William Chow's Personal Web Page

This is my first ever trip to the orient in 2005. This is what I saw in Shenyang, China.
Shenyang City, China
This is a very interesting city. If I were to describe it to you in a few words, I would have to say words like dirty, old, growing, modernizing city.
THE STATISTICS - Ok, we will start off with a little bit of common knowledge about this city so we can rank and classify in our mind what other cities in the world of similar characteristics. Shenyang (formerly called Mukden) is China's fourth largest city with a population over 3,762,000 people (1994). It is the capital of Liaoning province. It is a major manufacturing hub specializing in motor vehicles, textiles, chemicals, paper, medicine. Has an economic output of $14 billion, and an annual growth of 10.3%. Copper, zinc and lead are smelted in the city. The city has many specialized institutions like the Liaoning University, NE China U, medical college, and a music conservatory.
DIRTY - Everyone always makes a joke about how Mexico or Hong Kong and China is so dirty that you don't want to drink the water. Well it is more than true. I would have to agree with that 100%. But I want to say just a little bit more than what everyone else says. I want to say why and what I have observed why.
I have noticed that snow on the ground is normally a bright white. Of course in a city, with all the sanding and salting we do in Vancouver, the white snow turns into a colour the same as sand. Well in Shenyang, it is so dirty it turns into even a darker colour of black. It is almost as if it was stained with fine particles of ash. The reason for this is probably due to the high metal dust particles in the air due to the metal smelting done in the city.
The outside of the apartment that Ami lives and pretty much every building I see, nobody seems to really respect the common area. In things like condos and apartments and townhouses, Vancouver units usually have something like a "maintenance" fee that is used by the owners of the complex to help keep the common areas used by everyone safe and clean. This would include making sure the floors are clean, locks work, lights are working and fire equipment is working and etc. Well, in China, it seems the tenants, gives a total rats shit ass about anything outside their suite.

The floor is very slippery and dirty. People drop garbage and spill drinks on it and they don't bother cleaning it, even it is at the front lobby or heck even it is outside their doorway. I suppose it is the attitude that "It is not mine so I don't care."