three things
16 Dec 2009 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigou1. Contacts arrived on Monday, new glasses on Tuesday. WOAH. I can see!
2. When setting a story in actual geographical location, it helps to look farther than just a half-hour away to get an idea of the region. Hit point in story where I had to ask, are there bookstores? how big? how far away? and I went back to map to remind myself of nearest good-sized city, outside the town where the story's set. And then... ahem. Suddenly mental list shifted radically.
-- has large number of Ming-era homes. check!
-- has mountains nearby. check!
-- is within short distance of Yellow River. check!
-- has archaeological significance for pre-Qin dynasty. check!
-- has at least one big honking temple in/near town. check!
-- has historical significance going back to Liao Dynasty. check!
-- is within hour's drive of the most polluted city on earth. check!
...wait whut whut.
I can't even comprehend the notion of any one person living in a place that's so polluted it makes Los Angeles look like middle-of-nowhere in Montana on a gorgeous day, let alone a place so polluted that breathing its air for twelve hours is equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes. I certainly can't imagine putting four million people through that, and even if they are living with that as I write this, I'm not doing it to any fictional characters.
If I had more word-count and a broader picture, I might place a story there for the additional social commentary and critique (not to mention the issue of whether it's American privilege to demand a safe and healthy environment!) but this story has enough weight to juggle already, and I think it'd sink under such a massive thing... especially when, after watching two different documentaries about the area's coal-mining issues, I discovered the pall of smog is captured by the surrounding mountains, so one would be driving for nearly two hours along the valley before the smog dissipates. Since the original setting is on a mountain just north (and facing) the coal-mining valley, well, that explains one thing: those pictures of the temple and the town's architecture weren't all taken on foggy days. That's smog.
Gross.
3. There is a CAVE near my HOUSE.
Yesterday while hiking through the woods (don't ask), I was taking a deerpath that runs about 30' up from a seasonal creek, and the ridge above extends another 40' or so -- sharp drop. Come up a slight rise in the ledge and there's a limestone outcropping over my head. The path breaks off, so I follow it up to the outcropping, and there I discover CAVE.
Inner 8-yr-old: CAVE! MUST EXPLORE!
Inner 12-yr-old: I bet this is where teenagers do Bad Stuff.
Inner writer: This is so going in a story. Let's go in!
Inner sanity: SNAKES.
And then I backed away slowly, rather irritated that I didn't think to bring a flashlight with me so at least I could have shone a light in and seen more of the darkness. And it's just the right size for crawling on hands-and-knees, so it's not like it's terribly tiny. What's odd was the lack of graffiti, beer cans, pipes, or any other accoutrements of trash that I might expect, so I guess it's not something most folks know about.
Still... a cave! A Real Live Cave! I spent just about every single summer as a child searching for a cave to explore (probably thanks to all the Nancy Drew stories with caves involved), and never found a single one. The counties around Atlanta just aren't big on natural caves, it seems -- and now I've finally found a cave and a) I'm not quite as short as I used to be, so the fit would be much tighter, and b) I've got this annoying adult voice reminding me about SNAKES.
Sigh. But I can at least dream -- in between researching furiously to find another region for setting a story, and this time to double and triple check that the locale doesn't come with excessive amounts of smog. Gross.
2. When setting a story in actual geographical location, it helps to look farther than just a half-hour away to get an idea of the region. Hit point in story where I had to ask, are there bookstores? how big? how far away? and I went back to map to remind myself of nearest good-sized city, outside the town where the story's set. And then... ahem. Suddenly mental list shifted radically.
-- has large number of Ming-era homes. check!
-- has mountains nearby. check!
-- is within short distance of Yellow River. check!
-- has archaeological significance for pre-Qin dynasty. check!
-- has at least one big honking temple in/near town. check!
-- has historical significance going back to Liao Dynasty. check!
-- is within hour's drive of the most polluted city on earth. check!
...wait whut whut.
I can't even comprehend the notion of any one person living in a place that's so polluted it makes Los Angeles look like middle-of-nowhere in Montana on a gorgeous day, let alone a place so polluted that breathing its air for twelve hours is equivalent to smoking three packs of cigarettes. I certainly can't imagine putting four million people through that, and even if they are living with that as I write this, I'm not doing it to any fictional characters.
