Saturday night we biked downtown
Saturday night we biked downtown and watched what may be our last movie in China, “The other side of the bridge”, a very fine movie about an Austrian woman who moved to China in the 1930s to get married and spent the rest of her life in Anhui Province. It was shown by “Cherry Lane Movies”, a non-profit group that takes good Chinese movies, quickly writes English subtitles, and presents them on the weekend. It is put on in a big building that is used during the week as a movie set and to explain Peking opera to tourists, so it’s a nice, well-ventilated place. Nonetheless, the government here plans to close all theaters for the duration, so that may be a SARS casualty.
On the way we stopped at the big Lufthansa shopping center so my wife could look for gifts. Everything in the large deserted stores were extremely expensive, but in the supermarket in the basement I was able to buy a bunch of dried beans to add to our own emergency stocks.
One sign of ordinary life persisting came when I went to retrieve my bicycle outside. I noticed that my big red cable lock wasn’t on the bike, and noticed that there was one just like it in the basket of the bike beside mine. I thought I must have failed to close it, and someone had retrieved it and tossed into a bike’s basket. But I couldn’t open it with my key, and finally realized that it had been jimmied open and ruined. The second lock on my bike (a Taiwanese U-lock) had also been tampered with, although the tool used to open it had broken, leaving the head in the lock. Luckily I had my computer geek Swiss army knife with me, complete with pliers, and was able to get the tool out and unlock my bicycle.
Surprisingly, the lock that I had the most confidence in is the one that was removed, and the one that I had little confidence in (I had accidentally discovered a very easy way of disassembling it) was the one that saved the day. I have what I think is a better lock now, but I’m starting to understand why people here use multiple locks. Many bikes, including mine, have an internal lock that consists of a screw in the front column that serves to lock the front wheel at an angle, like the steering locks on cars, so that you could only bike around in a circle if it’s engaged. The bicycle thief had opened the cover of that lock to make sure it wasn’t engaged; I guess I need to start doing that in the future.
My wife had said that one of her teachers had said that many people were buying bicycles now out of fear of cabs and public transportation, so I guess there’s a strong market for “used” bikes as well.
The city is now plastered with the SARS poster below, which is interesting because it combines information that would be standard public health information in the US with information that we would view as technical advice for physicians. I’m going to post and translate one section a day until I finish. There are medical terms I’m not familiar with, so I won’t vouch for the translations, but I would welcome corrections and I’ll update it as I receive them.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0100066/images/SARSposter.jpg
Here’s a detailed picture of the top left panel:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0100066/images/SARSadvice1.jpg
The first point is: “Early discovery” [Note: I can’t vouch for my translation, but if anyone sends me corrections, I’ll update it and acknowledge them]—it describes the symptoms of SARS —1. Close contact within two weeks with someone with SARS. 2.A fever over 38 degrees Celsius, a cough, fast breathing, gasping for breath or difficulty breathing, a sound like “luo” when you breathe (?), or change in state of your lungs. 3. In the early stage, the white blood count is normal or reduced. 4. Chest X-rays show a flake-shaped area, which gradually shows a shadow or shows a net-like appearance. 5. Antibacterial treatment shows no clear improvement.