Business...

Today the joys of nomadic flaneurie have brought me to a quiet and pleasant little guest house in the Northern Thai city of Chang Mai. Sarah's Guest House lies just a couple of hundred metres from the the moat and city wall of the old town. The place has a pleasant, although slightly run-down ambience of the sort that one often comes across in Thai cities. In such a hot country, the architectural emphasis is often on maximising air-flow and coolness and so it is that I find myself sitting beneath the stilted verandah listening to the sounds of water trickling from a small fountain whilst enjoying the first bowl of porridge that I have had the pleasure of consuming for many a month.

Chiang Mai is Thailand's second city and lies in the extreme North of the country. At the time of writing there are still some uncertainties as to how the current political turmoil here will pan out and the future looks somewhat uncertain for this beautiful land. One of the possibilities that has been mooted is the division of the country between the North and the South. If this did indeed come to pass then the city of Chiang Mai could, one day, find itself the capital of Siam. Oddly, the name Siam was originally used to denote people with dark brown skin (from Sanskrit) and was meant in a slightly derogatory sense. The people of the north are indeed slightly darker than those further south. Present day Thailand is a curious mixture of various ethnic groups held together by the oft asserted notion of 'Thainess'. Much work is done in schools to reinforce the idea of this identity but there still exists tensions between the different groups that all too often flare up in political strife and sometimes even violence.

Thailand does, at times, feel like a dangerous place to be, despite its undeniable beauty. Not only do the politics appear to be potentially problematic but day to day life in Thailand can be risky in itself. I read only last week of the very common practice here of injecting formalin (a form of formaldehyde) into fruits and vegetables to maintain their freshness longer. It does indeed have that effect, but unfortunately also leads to health problems of various sorts, some relatively minor such as skin irritation or sneezing, but long term ingestion can lead to consequences the details of which are far too gruesome to go into here.

There is a fairly loose and patchy application of the law in this land, an attitude that permeates life from the highest social strata to the lowest. An obvious example would be the law requiring the wearing of crash helmets. This was passed in 1979 in view of the high number of fatalities in motor cycle accidents suffered by the people of Thailand. Standing on any street in a major city in this country one will mostly notice crash helmets by their absence. In a very short time hoards of motor cyclists will pass by but only about one in four will actually be complying. You may even notice a nearby police checkpoint but very little actual in the way of a response from the policemen inside. I originally heard that the law only applied to foreign nationals. An understandable misunderstanding as they seem to be the only ones who are stopped; there normally follows a stealthy financial transaction quite costly for the poor tourist involved but more profitable for the representative of the local constabulary.

One would think that travelling by bus would be a safer option in Thailand, and one would be right but... it is merely a relative safety; buses in Thailand cannot be considered safe per se. The drivers, particularly of the mini-buses, have to work long hours to make a living. Rumour has it that they often imbibe yaba, a substance that enables them to keep going for extended periods but also produces a certain psychological intensity that leads to feelings of being 'bullet-proof', perhaps not the ideal state to be driving buses in...

My own personal experiences of travelling by this mode of transport in Thailand has lead me to revise much what I thought I knew about the laws of physics. Certainly it would seem that buses can get around sharp bends at far higher speeds than I had previously considered possible. Also, my perception of space would seem to be somewhat awry as often these self-same buses manage to squeeze through gaps that appeared to be almost narrower than the bus itself (at speed, naturally). Such driving does indeed take minutes off the journey but one feels it may be a pyrrhic victory as it feels as if it may also take years off of one's life in terms of the stress entailed.

Before I was privy to much of this knowledge I rather naively hired a motor bike from one of the numerous shops supplying this service in Kanchanaburi. The day itself proved to be an excellent adventure whilst I rode around the hills and mountains of West Central Thailand near the border with Myanmar. Unfortunately, the return to the city lead to a change in my relationship to surface of the planet from the vertical to the horizontal when a white van (some things never change) pulled out from the side across two lanes and into yours truly.

Nursing eleven abrasions, three large bruises, two egg-shaped contusions and a bump on my head (luckily I had insisted on having a crash helmet) later that evening, I could not help but notice similar casualties amongst my fellow travellers in Kanchanaburi. One chap was so swathed in bandages that he looked almost mummified. Understandably, he was moving with the slowness one associates with the role; one could almost feel his pain just by looking at him.

Many years ago a very famous Greek mathematician who went by the name of Pythagoras, although at the time he was known as much for his philosophy as for his mathematics, pointed out the shortcomings in our approach to risk when he said: “Self chosen are the woes that befall man.”

We are indeed all too often the architects of our own downfall. A more modern quote, oft cited by my brother in regards to his flying activities, seems apt: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are not many old, bold pilots!”

The avoidance of risk is often decried in our modern world but, as one matures, one begins to understand that brash risk taking is better left to the brash. Again, Pythagoras had something to say on the subject, advising that it would be better to avoid such misadventures and instead to “live quietly in the constant light of truth.” Deeply unfashionable maybe, but then again so many of the best things in life are.

Truth itself, of course, is often hard to come by. When faced with the truly alarming road traffic fatality rate in Thailand the politicians decided to do something about it. The measure taken did indeed lead to a halving of the fatality rate in just one year. I hear you ask 'what could they have possibly done to lead to so successful an outcome?' The measure they employed to reduce the appalling figures entailed changing the way they collected the statistics. Now in Thailand if you leave the scene with a semblance of a pulse you are not considered a fatality. No matter if you die thirty seconds later in the ambulance you are no longer deemed to be a road traffic fatality but are lumped into some other, less controversial, statistical category instead. This solution, if one may call it that, did indeed work but one cannot help but feel that it rather misses the point...

 Back at Sarah's Guest House I seem to have been befriended a couple of wandering felines. Such debates about the nature of risk taking are of no interest to them it seems, but a soft scratch behind the ears or a full length stroke to the tip of the tail is far more to their liking. Soft Thai music is playing in the background and this place remains agreeably cool and pleasant despite its proximity to the centre of Chiang Mai. 

Shortly, I will have to head out into the frenetic chaos and mechanised madness that typifies the roads around the old city. Beyond that though, there are areas of surprising calm inside the walls themselves. Within these precincts a local Wat (Buddhist Temple) offers massages for the princely sum of 140 baht ($3) for an hour. So far on this trip I have forsaken the temptations of such therapeutic interventions due to some of the more compromising aspects that are involved in some of the commercial establishments. This injured body though would appreciate some tender loving care at this point, so I think that a visit to the temple would indeed be in order. So, without further ado, I think I will take my leave for another week with a final, apposite thought... take care out there!

A short and rather sad addendum to this post. Following my massage I was strolling around the old town when I came across today's Bangkok Post. It told of yet another bus accident, this time leading to the loss of 15 passengers, mostly children, with 45 more injured. The driver of the bus was unlicensed and fled the scene. The unpleasant details can be seen here: 

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/397583/school-bus-tragedy-kills-15-injures-45