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Hong Kong.

In our part of the world Duluth well represents the closest we have to high country.
The French voyageurs called our region the upper land (pay den haut).

Look at the Incline and the Skyline and its easy to think, yup, that’s it. The steep Lake Superior basin on the North Shore gives a true sense of soaring heights. Duluthian pride in its elevated surroundings is justified, but dear readers we have nothing compared to Hong Kong.

In my recent experience a bus ride to a scenic overlook was fairly tame event. Not here in Hong Kong where a ride up to Victoria Peak (a name leftover from colonial days) traverses successive hairpins where looking out on the cliff side of the road you find yourself eyelevel with floor 30 of a 50-story apartment tower.

It is a very strange feeling to be in a bus driving halfway (as it felt) to heaven. At the top (after offering deep sigh of thanksgiving) the spectacular view was one of fresh fog-smog. Couldn’t see a thing. Everything including the viewing platform was obscured in haze. Possibly a lot of smog, but I’ll get to that.

One area where Duluth and the Twin Ports, etc. stand out is air quality. We have good air.

Some of you may recall days past when north of the Ports and North Shore were sought in mid-to-late summer by many for hay fever relief. In those days that was a very big deal.

I don’t intend to make an air quality argument here. My guess is that any population coming from a northern origins grew in and was accustomed to very smoky (smoggy) conditions. In many areas of the north open fires were the norm. Smoke blackened the upper levels of living spaces. Working around any fire outdoors also exposed people to frequent inhales of smoke-filled air.

It is/was common folk knowledge that smoke would follow anyone working around a fire. No escape.
So even if the outside air was clear the living and working situations of humans involved breathing soot-tainted air.

All that and more in mind (such as airborne pollen from far away fields of crops) our concern about air quality is a relatively recent, you might say, luxury. I might, at this point, even go so far as call it a bit of a quirk.

Quirk? Well, yes, if you’d consider it a tiny touch excessive to send two or three petrol-burning cars of air quality enforcement police to a nature park in Australia to make sure no bus would stand running in the parking lot for more than 15 minutes or face a serious fine.

That’s right. Three vehicles and six or more enforcement people making darn sure the steamy air our Army Duck would carry us through was not befouled by bus exhaust emissions in addition to that of the onboard engines themselves. (At the Duck’s rear I was very aware these were gasoline engines.)
OK. Very good, and if you’re purist inclined then very fine indeed.

I personally feel it was on the excessive side, but then how would someone from northern Minnesota know how sensitive a koala is to bus exhaust. Better to err on the side of overheating the bus interiors in the Australian sun than hazard koala distress. I would not think any argument about having to overcome the excessive heat buildup tops that of possible koala impacts.

So, imagine my shock and surprise when in China and Vietnam the Australian zeal for air quality was nowhere to be seen through the foggy smog. A bus did not have to shut down if parked for more than 15 minutes, and no officials appeared to limit running time or double check the bus for current EPA papers.

Now, it could be that the wide open spaces and jungles of Australia were thus kept clean by open vistas not available in a Chinese or Vietnamese harbor or high-density city. I’m not the one to know, but getting around Hong Kong on foot or bicycle to save the air would be a near suicidal activity.

In fact foot and bike travel was often forbidden. In Vietnam is bikes were offered as environmentally friendly it appears the locals said in chorus “No thank you!”

Almost costly as cars in China (price plus a 120 percent purchase tax for starters followed by gasoline more than $10 a gallon plus high maintenance and insurance costs) the Vietnamese clearly favor motorbikes to eco-friendly pedaling.

The motorbike is everywhere and used for purposes large or small. Rather than pedal in tropic heat and humidity the Vietnamese prefer motorbikes. Seems sensible to me, not to mention God knows how you’d get public transport fitted in the density of an old Chinese city or the sprawl of flooded fields in rice country.

The perspective I have as a northland Minnesotan feels rather small alongside places with a thousand or more years of cultural, religious, military and ethnic change.

I looked, for example, at a quite large water feature in the center of a Chinese temple and wondered if it was intended for adult baptisms to be blessed by the dragon and multiple stone turtles rising in vivid color from the pool.

Scattered here and there were buildings (now much overshadowed) showing European influence, but many, many more clearly or obviously celebrating Chinese influence or style. Which does make sense, really.

But saying so and writing this I must also comment how very much all of that is being crushed and ground to fine powder under the weight of modern architecture ever expanding in a skyline bristling with crane on crane busily adding to the duplication of copy cat blocks stacked and stacking like pieces from a popular toy as obsessive to architects and builders as the ongoing lure of instant connection provided by computer, phone web and net.

Are we caught yet? Are we happy and satisfied?

An old friend introduced me to the expression “A little more will always be just right.”
A little more and a little more. Where, I wonder, does that take us and will it be enough?