might makes right

Today was my last long run before the race—22 miles. It went fairly well, especially given that I’ve just been reading about air quality (or lack thereof) in Beijing and have received new statistics to actually back up my general impression that the air here is, well, completely gross (I just looked up “gross” in the MS Word thesaurus—one synonym is “sickening” which of course relates to the spitting, the cold I had that refused to quit, etc.—the air literally makes people sick).

According to the Chinese State Environmental Protection Agency website, the API in Beijing today is 151—giving it a 3B “grade” so far as air quality goes. This is by far the worst throughout China—only a few other cities even get above 100, and Beijing is the only city to get a grade of 3B (the others over 100 get 3A). What does this mean? Well, among other things it means that 151 is at the very edge of being “unhealthy” (as opposed to “unhealthy for sensitive groups”, which is the range of API between 100 and 150). At 151, the air starts being unhealthy for everyone, probably including runners.

The weather report on one Chinese website always lists air quality and usually says it is “jiaocha” which means “relatively bad.” I think this is probably a politically correct understatement. One major reason for all of this pollution is the number of cars on the road in Beijing—currently, there are over 1000 new private cars joining Beijing’s already gridlocked traffic every day. One in five cars in China is a Beijing car, at least according to a taxi driver I recently discussed this with (about one in 100 people in China resides in Beijing, for some comparison). Interestingly the website where I check the weather also features a “car wash index” which tells you whether it is an “appropriate” day to wash your car (apparently people can’t make this decision on their own) and also a report regarding whether it is good day to turn on their air conditioning (ditto on the decision-making).

Relating to cars, today on my run, which was in the Yuyuantan Park, I spent some time while running on the otherwise pleasant pedestrian pathway being closely followed by a park vehicle, which passed me at the first available opportunity. I was determined not to stop to let it pass—here, while “human rights” (renquan) are often rather lacking, it would seem that “car rights” (chequan—not really a word, just one I’m making up) are quite prevalent. There is frequent discussion of how China is a renzhi society—“rule by men”—rather than fazhi—“rule by law” and how this needs to change. However, the conception of “rights” here is itself problematic—the word for “rights,” quanli, sounds exactly like the word for “power,” also quanli, and they have the same root character of quan (the li is a different character but is pronounced exactly the same). So, in a sense, in China “might” literally does make “right.” This is utterly evident when it comes to the hierarchy of people in relation to cars, in which cars far outrank people, the implication of course being that the person driving the car far outranks the one walking down the street. Most people here buy cars not for convenience (taxis are incredibly cheap—about $5 for a ride across town, about $13 for a taxi to the airport from the opposite side of town—and cars are expensive, with foreign brands marked up a great deal over their home-country prices) but for “face”—to show that they have money, status, etc. So, for instance, right turn on red here does not entail waiting for there to be no traffic before going, but completely ignoring the red light as well as the pedestrians trying to cross the street and just barreling through.

The run was good, however. The highlight: a group of about 40 middle-aged folks learning Latin dancing, swinging their hips in a rather un-Chinese fashion.