when the air is clear

Usually when someone invokes the phrase “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone,” they mean that you don’t realize a situation’s greatness until that greatness goes away.

Like if your neighbor bakes cookies every day and always gives you some. You eat so many warm wonderful cookies – every day, fresh cookies – that it seems quite normal and run of the mill. Then the neighbor moves away and bam! no more cookies. That no-more-cookies slap in the face is when you realize how good you had it.

That's sort of like life in Chengdu, except that instead of cookies think pollution. Every day a fresh smothering of pollution. But then bam! just like the neighbor and the cookies, the pollution is gone. And you’re left with blue sky and clear air.  The slap in the face is the realization that living in Chengdu made you forget just how clean the air can be. 

Pollution… you don’t know how much you’ve got ‘til its gone.

A clear day here is jarring. It proves that Chengdu, at its roots, is a crisp city. It’s not that the buildings are ill-focused or that the bridge up the road was constructed with steel wool instead of steel. The reason life is blurry is that the city is too often cloaked in a scientifically measurable chemical layer that obscures the view.

When we woke to a shockingly clear and beautiful Saturday, we spent most of the day outside. It was as much a joy as an obligation. As we traipsed through the city, chasing the fresh air, a taxi driver told us that the excellent air quality was the result of several days of rain. After rain, he said, comes good air. My only response was a sincere hope for miserable weather.

It’s not like we regularly see the sun here either. One morning last week when the lady who watches Xiao Guai Guai got to our house, I asked about the weather. She said it was beautiful, you could see the 太阳. Hmmm … 太阳? I ran through my Chinese vocabulary knowing that I recognized the word but couldn’t for the life of me remember its meaning. 太阳… 太阳… Definitely haven’t said that in ages. And then, as she’s pointing out the window at the sky, I remember…. 太阳 is the sun! She’s saying that today you can see the sun!

Still, it seems our appreciation for a day in which the air quality index dipped into the “good” range was not necessarily matched by the rest of the city. (Note: "good" is much better than “unhealthy for sensitive groups” which after a steady stream of “unhealthy” days can start to seem downright rejuvenating.) All around us people were doing their personal best to knock the "good" rating up a few unhealthy pegs.

There were the sidewalk sweepers pushing piles of dust back and forth which the wind caught up in swirling clouds and deposited in our hair. There were the smokers at Bamboo Park who lit cigarette after cigarette and played endless rounds of cards as their smoke trails wound past every teacup in every shady corner. And there was the woman sitting on a bench along a main drag with her family who in quick succession sneezed several times, coughed juicily, spat, and then farmer-blew her way to a clearer breathing passage.

But none of this could stop us. We loved being out of the house. Loved seeing the guy making tofu breakfasts off the back of his bike. Kept remarking on how clearly we could see this and that.

We high-stepped it through the construction under the belly of the 2^nd ring road, tripping past more workers than jobs to be done. There they stood with their scooters, waiting for work with their handsaws, paint rollers, whatever they might need, all piled up on the backs of their bikes.

Workers were on cell phones as they repaired the city by hand and trowel. And the egg delivery guy rode past it all without breaking a single one of his dozens.

We were looking at Chengdu without its chemical cloak, without the metal aftertaste. We saw it with eager eyes knowing that once the unnatural cloud covered our lives all over again, we’d have to forget just how nice this city can be.

April 20, 2013

It turns out that earthquakes and childbirth have some similarities. To start, both are sharp-turned upheavals in which nature repeatedly drops its fist on your head and demands to know who’s in charge. I’ve experienced both recently and the answer in both instances - and without hesitation - is nature.

The earthquake began around eight in the morning as a curious rumble. Soon the house swam and the walls swayed. Our reaction was to scoop up the baby and the dog and get out. Leaving the house might or might not have been the proper thing to do but after Shi-wen declared “Earthquake!” neither of us opted to wait under the dining room table to see if the ceiling held out. Instead we rushed outside with the rest of the neighborhood and waited.

It reminded me of the moments after childbirth where everyone’s slopping around in slippers and pajamas looking a bit whiplashed and trying to call the relatives. People were dressed for early Saturday morning but cell phones were pressed to their ears instead of pillows.

For our neighbors, the date of the quake recalled a far deadlier earthquake just five years earlier. In that quake, which occurred just 50-some miles from this one, 90,000 people died or went missing.

News passed quickly through the pajamaed crowd as everyone milled around and tried to reach friends and family. The magnitude was 7. The epicenter was in Lu Shan County in Ya'an, about 70 miles southwest of Chengdu. The foreigners (meaning us) have a baby and a dog.

In this quake, Chengdu at large was spared serious harm although nearly 200 people were killed elsewhere. Just hours after the quake the city was back to business as usual. The aftershocks, however, went on for several days; when we thought we felt shaking, but couldn't be sure, we’d look to our gently rocking chandelier for confirmation.

On the day of the quake there was one person we didn’t get to meet from the neighborhood: a middle-aged man in pink pajamas who was walking circles near the swing set. As for recognizing him now - without his pajamas - I’m not optimistic. I’m probably as likely to be able to find him in a crowd as I’d be in identifying one of the ladies from my childbirth class without her giant belly.

In the midst of life’s big shifts every detail is vivid and sharp and unforgettable. But soon the rumble of trucks no longer makes you think the ground is shuddering and the pain of childbirth becomes harder and harder to explain.

It’s this gentle-ing of memories that lets you sleep soundly in a house where the walls once shook. Not that we’re sleeping much. Earthquakes may eventually stop their shaking but the roar of an infant feels like forever.