I look down from my balcony, and I see some five stories below me, the world that Walt Whitman captured in his vision of America:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work or leaves off work….
(from Walt Whitman’s poem, “I Hear America Singing.”)
Whitman’s vision was of a working class happily toiling toward a blissful future. His vision was of seemingly disparate countrymen harmoniously laboring, each within his own talents and trade, toward a singular inevitable glory. It was a vision of a young country preparing to blossom into something beautiful and something that mattered in this world. And the delight of these workers! The euphonious seduction of their individual songs as they merged into the chorus of a country on the rise! This was Whitman’s America. And oddly, it is my China.
This is what I see from my balcony: a sandy beach turning into a family-oriented park-like pavilion, a place for the bulging middle class to take their children to enjoy the pleasures of a privileged life. Some workers plant grass and trees while others pull wheel-barrows of dirt in order to make the land fertile enough to support such colossal greenery. Fountains sprout from sand, sculptures and cranes peer their necks over the Yellow Sea’s horizon, and each day from 6AM until 3AM, a nearly ceaseless wave of migrant workers tends to the development of my surrogate neighborhood.
(click here to see a short video of this construction project in action)
No, my description did not do this miracle justice. To be clear, I am witnessing ten years of growth in the span of four months. In a previous post, I referred to such progress as a “disease” or “dis-ease” in the e.e. cummings sense of the phrasing. Now, I would like to explore the disease’s alter-ego: the melody of happy workers chipping away at their trades toward a dreamy, faraway, yet almost-here and almost-out-of-this-world future. In the last few months, a subway opened on my corner, giving easy plebian access to two newly built malls and the stunning formerly-laid back beach that was the home to five-star Hyatt resort-goers and hard-core surfers. Now, it is the home of China’s migrant workers who hail from not-too-distant small rural towns, faraway hovels in remote parts of China that I need a map and a friend to locate, and everywhere in-between.
Everyday, before I leave for work, I take a picture of the progress that was achieved while I slept. Some days, grass is put in. Other days, large seating areas are constructed. Then I go to work, and when I return, there is some new fascinating and unfathomable feature awaiting my arrival. One afternoon I returned home to find that my formerly eggshell-colored building had been painted yellow in the span of a single workday! How wonderful! Yet, as I got closer to the building, I could actually see what a quick, shoddy paint job the workers were doing.
(click here to see a short video clip of the painters)
Yet, I have to give the workers credit for speed. I had previously never imagined that a building could be painted in one day, not with such archaic supplies and techniques. They were swinging on makeshift swings with small paint rollers, with only their hands and flimsy hardhats (the kind adorned by children on Halloween) as protection! Hardworking, and yet, they were singing. Literally singing. It was a happy love song, and I imagined the song was for the workers’ wives who were inevitably at home in a far away province or working themselves to modernize a city that was not their own. Or perhaps they were singing a love song to their country.
They smiled when they saw me walk up the stairs. To these workers, the sight of a foreign woman is a small joy in an otherwise mundane world. And here’s the clincher: with all of the autonomy that I have over myself and with all of my ability to make actual choices, and with my foreign money and foreign bank accounts, and with my collection of post-collegiate degrees, and with my plethora of stamps in my unfathomable passport, and well, with my “wealth” and its smorgasbord of choices and privileges, and even with my studies in mindfulness and happiness and religious practices, I could not claim to be even a scintilla happier than the workers dangling precariously from my apartment building, as they rolled yellow paint across the horizon. How could that be? But it could indeed be, and it was as clear as the song they sang.
Yes, I was clearly hearing China sing.
Today, when I returned home from work, I saw that the new light posts that were recently placed along my street had been uprooted, and a fast and furious vegetation program had been instituted. Workers were planting petunias faster than I could even cross the busy street. It looked and smelled beautiful. And as cliché as it sounds, nothing was more beautiful than the smiles and chatter of the workers as they unearthed dirt and transplanted a phantasmagorical assortment of color and texture to what was once a barren concrete slab.
None of this blissful, flowery idealism is without a price. The workers tend to their jobs under the hot sun, in the brutal wind, and even on the most polluted of days. And when did I first come to realize that Qingdao was undergoing a quick and eager revitalization process? When I returned from a week or so away, and I found that my beloved “slums” (Read my post, “The Lion Mall and the Slums.”) had been destroyed. Homes and shops and my beloved Mama Li’s Dumpling joint had been knocked down and discarded as a sad pile of rubble. Where did Mama Li and her family go? I did not have her phone number and could not call her. And the lady who sold me bread? And on and on…what happened to everyone? The few buildings that were left in quasi-functional shape had been pierced with the Chinese flag as if to declare that this too was a song to the developing China.
(Pictured above is what remains of the “slums” after being bulldozed. The Hyatt and other modern buildings stand smugly in the distance.)You may wonder why all of this is happening? Sure, China has a history of developing east coast and southern cities in a way that turns small fishing villages into economic powerhouses in what seems to be overnight. But why here, in the Laoshan District of Qingdao, and why now? Qingdao first hit the stage as a charming supporting actor to Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics by hosting the sailing competition. Now, ten years later, Qingdao has the opportunity to have the stage all to herself with the SCO Summit in which leaders of East Asian, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern nations (and beyond) will come to Qingdao for a few days. The government is secretive about the exact details, and even about the days in which the summit will take place, but in the meantime the entire country seems to be in Qingdao with all of its hands on this city’s proverbial deck. It is a sight to see, and from my balcony overlooking Shi Lao Ren Beach, I have the best view in town.
And this is just the beginning, I am sure. In all of my time in China, I have never witnessed such growth first hand. I have quite a deal of judgment as I think of my beloved “slums,” but today in the smiles and bliss that beam from the faces and hands of China’s workers, I only want to hear China singing. I did not get to witness Walt Whitman’s America, but I do have the opportunity to see, hear, and feel China singing, and I do not want my negative judgment to taint the puerility of its song. “I hear [China] singing, the varied carols I hear,” as the sun sets and dusk falls upon the sea’s horizon and upon my balcony and upon the newly planted petunias, and as some workers stop for dinner and beers while others begin their night-shift duties, I hear “[s]inging with open mouths their strong melodious songs.”
