heilongjiang

So I was having an argument last night on why I don't think China will be the next superpower, when I ran across this today:

China confirms "major" pollution of river

I wish they would have specified which river in the title, because I read that and instantly considered myself walking dead. Luckily for me, Harbin is a couple thousand miles away. But that doesn't matter, because it could have (and still may) happened to the Yangtze or the Yellow River or outside of Hong Kong. In which case the damage would be enormous. Beyond anything imaginable in the west. New Orleans would have nothing on a fuck up in Shanghai. Clearly, China has too many domestic problems to become the new hegemon.

I actually used to live in Harbin for about a month. Although it has 9 million people, it's still a small city. Kind of like Minneapolis. People are nicer there, they speak clearly, and the food is terrible. It's a pretty dull town. Nice Russian architecture. It only has two 'night clubs'. I realize that the number of night clubs doesn't determine how fun a place is, but when you're stuck in a small town, south of Siberia you become pretty dependent on it. Anyway, overall it's a pretty cute place. They have an ice festival in the winter. They also host the International Ski Conference. I helped put that together actually when I worked for the UN Industrial Development Organization. Obviously the UN knows where development is needed most in China - the ski slopes. This way the Chinese who are finally rich enough to ski, now have decent facilities to do so. I actually know some people in Harbin (well if I ever emailed them I would), I hope they're ok.