China - Part 4�

2004-10-26

More rain due tonight. I got out and did as much yard work as I could. At least it�s not supposed to rain for four days straight like last week. Fall is the best time for planting and my favorite time for working in the yard.

I�m finally starting to feel like a human being again, instead of something in hibernation. Since we got back I�ve slept more than I ever have before. Since I�d still been having some intestinal distress I started to take the antibiotics that the doc gave me �just in case.� Placebo or real effect, I don�t know, but at least I can stay awake for more than four hours at a time.

China � Part 4

The very first thing that the spouse and I noticed about China was that, from the air, it could be anywhere. China, from the air looks like nearly everywhere/anywhere I�ve landed in a plane in the US. And the four other flights we took over China during out stay didn�t change that feeling.

The second thing I noticed was the smog. Beijing was the worst, but the entire country is just blanketed. The rest of the world had better watch out; China could easily cover the whole world in smog. There�s a lot of smog between coal burning for electricity, and the increase in motorcycles and cars.

I recently heard that coal burning is responsible for the majority of the mercury in our water. And the level of mercury found in most women is enough to lower the IQ of her offspring from between 5 and 10 points. China better watch out; its collective IQ may be going down every year.

Dad made a joke the first day we were there about the crane, being the national bird of China. Construction cranes, that is. It was said more than once that 95% of the worlds cranes are in China.

And our time there bore that out. I�ve never seen so much construction in my life

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