Waiter! What is a pig doing in my soup? And more at the Yellow RIver Chronicles.

Artwork courtesy of Weibao

Hello and welcome back!  The Yellow River Chronicles returns this week to address the subject of porcine potamology, or, in the vernacular, the study of pigs in water.  As you may or may not know, the Shanghai water supply, the might Huang Pu river, was recently invaded by, well, dead pigs.  

As the story has slowly "evolved", the body count "evolved" from a few hundred dead pigs that were no problem at all to water quality, to a few thousand pigs that were also no problem to the water quality.  As the count now stands, we are at at +7,500 dead porkers bobbing in the Huang Pu infected with porcine circus-whooosssoo-virus.

These pigs are also not a problem to water quality.  

While Shanghai citizens have expressed outrage on Weibo and other outlets for Shanghai outrage, the  media here have generally been trying to put the traditional "positive" spin on the matter:

China: Vigilance grows as dead pigs in river reach 7,545

Via Shanghai Daily, the story continues: Vigilance grows as dead pigs in river reach 7,545.

The number of dead pigs retrieved from the Huangpu River in Shanghai increased to 7,545 after another 944 carcasses were retrieved by 3pm yesterday, officials said. 

Spokesman Xu Wei said the city government is stepping up monitoring of water quality. 

The government also is strictly supervising the biological treatment of the dead pigs and monitoring pork quality at local markets. 

Xu said Jinshan District staff has started removing dead pigs from the waters at the border between Shanghai and Zhejiang Province. 

No pollution has been detected in raw water in the upstream part of the Huangpu River in Shanghai. 

Six water intakes and nine water plants in Songjiang, Jinshan, Minhang and Fengxian districts are being closely watched. 

More inspections will be done at supermarkets, wet markets and butcher shops.

It is comforting to know that the vigilance is growing as the piggies pile up on the shores of the ol' Huang Pu.  Despite all the vigilance, though, the main reason the porker floaters are not a problem is that they cannot make the water quality any worse.  This from the Atlantic:

"The carcasses were probably dumped in the Huangpu river in Zhejiang province," reports NBC News. While The Telegraph says local media suggested that the pigs were dumped by a nearby farmer, the official cause of the rotting swine river is still a mystery.

What's even more vomit-inducing is that the rotting pig soup known formerly known as the Huangpu River was actually a smelly stew of feet and bodily fluid even before the rotting pigs were found. "On Monday afternoon, the dead pigs shared their aquatic graveyard with a filthy mesh of glass and plastic bottles, flip-flops, shoes, what appeared to be bags of domestic and medical waste and even a plastic sex doll." Phillips reports. 

Ewwwww.  Spareribs, anyone?   Our loyal readers will be pleased to know that the offices of the Yellow River Chronicles are equipped with a top-of-the-line reverse osmosis water filtration system and we try to consume only beer, wine and vodka for purposes of hydration.  It is important that our loyal readers not confuse the Pigs in Water with the pigs from the Muppet Show segment "Pigs in Space".

However,-alert YRC staff has discerned the the true cause of the Pigs in Water epidemic here in the 'Hai.  As you may know, Angry Birds is hugely popular here and the newest edition features, you guessed it, Pigs in Water!  You see!  Farmer citizens, anxious to improve their "Birds" stats, have taken to putting pigs in the water to simply help practice for the new Angry Birds universe. 

It is so...obvious.   

(NOTE:  The YRC staff is heading to Cambodia, Thailand and points north in the PR of C and will return in a few weeks.  By then we hope, most of the pigs will be out of the water. See you then!)

The View from the Other Other Side of the World

Hello, greetings and welcome back to this week's Yellow River Chronicles.  As you may have noticed, the YRC has turned its pristine journalistic eye towards weighty topics such as pollution, credibility and tacos in Bali.  We now caste our gaze on the status of "Asians" in America.

We frame the discussion with a video from Alexandra Wallace, a UCLA student, posted on YouTube.  It has been "removed" but the always alert YRC research staff were able to find a pirated DVD over on Dagu Lu.

Thanks for your thoughts, Alex-An-Dra! Posted two years ago in March, this video went viral with around 1.9 million hits on YouTube.  There was a storm of protest, several very funny parodies and some actual thoughtful commentary.

While nightmarish in many aspects, it video did highlight some of the friction between Asians and Americans and the poor wardrobe choices of college girls from southern California.

Two full years later (yesterday), a young student from Culver, Indiana was able to reignite the discussion with his unique analysis of "Ten Reasons Why He Would Hate to be Asian".
 

While it was originally thought that young Samuel Hendrickson was from Indiana Southern University or Indiana University, no Indiana college has stepped forward to claim him. Yet.  But he is wearing a Notre Dame t-shirt, so who knows?

To summarize his salient points (thanks to Shanghaiist who had the courage to watch the whole thing), here are the reasons young Samuel would hate to be Asian.

Most Asians look alike

If he was an Asian man, he’d most likely be with an Asian woman (and he doesn’t find Asian women attractive)

Sweatshops suck.

Smoking pot while Asian makes would make his already-chink eyes close completely

He sucks at math

The only way you can be in show biz if you know kung fu or if you play an Asian mobster

He’d be short.

He hates sushi and it would be “everywhere” if he was Asian. [He throws in a nice use of the word "Oriental" during this segment.]

