08.11 | dispatch from an emergency help-a-friend trip
Well this is unexpected! I'm writing you from Nanning, the capital of Guizhou Province, after flying down here to help a friend through some tough times.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
— Ursula K. LeGuin
✉️ letter #3
Well this is unexpected! I'm writing you from Nanning, the capital of Guizhou Province, after flying down here to help a friend through some tough times.
I'm lucky that I'm able to emergency fly at all - an outbreak of covid cases here (incoming from a flight from Russia) has caused several cities to go into lockdown again. They've now tested all 8 million residents of the outbreak city (Nanjing) twice, and certain cities require you to have a 48-hour covid test in order to fly into them.
Beijing is being especially strict - any city above a certain amount of covid infections doesn't seem to be allowed to fly (or train) into there at all! By the way, the current number of cases discovered across all of China this week is less than 600. On Aug 9, the United States recorded 92,631 new cases.
Luckily, Guangxi Province seems to currently be one of the least infected areas of China, and so I can come to help my lovely friend. She moved here in Winter last year with her husband and new baby. They had just moved into new housing when her husband had a bit of a health emergency that made it hard for him to move around.
So the last two days has been a lot of washing dishes and watching babies and being a second brain & pair of hands for home organization.
Being here, and being able to offer her up a little breathing room, reminds me of how hard the nuclear single-family life truly is on people, and how when it was touted as The American Ideal in the 1950s, it actually relied on mostly invisible (and often colored) help.
It also reminds me of how I was in a Clubhouse room recently talking about women in the workplace and why Shanghai's statistics for workplace participation and women in management roles seemed so much less dire than other parts of East Asia.
Two trends emerged from people sharing their experiences: lots of family close by - especially with the tradition of two sets of grandparents watching one kid - and an ayi (the Chinese term for domestic helper) underclass.
Who helps the Ayi with her kids? Well, there's a reason China has the term "left-behind" children. Many younger adults seeking their fortunes in the bigger cities end up keeping their kids with relatives in their home village, where a lot of older relatives can look after several of these kids at once.
No matter the circumstance, it looks the same: it's hard - nearly impossible - to run a family without a community of extra hands. And yet, at least in my lifetime, the ongoing messaging has been to put it all on the shoulders of a woman to try and "have it all." No wonder so many of us are choosing just not to have a family at all.
My friend gets an ayi next week, which should lighten this load for her. And I hope that somewhere between the baby watching and dog walking and stuff organizing, I might get a quick chance to actually see the actual Nanning city with her before I go back to my single work life in Shanghai. We'll see!
In the meantime...
🌱 the ethical ideas news reel
Pieces I've found from around the internets with interesting ideas for sustainability, human health, and diversity (both bio- & people).
- The biggest piece of environmental news this week was of course that super dire IPCC "code red for humanity" report. The changes are unprecedented and irreversible, and really all we can do now is try to figure out how to deal with a hotter and more dangerous world. Welp.
- But as one of my favorite insta follows (@ajabarber) puts it, "Don't give into climate doom." While the fact that we could never get enough traction to STOP climate change, there is still so so much we can (and need) to do to mitigate it.
- In fact, the climate change petition site 350.org has its own plan to "decarbonize rapidly." You can join in if you like what they're spoutin' by checking out their response to the IPCC report.
- On a more positive front, it looks like that, for whatever reason, women climate scientists are NOT suffering from the implicit biases that cause them to be judged whenever they speak out. Hurrah for a lack of Cassandra Syndrome. Hopefully we'll be encouraging a lot more women scientists to talk to media more.
- This person taught herself to be more resilient by applying lessons from machine learning. I'm tickled. "When we explore our own connections to data, our own experiences within algorithmic systems, we automatically engage in a process of self-reflection. As I worked with others to teach them about how algorithms affect us, I was working on retraining my own models of the world through trauma recovery; Abuse was not love. I deserved better. I am safe now. And I am allowed to reclaim my own power."
🎵 Song of my week
Last year around this date, the music experts at my workplace (RADIICHINA) put together a pretty great summer playlist of Chinese indie tunes. Still holds up.
✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun
So it's not exactly a "surprise" by this point because I think very, very many outlets out there were talking about how the Apple TV series Ted Lasso is undeniably great... but well, I finally started up that Apple TV trial subscription to watch it and it is in fact great!
You don't have to be a fan of football (either one) to watch it. In fact, since it is basically a fish-out-of-water story about someone being introduced to coaching "soccer" (as we yanks call it), you could probably use it as a really easy-to-digest primer on football culture in the U.K.
But in any case, it's clever, heartwarming, and everyone has a chance at redemption. Ted Lasso is like a balm for those who want their entertainment to remind them that maybe humanity doesn't suck.
Did you enjoy it?
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