(Don’t) Breathe (Very) Deeply

Posted on January 11, 2014 by ericksonsinchina

*Note: This post was written before we left Shanghai for our holiday break. I was just too overcome by the smog to actually post it.

The pollution in Shanghai has been out of control. Maybe you have heard? Maybe you have Facebook friends constantly posting photos of the hazy view outside their living room windows? No? We obviously don’t have the same taste in friends then, because many of mine have been dedicating their time and attention to posting shots of what looks like San Francisco fog but is, in fact, horrible smog. The pollution has always been something we complain about. There are rules about when the kids are allowed outside and there is that nifty little scale that tells you how close you are to cheating death by breathing more of the Shanghai air. Of course, we have never had it as bad as Beijing. Remember last year when the poor, poor people of Beijing couldn’t even see a few feet in front of them because the pollution was so horrible? Ahem.

No, that isn’t fog. And even worse, it isn’t even close to sunset. That is a photo of my children waiting at the bus stop in the morning. Waiting and poisoning their tiny little lungs as they gulp down toxic air! It was predictable, I suppose. This is the kind of thing that always happens just when I think I have settled in here. Just when I have made my peace with China and we have eased into some sort of tenuous ceasefire, things fall apart. I apologize to all the other people unfortunate enough to live with us in Shanghai during this trying time. I am sorry you have been drug into this never ending fight between China and myself. Who knew it would get this ugly? Who could have anticipated that China would literally fight dirty?

Normally right about now you would be looking at the Peal Tower. 4pm, by the way.

I have actually been having a few good months over here. I know I shouldn’t say this out loud, but I have been finding my groove. I finished my dissertation and, after banging my head against the wall for a few weeks, I decided to go back to work. There was an opening at the kids’ school in the Admission Office and since I’ve been going to work every day things have really evened out. It turns out being at home with the ayi all day is a little hazardous to my mental health. It probably helps that once you are inside the school you feel like you could be in the United States. Well, almost.

Being at school is most likely the only reason we will survive living in Shanghai if the pollution levels stay as high as they have been. The school has an excellent filtration system. This is lucky for Team Erickson because, you see, I have been living in denial. Despite everyone’s dire warnings about the air quality in general and Lucas’ asthma in particular, I have refused to plan ahead. This is how I deal with the things I cannot change in China. In a place where you get an email from one of the local grocery stores with the title, “2013’s Food Safety Scandals Reviewed (& some festive cheer!),” living in denial becomes the most reasonable option. When everyone else was buying air filters for their houses and stocking up on N95 surgical masks I was apparently focusing on other things. Admittedly, I was most likely arm wrestling Sally the ayi for ultimate control of my household, but I certainly could have taken a break to check into some of the safety issues that are now front and center. Now as the pollution levels have gotten ridiculously high, I find myself having panic attacks on the way to work.

Talking to my colleagues doesn’t make things better. They are shocked at my lack of planning. One of the school nurses took pity on me and gave me a handful of surgical masks for the kids. A fellow parent left another few on my desk. Everyone is encouraging me to get air filters for the house. Of course, those are the things everyone else has been stockpiling. The things that are now impossible to buy! Lucas asked for a respirator for Christmas. A respirator! One evening when the air inside the house began looking like we had a something burning in the kitchen, Mark commented, “We have got to get the hell out of here.”

Which isn’t going to happen any time soon, of course. So I added some extra things to our “bring back from the USA” list. I am hoping that this ensures that the air stays breathable once we get back from our winter break. Like the lice shampoo I buy every vacation as a talisman to prevent the children from getting lice (successful thus far!), maybe a huge stack of masks to keep out the dangerous pollution particles will appease my arch nemesis. China, this time you’ve gone too far.

*Also would like to mention here that the air has been relatively clean since we arrived back with my excessive number of surgical masks. You are welcome, Shanghai.

Paging Dr. Pu

Posted on August 31, 2013 by ericksonsinchina

We are back in Shanghai and the opportunities for blog posts are piling up faster than I can write them down. First, let me begin by saying that our first few weeks back have had amazing weather. It is hotter than an oven with record-breaking temperatures, but the air quality has been amazing. Seriously amazing. Remember when the pollution levels were up in the two and three hundreds? One morning when we woke up, they were measuring the pollution levels as an eight. An eight!!! Let me give you an idea of the difference:

A bad air day

A “good” air day

An excellent air day!

