Today’s API in Beijing was 246. No, that’s not a typo. For more on what that means, there’s a good summary here. Hong Kong considers anything over 100 as very high pollution, and for the U.S. anything over 150 is unhealthy. If I would have known it was this bad today I may have stayed inside and averted the accident detailed below.
Photo above is of Mr. Xu, a migrant worker in the Da Pu factory area of Dongguan. He’s still currently working and gets a basic salary of 770 yuan a month. Previously he would have been able to get a little over 1,000 per month by working overtime, which for him meant working from 8am to midnight. Right now orders are so low most of the workers I talked to down there can’t work overtime. Since the basic salary is so low, a lot of them don’t think it is worth it so besides the people getting laid off many are quitting. I have a story on what’s going on from Dongguan which is being considered by someone, but it’s getting a bit late in the game. Anyone interested in taking a look, mail me at michael.standaert@gmail.com
In the news:
From the blogs:
The ‘Sanlitun Incident’
And in the “Mike does stupid things” category ... I was down at Sanlitun this morning to stop at the Apple Store to get some answers why I can’t get an Internet connection from off a cable anymore. My taxi pulled up and I opened the door slightly, paid the driver, then I opened it a bit wider to step out and WHAM! ... guy on an electric bike going about 20mph smacks into the door and crumples down to the pavement. My wife had seen him coming out of the corner of her eye but her NO! reached my ears at the same time as the WHAM! I hop out, help the rider up. He’s shaken, but I don’t see any blood. Driver gets out and comes around to the passenger side. The door had been wrenched around and now can’t close. Large crackling dent, like a folded soda can. I’m spilling low duibuqi’s as the traffic backs up behind us and the sweeping women close in to gawk. But I guess you can also file this in the “money can do anything in China” category because within five minutes we’d give the taxi driver a little cash, as well as the biker, and everything was fine. I actually felt the taxi driver deserved more cash, but he didn’t ask for much. Probably couldn’t work the rest of the day until he got that door fixed. The biker (who had been talking on the bluetooth in his ear and going too fast anyway) likely got more out of us than what damage was sustained, but we wanted to get out of there and let the scene die down as soon as we could.
First strange thing about all this is I usually look to see if there are any bikers, since I have an electric bike myself and I hate when people just leap out of taxis in front of me, though I usually take it in stride as part of the usual traffic craziness you deal with on a daily basis. Second strange thing is that just last night I was reading the chapter on Nanjing in Simon Winchester’s River at the Centre of the World where he did the exact same thing, but without the noise. His episode told of the graceful tumble the young woman took down an embankment and of her nonchalant remounting of the bike and peddling on her way again. There was no grace or ease about my incident.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
