To the editor:
It is early morning now. The streets of Shanghai are quiet: Quiet for a city of 18 million people. Even though I am in a very cosmopolitan city, it still follows a tradition that goes back before there was a city here on the Huang Pu River. Most people follow a farm schedule, rise with the sun, and sleep when it drops in the west. And even now as industrialization takes shape in this country, farms rule!
Did you know that you could grow concrete? When I was in Mr. Nichol’s Earth Science Class at Presque Isle High School one of our sections of study was the local rocks of Aroostook County. The final exam we had to look at a bunch of rocks and identify them. Much to the amusement of the class were the numbers of us who identified a sample concrete as an indigenous member of the Aroostook Rock Family. And of course we were treated to a few of the jokes that are still current today. Aroostook’s second crop: Rocks! Can we get crop insurance for boulders? Laughs aside, as I walk to my school at the early hour of 5:30 a.m. I am amazed that the Chinese have managed to learn how to grow concrete.
Shanghai is building and rebuilding every square inch. Bricks, mortar, concrete, and cement come alive here. One day you may see a field and the next you are staring at yet another high-rise is sprouting with the audacity of a weed. Once one sprouts, runners come out and streets and sidewalks move forward in a never-ending quest to propagate. The witch grass, pigweed, and burdock that plague the spud lands are no match for the creep of concrete.
I mentioned that I am walking to my school at 5:30 a.m. In the states, the policy of most school systems is that the teachers stay in one place and the students are bused in. Here it is slightly different. Students stay on their campus and the teachers are bused in. Classes will start at 8 a.m. The campus I teach on is about 40
minutes away from the main campus and so every day I have a class I must get up at about 4:30 p.m. and head for the bus. Nothing like farm time to get you on your feet! The bus for the auxiliary campus leaves promptly at 7 a.m.
It’s about a 35-minute walk from where I live to the station. If I time it right, I can stop at the local McDonald’s for a cup of coffee. Sadly, McDonald’s in China does not offer Sweet and Low or Equal. Still, they do have the cheapest coffee of any of the chains. And I can get some eggs and sausage. Almost like going down to the Northeastland for coffee. The street is pretty much mine. Oh there are the street sweepers, deliverymen, and other hardy souls on their own way to work. But the rest of the city sleeps. In an hour, these simple streets will teem with the wild, raucous, tumult of a city that belies its age. And sure enough, if you scratch the ground and wait just a moment, a new concrete plant sends up a shoot.
Welcome to Farm Shanghai!
Orpheus Allison
orpheusallison@mac.com
