Chapter 106
Pollution
It was rare to see blue sky. That is one thing that I really missed seeing. There were days when I could see the blue sky now and then but more times I could not. I could see the moon more at night than I could the sky during the day. I was told that in the month of October the farmers would burn corn stocks after harvest and that is why it was so hazy. They weren’t supposed to but they did.
The second time that I was there, it was better. The blue sky could be seen more often and I couldn’t smell anything in the air. The winter of 2011-2012 was a different winter. For about three months, it was foggy in the mornings, I was told by friends that it was pollution. I could not smell it. I read online in the China Daily paper that the reason there was so much pollution from the big cities, like Beijing, and the air was so heavy during the winter that it was keeping the air and pollution down so it couldn’t escape into the sky and that is why the blue sky couldn’t be seen for so long. The pollution in Beijing was effecting us in Luoyang five hundred miles to the southwest.
Beijing has had very serious pollution problems. That winter, the pictures that I saw online were really something showing the pollution. They said that the people in Beijing couldn’t see more then about three feet in front of them. People were wearing all kinds of masks, whatever they could find to wear. The stores eventually ran out. They couldn’t get them in stock fast enough. Many people had respiratory problems. The hospitals were constantly busy.
The police on the streets, especially the ones directing traffic, had very serious respiratory problems. Imagine directing traffic for many hours a day and breathing in all of the pollution and the car fumes. The police were not allowed to wear the masks. That’s right. That is why the police had so many respiratory problems. The reason that the police could not wear masks is because a mask is not a part of the officer’s uniform. I wonder if that has changed? I’m sure that rule comes from someone sitting at a desk that didn’t have to stand outside all day breathing in the pollution. I also remember hearing that Shanghai and Guangzhou were two other cities that had very serious pollution problems. One of my former students that worked in Shanghai talked about how bad it was there.
One thing that they do now to cut down on the pollution in Beijing, and other cities, is if a car’s last number on the license is even, they could drive on even numbered days and odd numbers on odd numbered days. That may have worked some but people that could afford it would buy a second car and one car would have a license plate where the last number was even and the other car had the plate where the last number was odd. Some people would just drive no matter what number they had. If they got caught by the police, they would get a fine. Even though there are buses, taxis and subways, people still drove their cars. If we had to do that here in the US and we were told that we could only drive on even numbered days because your plate ended with an even number, what would we do? What would you do? Think about it. The people in the US would be in an uproar.
I didn’t have any problems with the pollution, it didn’t cause me to be sick. A statistic that I found for 2015 said that 4400 people in China die each day from respiratory problems.
The second time that I was there, it was better. The blue sky could be seen more often and I couldn’t smell anything in the air. The winter of 2011-2012 was a different winter. For about three months, it was foggy in the mornings, I was told by friends that it was pollution. I could not smell it. I read online in the China Daily paper that the reason there was so much pollution from the big cities, like Beijing, and the air was so heavy during the winter that it was keeping the air and pollution down so it couldn’t escape into the sky and that is why the blue sky couldn’t be seen for so long. The pollution in Beijing was effecting us in Luoyang five hundred miles to the southwest.
Beijing has had very serious pollution problems. That winter, the pictures that I saw online were really something showing the pollution. They said that the people in Beijing couldn’t see more then about three feet in front of them. People were wearing all kinds of masks, whatever they could find to wear. The stores eventually ran out. They couldn’t get them in stock fast enough. Many people had respiratory problems. The hospitals were constantly busy.
The police on the streets, especially the ones directing traffic, had very serious respiratory problems. Imagine directing traffic for many hours a day and breathing in all of the pollution and the car fumes. The police were not allowed to wear the masks. That’s right. That is why the police had so many respiratory problems. The reason that the police could not wear masks is because a mask is not a part of the officer’s uniform. I wonder if that has changed? I’m sure that rule comes from someone sitting at a desk that didn’t have to stand outside all day breathing in the pollution. I also remember hearing that Shanghai and Guangzhou were two other cities that had very serious pollution problems. One of my former students that worked in Shanghai talked about how bad it was there.
One thing that they do now to cut down on the pollution in Beijing, and other cities, is if a car’s last number on the license is even, they could drive on even numbered days and odd numbers on odd numbered days. That may have worked some but people that could afford it would buy a second car and one car would have a license plate where the last number was even and the other car had the plate where the last number was odd. Some people would just drive no matter what number they had. If they got caught by the police, they would get a fine. Even though there are buses, taxis and subways, people still drove their cars. If we had to do that here in the US and we were told that we could only drive on even numbered days because your plate ended with an even number, what would we do? What would you do? Think about it. The people in the US would be in an uproar.
I didn’t have any problems with the pollution, it didn’t cause me to be sick. A statistic that I found for 2015 said that 4400 people in China die each day from respiratory problems.
