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The Southerner’s view of Southern California

 I am from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It is a medium-sized college town with fairly homogeneous culture. There are white and black people, a few Hispanics, and negligible number of Asians. My wife’s hometown, Santa Monica, California hosts a more colorful palette of people.  Here you will see folks going about their life in every imaginable conveyance and raiment.  Just today I have seen skateboards, bikes, tandem bikes, motorcycles, wheelchairs, Range Rovers, classic Broncos, sports cars, German sedans, American cars and pick-up trucks, and the ubiquitous Japanese hybrids. Los Angeles probably has the same concentration of Toyota Prius as Hong Kong does of Ferrari… flocks of them!

On clothing, one senses the immediate casualness of Santa Monica.  In fact, I have yet to see anyone other than my bank teller wear a necktie.  There is a profound lack of respect as far as removing hats indoors, wearing a belt to keep pants at the waist, and so forth for anyone under the age of fifty-five. Some men dress up in surfer clothes with baggy shorts, hooded sweatshirts, frayed caps, Vans shoes, et cetera well past fatherhood and into their forties. In Alabama, most guys trade that in for khakis and Polo shirts around twenty-two.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like as a resident in the 1940s or 1950s seeing it change so much. From my observations, most of the neighborhoods were constructed as postwar “spec houses” to meet the need of America’s baby boom.  Many homes still bear the “spec” image of a small cottage, whilst next door sits a very modern behemoth mansion.  My cousins in Coronado complain that this phenomenon of literally razing an old structure, then building from edge to edge of the property blocks out the sunlight for the smaller neighbor. It is a pity but the reality of the situation.

Another thing that amuses me about these coastal Californians is how they take great strides to ‘conserve energy.’ We live in America, the land of Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Samuel Colt and other brilliant inventors whom I shall leave out for brevity. These men did not put so much effort into making our nation the best in the world to have a society that refuses to produce more energy to match growth. Do you think the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf would be the car of choice for Franklin? NO! He would enjoy only the best… Mercedes, Lexus, or maybe Cadillac, but would scratch his head in confusion over why we don’t drill for oil where we know we have it (ANWR, Pacific Coast) or build more refineries and nuclear reactors to accommodate our growing population’s thirst for energy (LED bulbs alone won’t get us there). I digress.

One most amusing display of ‘conserving energy’ was the Venice Community Garden’s “Solar Cooking Day.” The idea was to harness energy from the sun to cook some organically grown veggies in a foil covered box. While the idea is more than plausible (I’ve seen it done at a Boy Scout Jamboree), the community gardeners failed to reduce their carbon footprint as a charcoal grill was substituted for the foil box. So not only was energy wasted, but also time. The moral of the story is that while solar cookers work great in the summer sun of a place like Phoenix, charcoal or propane is a much more efficient and reliable heat source in breezy cool Venice and Santa Monica.

One must never mistake reducing one’s quality of life automatically equals environmental stewardship. Humans were given skill to convert raw materials and natural resources into modern conveniences. Stewardship is having the wisdom to cleanly extract and ethically utilize these gifts. My Dad always told me "lack of preparation on your part doesn't constitute crisis on my part." Having regular gasoline at $4.99 per gallon would be an epic lack of preparation. While searching for an answer to this problem on energy.gov, one senses a huge disconnect from those of us who feel the pinch at the pump for our daily commute and those who make policy decisions for our nation. Nowhere on the main page is there mention of petroleum products. Wind farms in the Great Lakes and solar panels in Nevada seem more important to our president than issuing drilling permits. So we'll see how $4.50 gas affects poll numbers in November.

Let me sum up. Many folks here in California make complaints similar to the above paragraph about the high cost of living, overcrowded freeways, lack of freedom for gun owners, overprotected condors & cougars, and so on. This was my attitude for about a month. Then I realized what an amazing place California is. If it were so terrible why do people continue to move here? Pleasant weather. That is reason number one. Other reasons are 'people watching' in THE melting pot of America, catching glimpses of movie stars, and shopping at the most exclusive boutiques on earth. Southern California has towns that boast 325 days of sunshine. There are some really beautiful towns. San Diego and Santa Monica come to mind. Who wouldn't want to spend a week, month, few years in an ocean side paradise?  

Loma Linda and Redlands are two of my favorite towns in California. Located 50 miles from Big Bear and 50 miles from L.A. they are close to mountain snow or sunny beaches. Oh yeah, Joshua Tree is less than two hours away as well.  These are the reasons people love California: pleasant weather, and abundant outdoor activities. Hike, surf, ski and eat fish tacos all in the same weekend. I will delve deeper into the tasty foods in a later post. 

God Bless. 

Chinese drivers are MORE PATIENT than You.

