Out and About in Shenyang

“New female driver: Keep your distance”

You just never know what the air pollution will do here. It’s less predictable than the weather. That’s ironic, because unlike the weather, the air pollution is manmade, and therefore controllable. Still, we can never predict what the air quality index (AQI) will be like from day to day, even from hour to hour.

As an example, late last week we had a spout of high-pollution index days. A coworker was planning to take her family to Beijing for the long weekend, and was considering canceling her plans because the air looked so bad. In the end, she decided to go anyway. With winter coming, she figured that if she didn’t go now, they might have to wait until next spring before the weather was good enough to go again. And it’s a good thing that she went, because the air quality in Beijing over the weekend was terrific. Even as I write this on Monday morning, the AQI in Shenyang is 122 (“unhealthy for sensitive groups”), but in Beijing, it’s 29 (“excellent”). Usually Beijing her terrible pollution, but right now, it’s no more polluted than any US city.

I’ve heard from other people that the city-wide heating systems are turned on starting on November 1. Since heat is generated by burning dirty coal, the AQI starts getting dangerous at that time. If that’s true, then we had better take advantage of good air while we can, before we’re confined to the indoors for the winter.

Time to start wearing the special face masks that filter out the nastiness from the local air.

I didn’t want to like Banana Milk, but I do.

I returned from my trip out of town last weekend to hear my smoke detector chirping, indicating that it was time to change the battery. Innocently, and probably naïvely, I thought it would be as simple as contacting the front desk and asking the good maintenance people to replace the battery. Boy, was I wrong.

A few minutes after I notified the front desk, a team of three, yes three, people came to my apartment to examine the situation. They looked around the apartment for about five minutes, then located the smoke detector. They all stared up at the smoke detector for a minute or so, then spent another five minutes huddled together, discussing the situation in hushed voices.

Finally, one of them looked up at me, and in an apologetic tone of voice, said sorry, they couldn’t fix it.

Why not?, I asked.

They said that the smoke detector was not their equipment. They said that the consulate requested that it be installed. They said that they didn’t have the “technology” to fix the problem.

The problem is a battery, I explained. You just have to replace the battery.

Their faces lit up. They said, we can do that. We will be right back. They shuffled out of the apartment.

Ten minutes later, they returned with yet another person, making a total of four people in my apartment, who had a ladder with him. He ascended the latter by stepping on the bottom rung, so that he could reach the smoke detector.

After removing the smoke detector from at ceiling mount, another few minutes were spent trying to figure out how to open the battery compartment.

Faces fell as they saw the battery: a 9 volt battery. Indeed, unknown technology in China. With despair in their eyes, they looked at me and informed me that in fact, they could not fix the smoke detector.

I informed them that we were at an impasse: I would not allow them not to fix the problem. I reminded them that there was a fire in this very hotel just last month, on this floor, in one of my coworker’s apartment. I told him that I would not go to sleep in an apartment without a smoke detector, and that they had to fix the problem before I went to bed that night.

They assured me that they would fix the problem, and retreated en masse. In my mind, I queued up the Keystone Cops soundtrack.

30 minutes later, all four of them returned, accompanied by one of the locally engaged staff from the consulate, who had in his hand a brand new 9 V battery. Within 15 seconds, he had installed the new battery, and replaced the smoke detector in the ceiling. Our eyes met, then we each rolled our eyes. The Keystone Cops music was playing full blast in my mind.

As he walked out of my apartment, he surreptitiously slipped me two additional new 9 V batteries, so that in the future, I would not have to force the poor hotel maintenance staff to face the confusing technology of 9 V batteries, and could fix the problem myself.

The next time your smoke detector starts to chirp, take comfort in the fact that it will not take five people and an hour and a half to replace the battery.

You know how some Danish have some fruit on it?

You know how we all think that cantaloupe on a Danish would be just as yummy as peach?

Yeah, me neither.

A guy is selling fruit on the sidewalk in front of the Consulate. Out of a cart pulled by a donkey.

Part of me thinks: “wow, fresh from the old countryside, this fruit must be clean and pure and tasty!”

Another part of me laughs in scorn at that part of me, and snorts: “that’s exactly what the guy wants you to think. He probably bought the fruit in the wholesale market, rents the donkey by the hour, and is charging you double for the illusion of countryside food.”

I don’t like that part of me very much, but I suspect that it’s right.