Chapter 107
Stolen Computer
This is a story that happened ten days before I went back to the US in 2004. I will start when I moved into my apartment at the Number One Foreign Language School in August of 2002.
During the first month that I was there, there were a couple of young guys who had been friends with the foreign teacher that had been there the previous two years before me. They would come to my apartment later at night and they would want to talk so they could practice their English. The foreign teacher before me could speak Chinese so it worked for the two guys to practice English with him. He could speak both languages so that really helped them for learning.
They would stop at my apartment at 10:00 p.m. or after. I didn’t know them, I couldn’t speak Chinese and I was tired from the day. I lived on the fifth floor and they could see the light on in my apartment even with the window blind pulled down so they would know that I was home. I told them that it was too late and I was tired and it didn’t work for me. I tried to be polite to them. They quit coming then.
There was a big computer desk in the living room and I moved that into my bedroom so I could turn the lights off in the living room, shut the door in the bedroom and no one could tell I was home if they looked up at the living room window. I left it that way for the two years that I was there until ten days before I left in July of 2004.
I decided to move the computer desk back to the living room so the apartment was the way it was when I moved in. This was at the end of June and the weather was hot. In the bedroom was the heater/AC unit. I would shut the bedroom door so it would cool down in there. I would also have a fan going in the bedroom. The unit was not big enough to cool or heat the whole apartment.
The first night after I moved the computer desk back out to the living room, I decided to leave the living room window open. It had a screen on it and I thought maybe it would cool down overnight. The second night, I decided to leave the kitchen window open. I had gone to bed at midnight and closed the bedroom door like I had been so it would stay cool with the AC on so it would be nicer for sleeping. I also had the fan going. With the AC and the fan going, I couldn’t hear anything else.
I got up at 6:00 a.m. and my laptop wasn’t there. I looked around trying to remember if I had put it somewhere else. Then I realized it was gone. Also my cell phone was gone. Even though I had my shade pulled down at night, during the daytime when it was up someone had been watching me from another apartment building across the way and had seen me move the computer desk back into the living room and saw that I had my computer there. They could see in my kitchen windows when I would close the bedroom door and when I left the kitchen window open they saw an opportunity.
I was being watched all the time and didn’t realize it. On the kitchen windows of the four floors below me, there were cage like things covering the windows so no one could crawl up the outside of the building and climb in the apartments below me. I never gave that a thought while I was there those two years. They had crawled up the side of the building by using those cages on the four floors below me and crawled in through my kitchen window and had taken my computer and phone and then went out the door to my apartment.
There was a regular phone in my apartment so I called Jigang. He came, along with six police officers, and they dusted for fingerprints and did what they do in this kind of situation. It was ten days until I would leave, no computer and no cellphone to contact people. I knew that I would never see either one of them. They would not be found.
One of my friends was concerned that I would be mad at the Chinese people because of this. I told him that I was not mad at the Chinese people or anything like that. I guess that I could blame myself but I never gave it a thought what would happen by leaving the window open. I had done it before during my time there. If I was on the first or second floor, I wouldn't have left the windows open but I never thought there would be a problem like that on the 5th floor.
Luckily, I had been saving my pictures and the journal that I had been writing on an external hard drive otherwise I would have lost all of those things and I wouldn’t have had any pictures of my two years in China. I hadn’t saved the last three months on it so I lost that part.
But this isn’t the end of the story. Three years later, Li Xiao (Emily), Zhang Huiqin (Marie) and Li Yuemin (Michael) came here for the year to teach. Sometime during the year, Emily said she found a CD in the apartment she was staying in. I guess Amiao (Guo Limiao), one of the teachers that was here the year before, had brought it when she came and left it. Emily had been watching it one day.
It was like a tourist CD to tell people about Luoyang. Emily told me that some of the pictures on it were ones that I had taken because her sister Echo was in one of the pictures. I watched it and some of the pictures on it were pictures that I had taken. The picture of Echo was from a wedding that she invited me to go to, the bride had been a classmate of hers. It was a picture of her and the bride.
There were many pictures of things I had taken that were used on the CD. I recognized the pictures and the date was also on them so I knew they were mine for sure. So whoever stole my computer either sold the pictures or gave them to someone and they ended up on the CD or the police found the person that stole the computer and then went through it and found the pictures and used them. I will never know how it happened but I find it interesting that somehow my pictures ended up on that tourist CD
Chapter 108
Pickpockets
Friends of mine had things like cell phones or purses stolen, others had money stolen from their purses. One of my friends had his cellphone in a case on his belt and someone opened the flap and took the phone. Others that had backpacks may have the pack cut with a knife and things taken.
You had to be careful on crowded buses and places where people would be close together. Women would carry their purses with the strap around their neck and the purse under their arm or in front of them so someone wouldn’t come by and just pull it off of their arm and run away with it. One of my friends was carrying her purse on her arm and a couple of guys came by on a motorbike, grabbed it and kept going. You always had to be aware of this kind of thing.
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