The powerful forces of Wuhan

Feb 2010

When you live in a city with 11 million Chinese people for two and a half years you appreciate what things you can control, and learn to patiently yield to the dominating monoliths that never make exceptions. Of these behemoths that cotton to neither rank, privilege, U.S. Passport, chauffer driven Audis, nor any other badge of prestige, traffic must be the biggest.  It is surreal to contemplate being an old Chinese man. I often sit back and wonder what it’s like to have lived through two world wars and the Depression as many of our grandparents’ older siblings did (Papah b. 1920 was the youngest of 10).  Having a paid for house and car, color TV, and some cash stuffed under the mattress or tidily growing at modest rates in CD’s was all they aspired to.  All that, plus having some healthy kids and grandkids, too.

But contrast Uncle Bubba, Papah’s older brother who was a Naval Academy grad and Alabama Supreme Court Justice with Zhou Laoshi, my Chinese tutor who is now sixty-five.  Zhou, a retired college professor who tutors foreigners to supplement his pension, was five when the war ended in China and Mao Zedong proclaimed a new China from the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square.  Mao would provide little peace to the people other than a protection from the Japanese and other foreign invaders. 

Zhou’s apartment is similar to mine, which is similar to most of today’s Chinese middle class.  Approximately five hundred square feet, fourth floor up (no elevators) in a squat grey concrete building adjacent to another eighty or a hundred buildings of identical appearance, externally it looks rather dreary.  On the inside however, one finds the digital age has crept in.  There is a thirty-inch flat screen TV, DVD player, cordless phone, mini fridge, cell phone, and computer with internet access.  The only things lacking are finished floors, a water heater, five-gallon water dispenser, and toaster oven.  Zhou never had any of those things growing up and is not American, so why waste the money on frivolity?  He does have a piano that he plays on occasion (hate to be the worker who delivers those in China- no elevator, 4^th floor!) and has a grandson who drives a car.  I sometimes wonder what Zhou does with his money because there is no conspicuous consumption… younger Chinese should emulate this thrifty example!

Traffic. That is the name of the beast, that terrible behemoth… the unyielding force of Wuhan. I was told by a senior expat teacher that as recently as the early '90s Dida, our school, was on an unpaved and heavily rutted gravel road. It is now reached by turning off of the multi-lane roundabout, Lu Xiang and proceeding down a much-improved four-lane road.  One might expect such rapid change to keep up with the ever-worsening traffic.  It hasn’t.  I was also told in my first week to always lock my bike, and even then to be prepared to buy another.  I’m still on the first bike, and am told now that the bike thieves have switched to pinching electric scooters and motorbikes.  I can only guess that the Chinese phrase for grand theft auto will soon work its way into the lexicon.  Cars aren’t really the problem; neither are the taxis nor buses. None of these factors is bad by itself, but together they form a dense cloud, literally (bad pollution) and figuratively. Don’t forget Chinese haven’t yet abandoned their use of three-wheeled pick-up trucks, bicycles and other such slow moving vehicles.  The regular Monday through Friday rush hours always produce predictably awful traffic jams, but weekends can get much, much worse.

Just this past Saturday for example, Eliz and I were trying to get back to our apartments from downtown on the main thoroughfare, Wulou Lu.  It runs into Lu Xiang roundabout before continuing on towards Eliz’s school.  Our taxi made it halfway to Lu Xiang before encountering the worst traffic I’ve ever seen in my life.  About half a mile from the roundabout, our driver decided the left lane wasn’t moving fast enough, so he and numerous others began using the next available two lanes to the left on this six-lane road.  That’s right, we were barreling down towards what should have been oncoming traffic. But in typical “only in China” fashion, there were no cars coming toward us.  A torrential flood of traffic heading into a roundabout creates chaos; chaos with two lanes of contra-flow!  I felt the mind numbing power of it all when we were creeping past a police car; he in the far left lane, us to the left of him in the ‘right lane’ of the contra-flow.  The idea of anyone having control of this situation at that moment ceased to exist.  (Fade into the Pixies: “Where is my Mind?”)

After grinding through another quarter mile or so, our driver forced us out about two hundred yards shy of Lu Xiang.  To his defense, we had been idling for about five minutes and noticing a flock of pedestrians glide past much faster.  He didn’t even charge us, it was just shift change time and he was already running late.  So we walked on past the horde of immobile buses, taxis, Audis, Hondas, and Citroens.  We actually made pretty good time by hoofing it past two bus stops and were able to catch a mini-van ‘black taxi’ on the un-congested Carrefour side of Lu Xiang.  Still, it took forty-five minutes to cover what would normally take fifteen or even ten minutes in America.  It is experiences like this that make me immune to American, British or other trifling traffic delays.  We have real traffic jams in China. Americans outside of Boston, New York City, L.A. and the like have nothing to complain about!  

However, a “government solution” (hahaha) is hopefully in sight.  Last year, work began on Wuhan’s new metro system.  There will be a metro stop right behind the Ramada hotel on Lu Xiang as well as at Chicony department store, where our taxi ride began.  The authorities moved the finish line for construction from 2010 to 2012. Whenever it does open for service it won’t be a single day too early!!!

God Bless.