The City of Wuxi

Tour Day 15: Saturday, May 5, 2001

A Neighborhood Visit

Clean Streets — Dirty Water

China is at about the stage we were in the 1940s.
Just then they were attempting to educate the public about keeping their waterways clean.
In those days the Mississippi River was a sewer, just like the Yangtze and others we've seen here. One town would dump their raw sewage in the river, then the next one downriver would take it in as their drinking water. Many years later, the beach cities of Southern California, such as Santa Monica, were still dumping their raw sewage at the end of the pier. And people were swimming around those same piers!

We Visited A Home On This Canal.

The doorway would have been close to the right edge of this picture.

Our Hostess & Grandson We learned much about the life of the people in this visit. Like the family in Beijing, these retired grandparents kept the grandson while his parents worked. In this case the parents also took most of their meals with the grandparents. They chipped in to help pay for the food, but paid nothing for the baby sitting. She told us that everybody has a TV, refrigerator, and washing machine. The room we sat in seemed to be a combination kitchen/living room. It was smaller than the one in Beijing, but there were more kitchen facilities. This room was dark and dingy. The owner, was friendly and talkative.

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