Carmaggedon…

This evening, I find myself in a pleasant little eatery near the main city square in Dongguan. I tend to like this place for its convenience and the fact that it only charges 5 RMB for a cup of filter coffee, as opposed to the 25 to 30 RMB of many nearby establishments. Coffee has the aura of a luxury item in China. Given that the average wage in this part of Dongguan is around £10K a year, 25 RMB would equate to around £7 a cup. Not particularly cheap…

The relative peace of this place is constantly interrupted by the noise of car horns sounding. The average driver here seems to be an odd mixture of the calm and the impatient. They seem not to concern themselves at all at some of the most outrageously bad driving that you will see anywhere on the planet, but if they find themselves having to wait for any more than a fraction of a second, the hand goes straight to the horn, as something of a reflex action.

Progress is often slow and jams almost a permanent feature of life here. Hence the use of the horn is an ever-present background to one's enjoyment of a cup of Java. Oddly, one gets used to it and often I find myself scarcely aware unless I make the effort. What I do tend to be aware of though is the constant presence of car fumes. It is hard not to be. The very act of breathing is challenged at times.

Dongguan, formerly a mainstay of Chinese manufacturing, is now far more concerned with financial and services to make its mint. Few of the factories that were once such a prominent feature here now remain. Unfortunately, the loss of pollution from the factories has been more than made up for by the rapid increase in car traffic.

Emission laws, where they do exist, are a lot less stringent than in Europe or the United States. This being China, even if the law has been written, it is rarely enforced anyway. Both a certain charm and a sense of exasperation can result from the Chinese attitude to laws and rules. Basically, unless the somewhat paranoid authorities perceive there to be a 'threat to social order' then almost anything goes. The elite will often address a given issue with a raft of new legislation, but like most of the legislation that has gone before, it is likely to be ignored unless something very dramatic happens to make it too embarrassing to continuing with such a laissez-faire attitude.

Incidents such as the recent massive and spectacular explosions in Tianjin or the high speed train crash in Wenzhou were sufficiently catastrophic to catch the authorities attention, otherwise life goes on from one near miss to another. Of course, such incidents are on the macro scale, but the attitude they betray can be seen and experienced every hour of every day that one spends in China.

A few simple examples might suffice to illustrate my point at this juncture. Last Sunday, whilst returning to Dongguan after a couple of days in Chang An, the bus became stuck in one of the many traffic jams that tend to bring the city to a complete halt on the weekend. The bus driver, as it is their wont here, decided that he would change route at this stage and we were asked to leave the bus (no compensation, no 'by your leave', just we are going a different way now so get off).

Forced to walk a couple of miles into the city centre, we were constantly beeped by cars who, having realised that little progress was to be made on the roads, decided to simply drive on the pavements (sidewalks) instead. As far as these guys are concerned, might is right in these situations – if you don't get promptly out of the way you are risking life and limb!

The next morning, en route to the coffee house, my attention was momentarily distracted by the antics of a child in a shop. When I looked back to the pavement I found myself facing a rather large and rather deep hole a mere two or three feet in front of me. No warning cones, no guardrail, no anything in fact - just an open hole in the middle of a busy pavement, waiting to swallow up the unwary pedestrian, with some wires coming out of it (probably live – for good measure!).

I could go on, such examples are experienced constantly as part of 'normal' life here in China.

Air quality is depressingly bad here at the moment. Up north, in the cities of Liaoning, it has become so bad that records are being broken. The WHO recommends that pm2.5 (particles small enough to penetrate the lungs) should never exceed an average of more than 25 parts per million over 24 hours. In Shenyang last week, they averaged over 1,000 and even levels of 1,400 were recorded. Not good from a country that is supposed to be addressing this problem.

Interestingly, just after those figures were released, China announced that it was building a bunch more coal-fired power stations. In a country that a recent report estimated to be losing 4,000 people a day to the effects of pollution it is hard to believe that not only are they continuing to produce so much of their electricity by coal burning, but they are actually committing themselves to even more.

The Global Times, a state sponsored media outlet, was even celebrating that in August of this year record car sales were achieved. Personally, I am not sure 'achieved' is the right word in this context. One thing that China does not need is yet more cars.

Of recent times, many fine words have been spoken and apparent 'commitments' to addressing the problems of pollution in this country have been made but….as the old adage has it, actions speak louder than words. One would imagine that with an international conference on climate change coming up in Paris soon, this rhetoric will only increase. If only it were matched by action…

As I complete another week's blog I found myself back in the same cafe the next morning and enjoying the first rain for a couple of week's. I say 'enjoying' as a decent downpour tends to clean up the air to something like breathable levels. I have actually avoided exercise for the past week, simply because the prospect of breathing deeply in such an atmosphere seemed to be anything but a step on the road to health and vitality.. 

 

PS. On the way back to the flat last evening there was a protest on the stairs to the massive City Administration building overlooking the Square. Those protesting seemed to consist of about 30 people, the majority women of more mature years with one or two younger women mixed in, plus a couple of elderly gentlemen. I have no idea what they were protesting about as we were not allowed within 50 metres and their placards were quickly taken from them by a group of around 50 or 60 members of a SWAT team; tall, fit-looking young men dressed in black and looking somewhat like the AGM of the Darth Vader Appreciation Society. It did seem like something of a very large hammer to crack a very small nut ...

(Forgive the slightly over-dramatic image, but I daren't take an image myself and this was the best I could come up with online!)