TaiChouHu

This is what Tai Lake looks like - stinky and toxic. These pictures were emailed to me.

mmm... green...

water gossip

In China, when something of import happens, the only information you get is gossip. If the newspaper does print anything, it's gossip too. When the Virginia Tech shootings happened, the papers here reported that the shooter was from Shanghai. Not exactly reliable reporting. The paper in Wuxi had only a few sentences about the problem, which basically amounted to 'the water is fine, it just smells bad'. The government keeps an eye on the newspapers. We wouldn't want our government superiors knowing what's going on - a la Walkerton.

I had two English corners on the topic yesterday. Some students think it's okay to drink the water. Others think they should boil it first. One student told me the problem is worse because of the dry weather we've been having resulting in Lake Tai being unusually low for this time of year. This is likely true. Other students told me it would last for two or three weeks. Nobody really knows. And no one will hear tell of any incompetence or wrongdoing on the part of the water treatment plant. Not a big surprise.

The water was worse this morning. After smelling the water this morning, I took a quick sponge bath in bottled water and opted not to shower or touch the water at all. So did most of the other teachers and some of the Chinese. Frankly, with my hair, I'd smell putrid for three days. So I'm going to buy a case of water and take a bath Chinese style - with a bucket. Mmmmm... bucket...

We have a student at the school who works for the plant. She said they're flushing the system right now. The water pressure is low today. They're also filling the water with as many chemicals as possible. She said the water should be *better* in a few days. But, until the algal bloom dissipates, there's not a lot that can be done. It's raining now and will rain more tomorrow, which will help. June should be so rainy that mould grows on everything. That'll bring new interesting problems.

SO, the hope is that in the next few days we can use the water for at least bathing and dishes. We've never drunk the water, except accidentally at McDonald's, which explains why it's made me sick so many times. Starbucks has it's own separate water filtration system, so their water is fine, which means that we can drink coffee. This was quite reassuring for me this morning.

More water gossip as it comes available.

mmmm.... blue-green

Like many other Wuxi residents, I awoke this morning to discover that our water exhibited a rather pungent odour. Fortunately, there was enough clean water in the water heater to give me a nice shower. Unfortunate for everyone who slept in later.

Wuxi' s water comes from Lake Tai, the largest "fresh" water lake in China. The water is treated, of course, but most locals don't drink it. I have noticed an increase in the water quality compared to my last trip to Wuxi, but it often smells heavily of chlorine.

Anyone who's taken a look at my blog pictures may have noticed that Lake Tai is green in the summer - a result of the blue-green algae that thrives there during the summer. I suspect that blue-green algae - which is actually a kind of bacteria - is a sign of polution, but I'm not entirely sure about that. For whatever reason, the algae has taken over and is not being filtered properly, resulting in the foul-smelling water. Since we're in China, we'll likely never know how the algae managed to get through the water treatment process, because, well it's owned by the government.

Aside from the smell, I wasn't terribly concerned... until I found out that the supermarkets are already out of bottled water and that cyanobacteria produce three different kinds of toxins, typically around 200 times more toxic than cyanide. Some of the symptoms of these toxins are: allergic reactions, skin rashes, eye irritation, gastroenteritis, nerve damage, muscle tremors, liver damage and an increased risk of cancer.

As a side note, McDonald's has stopped selling all drinks as a result of the water. This confirms my theory that they are not using filtered water. Bastards.

At any rate, according to my research - algal blooms (or an infestation of blue-green algae) generally last only a few days or months... though Lake Tai usually has these blooms last all summer... and the toxins, which on the their own are colourless and odourless, can remain in the water for weeks after the algae is gone and cannot be treated by boiling.

To sum up - the algae, which is normal for this time of year, has somehow made in through the water treatment process into the tap water, which is not normal. The algae smells bad and produce toxins and there is nothing we can do about it. Also we don't know why. And the bottled water is selling out. Good thing 750 ml of light (3%) beer costs $0.45.


This is a lovely picture of blue-green algae I found on the web.

This is a link to a factsheet about blue-green algae.

http://www.waterquality.crc.org.au/dwfacts/dwfact_algae.pdf

Xuzhou, Shanghai and some updates

After we finally got things with our apartment sorted out - and when I say sorted out I mean somewhat as we still don't even have a microwave - we found ourselves in the middle of May holiday. In China, there are essentially three major holidays consisting of five days each. This means that all 1.6 billion people plus in this country travel. Needless to say it's busy. We didn't attempt to do a whole lot. We did go out to Shanghai for a few days. We didn't see much but we we get to one of the good bars.

