Switching Gears

(Lindsay)

“There are a number of teachers here at Hangzhou who can forecast the weather by touching the walls of the school.” With this, William, the teacher who will be traveling to Dover in May, ran his hand along the tiles of the corridor wall, then turned to show me his wet palm. Sure enough, last night it poured. Buckets. And thundered with lightning and hail. This morning, everything was wet, inside and out. The corridors of the school buildings are arcades, open to the elements, and the floors everywhere are mopped regularly to clean away the dirt tracked in from the street. Since arriving in Hangzhou I’ve been told by many that this is the rainy season and that I should be ready for a downpour at any time. So far, it has rained heavily only at night, and I’ve been able to ride my bike to school each morning. I am getting accustomed to the dampness; fond of it actually, for the way it seems to bring out the songbirds.

What I am not used to is walking in cities that have not regulated every conceivable surface and proportion that my feet encounter. Building codes in America have done to our ability to amble what the FDA has done to our ability to deal with foreign bacteria; they’ve turned us into moving hazards abroad. Back in Jianshui, I saw a little boy stumble as he crossed the street. Rather than picking him up, brushing him off and consoling him, his father set him on his feet and gave him a solid smack on the behind. Astonished, I asked Jackie, our guide at the time, why the father had spanked the little boy, who couldn’t have been more than four years old. “He’s teaching him to be more careful,” Jackie said.

Evenly proportioned stair treads, risers and railings are not the norm here in China, and all of us in the exchange program have stumbled more than a few times on steps where we didn’t expect them, oddly placed thresholds or low bollards in the middle of sidewalks. In China, if you trip on an uneven sidewalk or fall down some broken steps, you are an imbecile for not watching where you’re going; in America, you are a plaintiff likely to win a lawsuit. I worry a little at what we lose in this all-too-American approach to wealth redistribution. While I am, of course, in favor of accessibility for the handicapped, the devolution due to building codes of the able-bodied American’s natural agility is something to consider. It’s not likely that we’ll see new regulations that reverse the former, laws that mandate uneven steps and the removal of railings, but there is more than a kernel of likelihood in the future foreseen by the film “Wall-e.” Worth another look.

Though biking presents different hazards, they are more foreseeable than those confronting the American pedestrian, and biking to school is one of the biggest pleasures of my day. I love the self-sufficiency of biking, the practicality and the environmental friendliness. It makes so much more sense than driving an upholstered box. To get to school, I ride through the silk market. At around 7:00 the market is just waking up, people are rolling up their shutters and mopping the steps. The shops open right onto the lane, and many of the proprietors have begun to wave to me in recognition and say “ni hao.” Some test their English with “hello.” They are always so friendly, and most likely somewhat relieved that I am biking rather than walking.