pollution, communism, censorship, justice

POLLUTION:
China is beginning to wear on me. At first I was underwhelmed by the pollution. In downtown San Jose, Costa Rica buildings and sidewalks have a thick smudgey blackness to them, presumably caused by the exhaust fumes of busses and cars. I was expecting the same thing in China, but the pollution here is different. It isn't black- it's gray, brown and hazy. Everything is covered in haze. In Shanghai and Suzhou, like Portland in the winter, the sky is pure gray so you can't tell if it's 9:00 am, half past noon, or 3:00pm. The only thing that makes sunset different from any other hour is that the sun turns fire red, the clouds however remain gray. I was expecting more people in China to wear face masks to prevent themselves from breathing in the smog but they don't, so we don't either. In Shanghai our boogers were black, and in Suzhou our eyes burned from riding bikes in traffic all day. Both of us have congestion at the top of our chests that's not particularly bad but certainly annoying. I get winded really easily and prefer not to take in deep breaths. We're heading to a national ark tomorrow and I look forward to seeing blue sky again.

COMMUNISM:
Looking around in China I see absolutely no evidence that this a communist state. There are no ration lines, no big billboards promoting the government (or if there are and I can't read them), there is no great social equality here- the gap between rich and poor is huge and widening, there's little police pressence and it's not intimidating, people speak freely about troubles in there country (even more so than Koreans!) and although there is some Internet censorship freedom of expression does not seem particularly restricted. Communism here is confusing- it's totally unlike Cuba which has ALL of the above qualities, and I can't figure out what is communist about the coutry besides there not being normal elections- something that isn't even necessarily a charcteristic of communist philosophy.

CENSORSHIP:
It's strange what is censored and what isn't. BBC.com= censored, NYTimes.com= not censored. (Interestingly, at our first hostel BBC news was broadcast nonstop on the TV in the lobby. I don't know if the broadcast was legal or not, but it shows that if it isn't legal people aren't too afraid of the authority, or if it is legal that media censorship isn't terribly strict) Wikipedia is censored and so are all blogs. Anything related to sex is censored. Naver- a Korean online community is partially censored so that you can read their main page and use their search engine but not access the cafes. Neither myspace or facebook are restricted except for blogs.

JUSTICE:
I like the cops here. In Suzhou someone tried to steal my wallet out of a pocket in my purse. This man must have followed me for quite some time because I remeber seeing him at least 5 blocks away from where I caught him. I felt a tug at my back so I swung around quickly and his arm was outstreched, fingers poised for picking. In my best mean-teacher voice (a voice I have honed for the last year) I spoke very sternly to the man and his two friends. When they guiltily tried to walk away from me, I followed them. They didn't walk too fast and finally the theif stopped in front of a sign and pretended to read it. I pretended to read it too & pointed at the symbols and fake smiled at him a lot. Then I saw a police man (riding a scooter in the bike lane against the flow of traffic) and I flagged him over and pantomimed what happened.
I was and am very impressed with the policeman's behaviour. He patted the men down, spoke to them authoritatively but not meanly (so far as I could tell), paid attention to my gestures. Spoke to them more, and after a small crowd formed he let them go and lectured me on keeping my bag held tightly nd securely. What I liked about the cop was that he didn't abuse his authority or disrespect the crooks- even though they were a different ethnicity than him. I can't imagine a Korean or a Costa Rican police officer treating a minority so respectfully, nor most US cops.
This is another way that Chinese communism doen't fit into my idea of what a communist state is. I feel like law enforcement officials (The guy I described and the traffic-directors) are very respectful and careful not to abuse power. This morning when Travis and I saw Chinese university freshmen practicing marching and doing army-type parade formations, we could see that the students were being treated kindly by the drillmasters. They would laugh together in between drills and there was nothing scary about the militaristicness of the drills.
China is so hard to figure out. I think it's because we're extremely tied out of the community because of the language barrier. Even though we're here I feel like we're looking in on the culture through a keyhole.