Then we went to Xuzhou with Chris. Xuzhou isn't even in the Lonely Planet, so there's not a whole lot to say about it. It does have a mountain and a big park and a museum. Of note at the museum were suits of armour made out of like square of thin marble woven together with copper wire. I'm not sure if these suits were ever used - they seem a little impractical because they have pieces covering the eyes, mouth and soles of the feet - or if they were intended to be worn by the dead, though the ones on display had not been worn by any dead people. I think we spent more time on the train than we did there. For Randall that was most of the fun.
On the way there we got a holiday train - a train run only during the holiday to deal with the extra demand. Holiday trains are the lowest priority trains so they have to pull off to the side to let all the other trains go by. So, despite the fact that the trip to Xuzhou is only about four hours, we were on the train for ten - mostly stopped. The way back was much more interesting. We couldn't get tickets back to Wuxi. Everything was full. The trick to getting what you want in China is to be more inconvenient than the person who is inconveniencing you. This is the golden rule of China. Make note. So, I stayed in the line until tickets to Nanjing that didn't exist suddenly existed. Nanjing is about two hours from Wuxi and they have an awesome train station and they're big enough that they pretty much service every town around on a regular basis. Nanjing, being a university town, also has a decent nightlife and a fairly good array of accomodations. So, it's a good second best. The catch, was that the tickets to Nanjing were standing tickets. When you have to stand, you meet more people - other people standing, people who let you sit in there seat while they go get something to eat or other standing people who've managed to get a seat and offer to let you sit for a while. Being the only white people on the train, we immediately had an audience and Chris kept the train entertained for about an hour haggling with a woman on the train selling insoles. We found some english speakers to chat with and one of them had a stool for us to use in the aisle. All in all that part wasn't bad.

From Nanjing, it was no problem to get standing tickets to Wuxi on the next train and though we were all exhausted, we arrived in about two hours - at 4:30 am. Then we slept and spent the next week doing nothing.

Now I'm working, although not terribly hard as I still only have two or three classes a day, despite still having to be here doing nothing for a large portion of the day. Still, I have some time to finally catch up on my blogging and all the tv I missed this past semester...

The Wiring in My Apartment

In China, you buy an apartment and it’s nothing but an empty space in a building. Then you put in walls, plumbing, electrical, flooring, windows, fixtures, furnishings etc. The Chinese system for doing this is through guanxi – or networking. Basically, you need walls in your apartment and your business partner’s son-in-law needs a job so he gets paid to do the work. Thus, you get the work done on your apartment and you solidify your relationship with your business partner. Most transactions in China are done this way. The problem with this is that no one knows what they hell they are doing and everything gets done half-assed, backwards and unsafely.

This leads me into a discussion of the wiring in my bedroom. Last night, Randall and I came across an interesting discovery. We have three lights in our room and three outlets. One light is over the desk. It works. One outlet is for the air conditioner. It’s rusted and we can’t plug anything into it. The second outlet is beside the desk. It works. The second light is beside the bed. It doesn’t work. The third light is a ceiling fluorescent thing. It kind of works. The third outlet is beside the bed. The light bedside the bed and the ceiling light are both controlled by two switches, one by the door, one by the bed. In theory, this means that you can turn off the light from bed, which is great for Randall, since it’s his job to turn off the lights at night.

Anyway, as usual, Randall went to turn off the light. Except this time, it wouldn’t turn off. It did dim a bit. We tried flipping the other switches, but the switch for the second light does nothing and flipping second switch for the ceiling light at the door didn’t work either. While we’re flipping all the switches in combination to see if we can figure out some reason for the light turning off, I noticed that every time we turned the ceiling light off, my cell phone – which was plugged into the outlet beside the bed – beeped to let me know that it was charging. This was important information.

This is what we concluded:

1. The outlet beside the bed only works when the light is off.
2. When the light is off, it’s not off, it’s just dim.
3. When anything is plugged into the outlet beside the bed, the light won’t turn off, it just dims.
4. Occasionally, for some reason, the light flickers like a strobe light.
5. When the outlet does work, it only has enough power to charge a cell phone and can’t run a space heater.
6. The apartment is trying to kill us.

*Update*

Having avoided the use of the outlet by the bed, the problem with the light has apparently resolved itself, however the light in the living room now constantly flickers... Also my fridge roars when it's open for more than five seconds...