Asian males don’t have a “good rep.” Schools don’t accept them any more than white males, they’re not known for being good in the bedroom, and are known for having small equipment and wear tighty-whiteys

Asians blur their porn

Sigh. Thanks for your enlightening thoughts, Samuel, your thoughts speak for themselves.  Several leading "Asian" YouTube comedians have started work on a parody/response to Mr. Hendrickson's magnum opus, similar to the efforts to parody Ms. Wallace.

Our YRC readers should be aware that efforts to work on "Ten Reasons We Would Hate to Be A Clown Car Driver From Culver, Indiana" have been hampered by the fact that no one really knows where Culver is.

This from the Culver, Indiana Chamber of Commerce (pop. 1,900):

"Amazing cuisine and classy shops enhance the appeal of Culver. Several exquisite restaurants will tempt your taste buds with a variety of foods. Some of the more surprising treats include excellent seafood, fine Italian dining, and even sushi."

You will be pleased to know that your ever-vigilant staff has actually BEEN THERE! Truth, that!  While we did not try the sushi, Culver is a pleasant enough small Indiana resort town with an excellent lake and a fine Dairy Queen downtown.  We saw the lake, spent some time fishing and had a Blizzard and onion rings at the Dairy Queen.

What we did not see on several visits to Culver were any short, unattractive "Asians" parading their small units around in their tighty whiteys, their eyes sealed shut from ripping bong hits after a hard day at the sweatshop as they wandered home to eat sushi, watch blurred porn and practice their kung fu.

To give some final perspective from YRC HQ, a full 25% of all expats living in China live in Shanghai (176,000).  To drill on the demographics a bit, nearly half of those are also "Asian" with Japanese being the largest group.  Americans, for example are 21,000 strong, our cousins the Australians are around 5,000 strong and our allies in revolution the French around 7,000 strong.  So, in a city of 25 million Han Chinese, we are less than one hundredth of a percent.

This means that we don't really have much of a presence to the general population, except at a few key bar streets on Friday and Saturday nights.  Or about the same percentage of "Asians" in Culver, Indiana.  So tune in next week, when we tackle the "Ten Reasons A Shanghainese Would Hate to be an Expat".  See you next week!

Airpocalypse Now at the YRC!

28 Mansions of Chinese Astronomy

Greetings, hello and welcome back the the Yellow River Chronicles!  This week's column includes a stunning array of meteorology, astronomy and ecological sciences so we are going to get right to it, with none of the traditional window dressing, prefacing and arbitrage that traditionally gums up the first paragraph or two of the YRC.

We were pleased to receive, from an active YRC correspondent, the following list of cosmic events that are not to be missed in calendar year 2013:

You will notice that the next celestial wonder will be Comet PANSTARRs zipping by in March.  You can actually get detailed instructions on how to view it at EarthSky, a very cool site:  Click for Instructions.

However, this may not be so for the +1 billion or so citizens of the major cities of the People's Republic as we enter what is now being called the Airpocalypse.  Since this winter, China's cities have been racking up "beyond the index" readings of air quality.  Air quality index readings list a "hazardous" level of 300 micrograms per cubic metre, and Beijing  the poster-child for poor air quality, had days where the readings spiked at +900 mpcm this winter.

Chart courtesy of Bloomberg

Things have gotten so smoky, Bloomberg has prepared a chart that shows it is healthier to breathe the air in an airport smoker's lobby that in Beijing.

Shanghai, home of the YRC executive offices, is never one to be second to the evil older brother Beijing.

Shanghai civil authorities have now released an air quality mascot to help us keep track of air quality in a friendly, cartoony, citizen friendly, way.

Yes, the scale is the same as the readings mentioned above, so the recent readings of 900 in Beijing would be nearly 3x the tear inducing levels of 300 in the Shanghai chart.  MMmuuuuuhhhahaahahaahahahahhhahahahahhaaaa!

So what this means, dear readers, is that there may be no celestial sighting in the Year of the Snake here in the 'Hai.  We know that the Chinese have a lunar calendar and a Moon festival and a famous poem, so we know that have, at some time in the past, been able to see the sky.

One of the most famous Chinese poems, by Li Bai around 700 AD is about the moon:

静夜思   A Quiet Night Thought

床前明月光   In front of my bed is the bright moonlight.

疑是地上霜   I doubt if it was the frost on the ground.

举头望明月   I lift my head to look up at the August Moon,

低头思故乡   Lowering my head to think about my hometown.

However, here is the current line-up for celestial viewing in the "Hai.

March:  PANSTARRS?  Forgettaabbbbbouuddddiit.
April:   Lunar Eclipse?  We're talking TOTAL eclipse here, folks.
August:  Perseid meteor showers?  Nope!  Took a bath. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow.
November:  ISON?  Not tonight, darling.

So, the YRC staff will sadly pack up our telescopes if we are in Shanghai for the weekend. We can always head out to parts of the countryside where the air is still clear and sweet as vodka on the rocks and the lunar viewing is as fine as Li Bai's.  But if we are in the cities...we will hold our breath.

As a deep irony moment, here are two photos.  One is from Beijing a few weeks ago, the other is a shot from the classic science fiction film "Blade Runner" which depicts Los Angeles in the year 2020.  Take your pick!  After all, it's only seven years away.