It made it almost bearable to be back in China again after our summer adventures. As one neighbor explained, “If you just don’t look down, you can forget you are in China!” Just focus on the sky, people!

True to form, the kids all caught some sort of horrible disease as soon as we landed. Most likely we got it on the plane, but does that even really matter at this point? There was plenty of coughing and sniffling and we almost broke out Lucas’ nebulizer. Henry was the last to fall, finally developing a horrible headache on Sunday that required our house full of friends to cut their epic battle short. In the middle of the night he was up again with a headache and slight fever. He threw up the medicine I gave him and he and I spent the remainder of the night in the living room. I kept him home from school the next day and he seemed to rally. Predictably, when the question of returning to school came up he was adamant that he was still extremely ill. He even thought he might have strep throat. It hurt to swallow! He couldn’t eat! Oh, the pain! I was skeptical. He insisted that I examine his throat and once I managed to find a working headlamp (don’t ask) I was surprised to find that his throat was red, swollen, and disgustingly splotchy. In fact, it perfectly matched the Internet illustration of strep throat.

So the next morning we visited our Chinese pediatrician’s office. There was a new doctor, of course, since we have yet to see the same person there more than once. The nurse gave me the new doctor’s card and explained that Dr. Pu would most likely be around for a while. I waited for Henry to notice that his new doctor had such an interesting name, but he had no reaction. None! Here was the perfect joke for a 6 year old boy and he was missing opportunity after opportunity. Dr. Pu was a Chinese woman who proceeded to listen to Henry’s laundry list of complaints. She took the time to belch loudly in the middle of questioning him about the duration of his sore throat. No apology, no discussion, no pause even. Her bedside manner is second to none, obviously. After diagnosing Henry with a sinus infection she berated me for even suspecting strep. His throat would look much worse! Consider his symptoms! I didn’t mention that I had consulted WebMD before making the appointment although I suspected she might have done the same. Her description of the illness seemed to be lifted word for word from the website. She refused to do any sort of test to make sure it wasn’t strep and then confided that if it was strep the antibiotics she had prescribed would knock that out as well. She also told me that Henry didn’t need to actually finish the medicine– a different powder for me to mix this time!– and then gave me some convoluted explanation of the number of days worth of medicine he was to take depending on how he felt. All very scientific. But I would never second guess Dr. Pu. (Snicker, snicker.) She is a professional.

Team Tofu

Posted on June 3, 2013 by ericksonsinchina

We all knew it might happen eventually… Team Erickson has become reluctant vegetarians. Food safety has always been a bit of an issue here for us, but lately it has gotten too difficult to ignore. We moved here concerned about the effects of pollution on ourselves and the kids, but that was all hypothetical. I really thought our main food issue would be strange, new, exotic food. Would the kids like it? Would they even taste it? Would I ever get over my street food anxieties? (The answer to that last question is a predictable “no.”) I had not thought about the availability of safe, reasonably healthy, affordable food on a daily basis. There is always some sort of food scare here and we laughed it off initially. People are injecting sugar water into the strawberries? Sure they are. There is some problem with the green bean supply? Yawn. Scammers are making fake eggs using chemicals instead of chickens? Highly implausible. Still, those stories began to weigh on me. I have talked before about my shopping difficulties. That hasn’t changed much. I am still pounding the pavement in search of dinner ingredients. Only now I have found that there are certain items that we were happily eating before that I can no longer convince myself to buy. Like meat.

Team Erickson is a family of meat eaters. Henry’s love of pork is well documented. Mark considers it the “trifecta” when he manages to have bacon at all three meals. Lucas enjoys nothing more than a good hamburger. Ava loves meat a little less, but still counts herself among the carnivores. Me, I can take it or leave it. Some things I love, but I can go without meat, especially here in Shanghai where the things I buy don’t compare in quality to the things I used to purchase in the United States.

So did I force everyone else to give up their beloved pork chops and chicken? Hardly. Did you hear about the 16,000 (!) pigs floating in the river here? The 1,000 ducks? That river eventually becomes the drinking water, by the way. Did you hear about all the chickens they killed once our new round of bird flu surfaced? We can’t do much about the polluted air– holding our breath forever isn’t a realistic option– but we can control what we eat and after a few of those stories we weren’t all that excited about meat.