If I had more word-count and a broader picture, I might place a story there for the additional social commentary and critique (not to mention the issue of whether it's American privilege to demand a safe and healthy environment!) but this story has enough weight to juggle already, and I think it'd sink under such a massive thing... especially when, after watching two different documentaries about the area's coal-mining issues, I discovered the pall of smog is captured by the surrounding mountains, so one would be driving for nearly two hours along the valley before the smog dissipates. Since the original setting is on a mountain just north (and facing) the coal-mining valley, well, that explains one thing: those pictures of the temple and the town's architecture weren't all taken on foggy days. That's smog.
Gross.
3. There is a CAVE near my HOUSE.
Yesterday while hiking through the woods (don't ask), I was taking a deerpath that runs about 30' up from a seasonal creek, and the ridge above extends another 40' or so -- sharp drop. Come up a slight rise in the ledge and there's a limestone outcropping over my head. The path breaks off, so I follow it up to the outcropping, and there I discover CAVE.
Inner 8-yr-old: CAVE! MUST EXPLORE!
Inner 12-yr-old: I bet this is where teenagers do Bad Stuff.
Inner writer: This is so going in a story. Let's go in!
Inner sanity: SNAKES.
And then I backed away slowly, rather irritated that I didn't think to bring a flashlight with me so at least I could have shone a light in and seen more of the darkness. And it's just the right size for crawling on hands-and-knees, so it's not like it's terribly tiny. What's odd was the lack of graffiti, beer cans, pipes, or any other accoutrements of trash that I might expect, so I guess it's not something most folks know about.
Still... a cave! A Real Live Cave! I spent just about every single summer as a child searching for a cave to explore (probably thanks to all the Nancy Drew stories with caves involved), and never found a single one. The counties around Atlanta just aren't big on natural caves, it seems -- and now I've finally found a cave and a) I'm not quite as short as I used to be, so the fit would be much tighter, and b) I've got this annoying adult voice reminding me about SNAKES.
Sigh. But I can at least dream -- in between researching furiously to find another region for setting a story, and this time to double and triple check that the locale doesn't come with excessive amounts of smog. Gross.
no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 06:04 pm (UTC)And yay for being able to see. I've only tried contacts once, but I found them to be too much bother.
no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 06:13 pm (UTC)re #1: YAY! Hopefully this will ease the eyestrain headaches
re:#2: If you're setting your story anywhere around Beijing, here's another little detail...there is an eerie lack of birds in the area. Apparently the farmers exterminated them wholesale some years back because they were eating the crops.
My folks traveled to China about ten years ago, and commented both on the extreme air pollution and the absence of birds. It was one of those niggling "something's not quite right" feelings until one of the tour guides mentioned the bird-extermination efforts.
no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 06:52 pm (UTC)After way too many hours poring over the maps and comparing them to my notes on architectural features and styles (so I can make sure I've got the descriptions correct), I ended up moving the story lock-stock-and-barrel about 5 hours' drive closer to Beijing, and now it's set in the mountains outside Xinzhou -- which is still an 8 hour drive to the southwest of Beijing, so not exactly right around the corner. Architecturally-speaking, it is, in that Beijing's sihuyuan style and the mountain-style are far more alike than, say, Beijing's urban homes are to urban homes in Shanghai or Hong Kong. This is all because originally I wanted to set the story in an archaeological dig in one of the Hakka half-circle homes, but the climatological and historical elements wouldn't have matched with the folklore I wanted to tap into, which is more Northern. Easier by far just to stick closer to the Yellow River rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance of knowing the Yangtze ain't what it used to be!
no subject
Date: 17 Dec 2009 03:16 pm (UTC)a cultural tide that thinks nothing of destroying everything in the pursuit of improvement.
I think China doesn't get enough credit for the environmental regulations it does have, which are not inconsiderable. The regulations are kind of schizoid, and enforcement is spotty, but there's definitely a substantial section of the population, both inside the government and outside of it, that does have a cluebat.
the issue of whether it's American privilege to demand a safe and healthy environment!
Do you mean at the level of narrative and/or in stories? My default assumption is that it is, or should be, a human right.
...I need to upload that China icon.
no subject
Date: 16 Dec 2009 11:21 pm (UTC)HOORAY A CAVE! We just had sinkholes where I grew up. D:
no subject
Date: 17 Dec 2009 03:53 am (UTC)Bring a flashlight, check it out and then tell us all about it!!
no subject
Date: 17 Dec 2009 01:49 pm (UTC)