Five Signs of a Greening China

So now we're ready to be nice to our Mother Earth, now that it's all but too late, now that we see continued abuse won't devolve on our grandkids' shoulders, but our own. With a fifth of Mother Earth's homo sapiens, all busy fulfilling the "next superpower" prophecy, China must convert to Sustainability if this new religion is to have any temporal effect.

Her standing in the church excites much gossip among the laity. A little googling turns up a novena's worth of sins: tales of cancer villages downstream from the chemical plant, toxic waste dumps next to schoolyards, bakshish buying carte blanche to pollute and despoil.

Such wickedness always follows radical national mandates, even those as noble as "Let's beat the first world at its own game, for the glory of China." But there's always hope, we hope. Zhongnanhai can get a nation toeing the party line like no other political force known to man. And the party line now unequivocally crosses out industrialization at all costs. Here are five signs of the new faith in China, and a new credo - To be rich in a barren, toxic wasteland isn't glorious.

Not Black or White

"Here, Laoyezi - let's drink a toast."

"Eh? What's this?"

"Stellenbosch Chardonnay, South Africa's finest."

"You know I can't take wine any later than lunchtime, son. What are we toasting for, anyway?"

"We South African Chinese are finally, officially, black."

"You are trying to upset my stomach. Why would I drink to such nonsense?"

"Nonsense? Nonsense was being colored when white men ruled, then being white when black men took over. Now we're finally recognized as equal."

Curse of the Fuwas

Of all the seven sins, pride is the deadliest. At least in China, where jealous spirits roam the sky and lurk in corners with stagnant qi. So apologize to guests for your scanty ten-course banquet, lest the New Year find you without rice. Belittle your new bride's appearance, lest a randy official hear of her comeliness and decide to make an er nai of her. And when she bears you a fat little son, dress him as a girl and call him by a female name until his voice changes, for his life is as dear to demons as it is to you.

Some may think the recent floods from Sichuan to Guangdong a random but cyclical catastrophe, a quirk of this third stone from a smallish star. Fools and their science. We are not mere ants, dying by the drove at the hands of a child with a garden hose. We are humans, the sentient jewel in the universal lotus, and our actions have cosmic significance. Especially here at the center of the world, in the Middle Kingdom. Just as the Tangshan earthquake in '76 presaged the passing of our Glorious Leader to that socialist paradise in the sky, recent cataclysms have tested China's collective pride, represented in her Olympic Fuwa.

Beijing's Behemoth Airport

China already has the biggest dam, but there's nothing very sexy about retaining water. It just built the world's longest bridge, too, but only Shanghai-Ningbo commuters seem to care. The world's biggest airport, now that's the kind of national triumphalism that turns heads. Beijing's terminal 3 covers some 1.3 million square meters, making it the largest covered building in the world, period.