Are we eating organic vegetables? Who knows? For all we know we are eating veggies grown entirely in toxic soil irrigated with the dirty water from some city roof. Actually, I am pretty sure we are eating at least a few vegetables grown in this less than ideal manner. We try not to drink the porky water with its high level of heavy metals and I don’t cook with it. But the water that comes into my house begins in that river full of carcasses and we all use it to shower. Is our bottled water any better? I have to trust that it comes from where it is supposed to– a big assumption for China– and that drinking it won’t eventually have some detrimental effect. Do I sound crazy? I am sure I do, but let me assure you I am far from the craziest person here when it comes to this issue. You should all be thanking me that I haven’t started forwarding all the alarming emails I get from the school and my neighbors concerning some new health scare. Don’t open your windows! It lets in horrible polluted air! Open your windows! Otherwise the off gassing from your carpets and paint will kill you all! Going home for the summer is not enough time to detox! We are all doomed!

The kids and I like to joke that we are becoming toxic superheroes. After breathing polluted air, bathing in toxic water, and eating vegetables grown in questionable soil we can now resist any sort of environmental hazard. After the next nuclear disaster, they can call Team Erickson to handle the clean up. We won’t need protective suits. We will breathe deeply and appreciate the relative freshness of the air. I should really get to work on our costumes!

My Lungs Feel Better Already!

Posted on March 21, 2013 by ericksonsinchina

Remember the Air Quality Index? The wonderful way of telling everyone just how bad the air we are breathing today might be? It just got more wonderful! Check out this new idea– cute little pixies to tell you the air is so very gross you should just stay inside! Who can feel bad about pollution when confronted with this?

I particularly like how when the pollution gets serious the tears really start to flow. So sad, but still so cute! Horrible.

Bad Air

Posted on January 17, 2013 by ericksonsinchina

Lately here in Shanghai we have had quite a few days where the air quality has been labeled “red.” We look at the AQI, the Air Quality Index, to see if the air is too dangerous to breathe. Red means it is “unhealthy” and the recommendation is to keep kids and the elderly inside. If you have “sensitivities” or heart or lung disease then you should plan to stay inside too. This means that on red air days I get an email from Henry’s school informing me that there will be no outside recess. The same usually goes for the older kids even though their school is closer to the ocean and allegedly has “better air.” You hear that here constantly. Pudong has “fresher” air than Puxi because of the trees. When the Chinese go on vacation they comment on the quality of the air and the “freshness” of the breezes. This seemed strange to me at first, but now I can see why. When you live with pollution constantly, clear skies can be shocking. You gape at fluffy clouds and stars at night. You forget what they look like after you live without them for a while.

When we first arrived, I had no idea that the air quality was a big deal. I thought of the AQI the same way I think of that terror threat scale in the United States. It is good to know that it is around, but I never pay any attention to it. It stayed at red for so long that red ceased to mean anything at all. For me the air quality idea was the same. Does it ever get to purple? Or to that brownish color that indicates we should all stay inside and remain perfectly still? Once when one of Lucas’ friends didn’t come over on his bike as planned, we were all surprised to learn that his mother had refused to let him out of the house due to the air quality. What? It had been a lovely day—one of the few with blue skies and mild temperatures—and I had let my kids run around outside all afternoon. Parenting fail, apparently. I knew Shanghai had pollution, but I had been expecting something like those cartoon factories with black smoke billowing for everyone to see. I hadn’t realized that a beautiful day could still be a heavily polluted one.

The past few days, however, you can really see the pollution. My brain still tricks me into thinking it is just fog, or that it might rain, but really it is just pollution. Pollution so thick that you can’t see through it sometimes. Inexplicably, my Chinese teacher prefers the pollution to rain. He would rather have the gray hazy pollution than drizzle. I counter that at least the rain washes the place clean, but he disagrees. Then the pollution is just in the water and the soil, he says, but that is the price for Chinese development. Just wait, he says, the factories are slowly moving. They are going to Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Soon tourists will stop talking about their beautiful blue skies and their fresh, clean air. Then they will pay the price for developing and China can clean up a little bit. But for now, the haze continues and China’s progress marches on.