The Wuhan Water Crisis and an Ode to Metro

It is another hazy saturday here in Wuhan and all I have in the kitchen for breakfast is a banana and a bag of earl grey tea.  I go to my water cooler and press the hot button.  It gurgles at me that there is no water left for my cup of comfort and spits the dregs of the tub into my cup.  I think to myself that it is enough to hold me over until the water guy, as he is known in my phone, can scoot over and bring me another jug of presumably drinkable water.

I say presumably because I have acquired a sense of distrust for the people who sell me anything consumable in China.  I know this is a gross generalization, and somewhat prejudiced, but recently we experienced what has been dubbed the Wuhan Water Crisis where a factory "somewhere" in China "accidentally" spilled "something" into the river which brings us our already chemically saturated water via the Yangtze River.  The result was a harsh odour and taste of strong chlorine coming from our taps which I had long become complacent about avoiding.  The people of Wuchang were told not to drink, boil, or otherwise consume this water while the "problem" was being sorted out, but as we are oblivious foreigners, we did not get the memo.  The teachers offices at my school started to smell a little bit by the third day as no one was really confident in showering in chlorine.  

Since then, the water has returned to "normal" and I have once again become complacent about washing my body, clothes, fruit, and dishes in it.  However, I no longer trust the boiling of this water, nor do I wash lettuce in it.  No, lettuce gets special treatment with water from the jug that the water guy brings over on his scooter.  Why only lettuce?  Your guess is likely better than mine, I suppose it's because I fear the cleanliness of the lettuce the most.

During this water crisis, my reliable water guy was completely out of water...for 3 days.  No water from the water guy.  "Mao water" (don't have).  Is this not his sole purpose in my life?  The routine is, I call him, he answers, I say, "Ching shway" (water please, or at least, that's how I think you say it), he laughs at me and says "Okay, okay" and 5-20 minutes later he shows up at my door with a jug for my cooler.  We laugh at each other because we have already exhausted our knowledge of each other's language and I hand him the obligatory 10 quay, which is less than 2 dollars.

My question is, why was he out of water?  Was it just that the informed Chinese people in my vicinity were onto the water crisis before me, and had cleaned him out?  Or, is he simply filling water up out of his tap and knew that he could not hide the chlorine smell so he had to get rid of those bottles?  Is it my imagination that when I drank some water from the cooler at school it smelled like chlorine?  Did "they" wash the bottles out with the contaminated water, or fill it up with it?   I know this is cynical, but is it so far fetched?

My friend once bought a bottle of wine from the store and after we pulled out the cork, we found that it was actually actual grape juice.  Okay, I know you're like, yeah dummy, wine is made from grapes.  No, no, this was grape juice, and I know grape juice.  The bottle had simply been re-corked.  Have I ever asked the water guy where he gets his water?  Of course not, it took me eight months to be able to say please to him, and he still giggles when I do it as likely I am doing it wrong.

Considering that this is how I have to go about getting water, you can imagine what I have to do to get milk.  There is a man who I can also call and he walks his cow over to my building and squats to milk it in my doorway.  Okay, that's bulshit, but I have actually seen that happen in India.  There is Chinese milk here but it is something I am also skeptical about and have been warned by my students to avoid.  Apparently it gave some child a gigantic head, or something. If Chinese people aren't drinking it, I'm out.

Fortunately, there is a magical place called Metro where we foreigners can go and buy those specialty items that make being away from home livable.

I made a trip there today and spent nearly 250 dollars on the imported items that get me through my busy teaching weeks.  Some of the items include: a box full of wine, this is important for those endless nights of marking and essential for girls nights which have come to be an event on thursdays.  Why not fridays, likely because we just cannot wait that long and by friday I'm asleep sometimes by 8pm.  Last friday, one of my students asked me if it was some kind of Canadian holiday, or special festival.  I said, no, as it's march and before St. Patty's...

"why would you ask that, random chinese student?"

"Oh, just wondering because all of the female canadian teachers are wearing their hair in big piles on top of their heads with no make up on..."

"No child, that just means we all had a bit too much fun drinking wine and playing Dance, Dance video games last night in anticipation of the end of a long week..." Kids don't miss a damn thing.

Also in my metro haul:

Milk from New Zealand, sometimes I get the German stuff, and today we found skim milk from Australia.  The milk has still been treated so that it won't go bad for about a year, and you don't have to keep it in the fridge, but it's milk and I need to have it.

Cheese, enough said.  I think I spent nearly 30 dollars on cheese, and I'll do it again next time.

Bread, ACTUAL bread, that does not have a shit ton of sugar in it.  I know you're all thinking, why would there be sugar in the bread...good luck finding any without it.  I bought two loaves and froze one for the inevitable time that I need more.  Handy trick ma!

Meat, like italian sandwich meat, paired with my bread and cheese and grainy mustard, that I threw in the cart at the last minute, and my clean-water-soaked and re-soaked and dried lettuce, I made a sandwich that people who invented sandwiches would be proud of.  I never really knew how much of a staple they are in my life, but I never want to live without them.  I think it might be the same as the abundance of rice and noodles you see around here.

When asked by a few students last week what was a traditional canadian food dish that they should try...I was stumped.  Can you think of anything authentically canadian?  We just steal dishes from other countries as far as I know.  Maybe beef.  And wheat...so beer.  I thought about if for a bit and then it dawned on me.  I excitedly turned to the boys and exclaimed I had thought of one.  Proudly I proclaimed: sandwiches.  They were less excited to study abroad.

Popcorn.  Thank god we found the butter popcorn.  You have to buy at least 2 packages because if you look anywhere else for popcorn they are all sweet flavours.  Not like delicious kettle corn that is both salty and sweet, but I'm talking banana flavoured, chocolate, I think there is strawberry, and the sugary list goes on.  Buttered and salty popcorn is a rare treat and I never want to be without it either.

Bacon.

The rest is all nicknacks, but I can tell you I've been eating the same kind of granola for the last 8 months and it's full of sugar too, but such a comfort.  Smelly candles, a necessity, and incredibly hard to find, nacho chips and salsa, how I have taken all these things for granted.  It is an amazing lesson to learn and considering the store is at least 45 mins each way  I learn it over again every time I head to Metro once a month...it's too expensive otherwise.

The water crisis was the first time that I have felt insecure about my water supply in my life.  Not knowing when you will have safe water was a small glimpse for me into what many other people experience in this world.  Those few days made me feel so vulnerable and human.  My body needs water.  This is obvious and essential and yet, I rely completely on strangers to make sure that need is met.  That is an incredible surrendering of power.  It's scary thinking about how fragile we are, and again, this was not that serious of a situation, but it brought that to the light for me.  Now, cheese on the other hand is of course a luxurious item, but I have learned to expect that I can have cheese whenever I damn well please...small lessons, but they're important.  My hope is that I will remember these things when I'm back in Canada, walking into my trendy organic market places and racking up a huge tab.  People in the world go without; what a concept.