ddewey ([info]ddewey) wrote,
@ 2005-06-13 16:16:00
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Current mood: pissed off

Black Smoke
This morning when I woke up I looked out my window and saw plumes of hellish inky black smoke spewing out of the chimney of the nearest power plant. In the past the color of the smoke has always been gray or white, so why is it suddenly all black today? I've heard that coal burning power plants tend to make a lot of extra pollution for the first six hours or so of operation, so maybe the plant was shut down for maintenance last night and then restarted. But it's already been much longer than six hours since I woke up and I haven't seen any change in the color or quantity of the smoke. I hope they haven't done something stupid like disable the scrubbers to save money.

I don't know why anyone would be so stupid as to put a polluting power plant in the middle of a big city in the first place. My business had better be very successful or I'm going to be pissed that I wasted years of my life and destroyed my health by living in such a filthy country.

In my last post I mentioned the sewer spewing sewage at Liuhe Road. That problem thankfully has finally been fixed.


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[info]virtualjustin
2005-06-13 06:36 pm UTC (link)
My business had better be very successful or I'm going to be pissed that I wasted years of my life and destroyed my health by living in such a filthy country.

wow, this could possibly be me in a few months/years :-\ hope everything works out dude

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[info]ddewey
2005-06-15 03:52 am UTC (link)
Don't worry, I'm here to stay. Yeah I complain about it sometimes, but hey, everyone who lives in China complains about it. Especially the Chinese.

By the way, the power plant emissions have gone back to their usual gray color. This is the same color as the air in Hangzhou, so on most days I can't even see the emissions at all against the backdrop of the sky.

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[info]milan27
2005-06-15 06:46 pm UTC (link)
Yep, that is just China, very typical. I liked your post about the sewage, you hit the nail on the head. Most Chinese have the attitude of ignoring things instead of confronting them, because it's not their business. I thought Communism is supposed to be about caring about the communities, I guess too many purges during the last century have made people very protective of themselves.

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[info]ddewey
2005-06-16 04:14 am UTC (link)
That may be part of the reason. Also I think communism itself brings about disregard for the community and the environment. When everything is owned by everyone, it's basically the same as everything being owned by no one. People don't have strong personal ties to community resources so they ignore them or exploit them. It's best to let people have the opportunity to own property for themselves, so that they will actually have a personal stake in that property and care for it better.

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filthy country?
(Anonymous)
2008-02-23 01:47 am UTC (link)
Many parts of China is very polluted and unsanitary. It's a developing country with a long history. It isn't easy making rapid progress economically and socially, especially for the most populated country in the world. But things are changing for the better. You should have been there 10 years ago to see the improvements. China is definitely not a filthy country.

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