The Ghost Tree

The Ghost Tree is under threat.

I'm not sure how it got that name, but that's what local people have always called it. It's a rubber tree, at least 50 years old and possibly much older, located at the entrance to Wang Tong Village. It's a magnificent multiple cascade of roots and trunks, towering over the village like the Lord of Trees. No single photo can capture its majesty.

The Ghost Tree is home to countless birds and an enormous Burmese python who is occasionally seen swinging from its branches (and twice creeping through our garden!). The tree grows adjacent to the long-vacant house #1, whose last occupant apparently died there in the 1980s and no one has moved in since. Is that one reason for the tree's name?

Several months ago, six roots were chopped off to make room for a small drainage ditch. By the time anyone noticed, the deed had been done. When I had finished choking and hissing my outrage, the foreman assured me that no further work was necessary. The tree was safe.

That was the first lie.

A few days ago I cycled past the tree on my way to the post office. A crew of government contractors were swinging axes at its roots. They explained that they needed to extend the drainage ditch. Already they had severed one major root. The path they had marked made it clear they planned to chop off the single largest root and dig down several feet to pour concrete, killing whatever roots lay directly below.

My Cantonese becomes incomprehensible when I'm red in the face furious, so I called my wife to the scene. She's a born diplomat. Though this time her diplomacy skills were stretched to the limit.

She browbeat the crew into stopping work and demanded to speak to the engineer in charge. Half an hour later he phoned her. He lectured this mere villager, clearly a madwoman, about the necessity of drainage works to protect property from storm water damage (the property to be "protected" being nothing more than a 10-meter-long stretch of concrete footpath which is so close to the village stream that it drains naturally). When she objected that damaging the roots would weaken or sicken an ancient tree, he reassured her:

"If the tree becomes sick as a result of our work, don't worry. We'll be there within one day to cut it down."

Those were the wrong words to say to the world's most fanatic plantaholic. My wife's response is unrepeatable.

Our village is considered an inconsequential pip in a remote outlying district. Government engineers don't waste their time visiting such sites. Plans for everything from a minor drain to the repositioning of an entire river are drawn up from topographic maps in air conditioned high rise city offices. The engineer claimed he knew the site in detail. That was the second lie, as his subsequent description of the site made obvious.

He sunk himself deeper with his next remark. He would be willing to suspend the works under the condition that my wife sign a legal document in which she personally assumes all liability for any claims of flood damage that may have been averted by their drainage ditch. He may as well have declared war.

One of the hardest things about living in a beautiful place is the constant need to do battle with the sinister forces of ugliness, exploitation and concrete addiction. One of the best things about living in such a place is that there is a well-developed network of people willing to join a worthy fight. After a few e-mails, phone calls and stopping neighbors on the footpath, the Ghost Tree has become a cause célèbre.

The Ghost Tree is especially awe-inspiring and photogenic. It's easy to rally the troops on its behalf. I wonder how many less glamorous trees have died in the name of minor and unnecessary infrastructure projects. What will this world look like when the engineers have finished making the environment "safe"?

What's more important? The life of a tree that has lived on this earth longer than most of us? Or not getting our designer shoes wet on a small section of footpath next time there's a torrential rain?

The photo on the right clearly shows the six roots chopped off for the first section of the drain. The fresh earth in the lower right covers the latest severed roots.

UPDATE: In October 2010 we received a letter from the government, which said that, having conducted further studies (undoubtedly costing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars), they determined that the planned drainage extension was not necessary, and therefore further works were suspended. The Ghost Tree will not become a ghost anytime soon.

The Stream Diggers

They're digging up the Wang Tong Stream. Well, that's a good thing. During typhoons and heavy rains a lot of coarse sand washes down from the granite hills, down through the village, and replenishes the beach a few hundred meters downstream.

Trouble is, ever since the government's ill-conceived "training" and concreting of the middle section of the stream for "flood control", storm water shoots through the channel like wild horses, without any natural streambed, plants or twists and turns to slow its course and catch some of the sand and then release it downstream gradually during more relaxed, normal river flow.

Just where the concrete ends there's a ninety-degree turn in the river. I don't understand the physics of liquid motion dynamics, but as the raging waters smash into the turn with a wallop, so apparently does much of the sand and, rather than turn the corner with the water, it simply accumulates. After a while, a miniature delta begins to form, narrow arteries of water cutting through sand islands. Garbage and various forms of ick and goo which are illegally discharged upstream get stuck there, and the sand islands crust over with algae. Yuck.

Cue the Drainage Services Department to come in every couple of years to dig it out. Look how much they piled up in just one thirty-meter stretch. Later they'll load it a bit at a time into that motorized cart on the left and haul it out to the beach.

The workers were naturally suspicious when they saw me walking around them taking photos. A gwailo -- foreign devil -- with a camera usually means one thing: an official complaint about something. Gwailos are always complaining, interfering with hard-working Chinese just trying to earn an income for their families, or to blow at the horse races, or maybe even both. I smiled and assured them that I merely found it "interesting" to watch them work. I'm sure they didn't believe me, but they smiled back nevertheless.

I understood their worry. Nine out of ten times when government workers creep into our village, it's usually for sinister purposes: installing unnecessary guard rails, erecting yet more nanny-like warning signs, concreting even more lush green hillsides "just in case" of mud slides, or building their odd little "temporary storage depots" for equipment, that they always seem to forget to take down. There is plenty to complain about.

As I left them, even I felt a sense of relief that this was a rare case of government doing something necessary, cleaning up after themselves, leaving behind no trace, and no complaints. It's as unusual as a blue sky in the smoggy Pearl River Delta. Strange, the skies were blue for much of the day as well.

A government project that makes sense and a blue sky. What an uncommon day it has been.

Rain Cycle

Wang Tong is located between 22°16'14.20" and 22°16'21.60" north latitude, which puts us just south of the Tropic of Cancer. That means three things: heat, humidity and rain. I'll gladly trade in the first two. The rain I don't mind, though we've had an awful lot of it this summer. Tropical Storm Goni is wandering by slowly, like someone peering in a window, while continuing to drench the universe in and around Wang Tong Village.

In this community one thing people never get tired of arguing about is how to avoid getting wet while riding a bike. If you have to ride home, you can wear a vinyl poncho, which inevitably comes unsnapped and blows behind you like a cape, sparing only your shoulders from being dripping wet when you walk in the door. Unless it's gotten caught in the spokes and you limp home with a bruised knee.

Some people ride with one hand while grasping an umbrella in the other, like the poor guy in the photo. It's picturesque, but also the surest way to wreck an umbrella and lose control of your bike at the same time. Two seconds after the picture he nearly had a collision with some urban tourists, who are by definition incompetent and inconsiderate cyclists.

Some hapless people use the rain as an excuse to ride their road-hog tricycles, most of which have canopies. If only rain fell straight down in a tropical storm, then that might work. Tell the rain gods to switch off the wind first.

I've never understood the fear of getting rained on. It's only water. It isn't all that uncomfortable, at least in the warm tropics. We bathe and wash our clothes in water, so what's the harm if our bodies and garments get an unscheduled rinse? I think the struggle against rain comes from a human instinct to master the elements. Getting rained on is not a matter of getting wet, it's being defeated by nature. That's why we so fruitlessly fight it.

The only sure way to avoid getting soaked is to not go out. Or move to the city and stay in covered walkways and subway tunnels. Either way you miss a chance of having a little bit of heaven drip on you.