Fengdu

My Teacher recounts the story of Fengdu:

And here is something remarkable, the root of my fascination with the flooding of the Three Gorges. How does one go on living, day-by-day; loving and sleeping and working – while knowing all the time that the flood will come?

In China there is, or was, a city called Fengdu, which was, until very recently, home to over a million people.  For more than a thousand years Fengdu has been called the “City of Ghosts” because Taoists believe that the ancient temples above the city are important gateways to the afterlife.

But now the name “City of Ghosts” has taken on a new, and more ominous meaning.  Fengdu lies next to the great Yangtze River in the Three Gorges area, and as part of the 3 Gorges Dam project, the biggest hydrological project in history, the city’s million-plus inhabitants have been forced to leave their homes so the entire valley can be flooded and the great City submerged.

It is eerie to see an entire city, complete with streetlights and skyscrapers, standing empty, it’s broken windows looking across the valley like thousands of hollow eyes.  It is a City, a great City – but no one lives there anymore, and now the City waits for the waters to erase its memory.

In the documentary film, “Up the Yangtze”, director Yung Chang’s cameras follow one poor family.  They have been poor for generations, and refer to themselves as “peasants” without an iota of irony or shame.

When Fengdu was emptied, the Yu family had nowhere to go and no way of making a living away from the only home they had ever known.  So they built a little shack on the riverbank and started farming, something they never could have afforded to do before – but now, with the city empty, there’s no one left to tell them to stop or to charge them rent.

So they raise their little crops and go on living.

Every day, they go about their business: planting, plowing, harvesting, and, if there is anything left over after feeding the family – they go to up the hill to the City of Ghosts, where they scavenge what they can and trade or sell their remaining vegetables to the few solitary souls who have refused to leave the city.

In scene after scene we see Father Yu hoeing away on his little patch of land as the endless waters glide by, but he knows full well that it will not last.  As the sun sets he stands by the water’s edge with his wife, gazing upriver from whence the flood will come.  Everyday is a day of waiting, even as the plowing, sewing and reaping go on and on like a spinning wheel.

The waters do come, of course they do, and the movie ends with Father Yu and his family packing what they can on their backs and climbing up and away from the rising waters, which rise and rise and rise in stop motion until not a trace remains of one family’s little shack, corn fields and lives.  It is as if a chapter has been erased.

This Father Yu defines my life. This waiting.

I am semi-retired. The company for which I have worked for the past 10+ years has been down-sizing and re-locating out of town for the last 2-3 years. Where the allegory especially pertains is in our three-story building.

I work on the 2nd floor. Last spring the Company relinquished our first floor back to building management which promptly re-leased it to two other businesses. A couple of weekends ago, I heard from an ex-employee that knows a friend who knows building management who told him that my Company's CEO has not done anything to renew the current lease on 2nd floor which is due 1 October. I have no idea how reliable that news is. All I can say is that I weigh it along side my observations.

• In my office flat, there are six offices and six cubicles. Two of the offices and three of the cubicles are occupied. The balance of space is used for storage: piles of used computer equipment and cardboard boxed-up files.
• Discreet inquiries yield the impression that, excepting the CEO's offices, the Company's cubicles and offices on that floor are also sparsely occupied, without piles of detritus.
• Secretive, whispered nose-counting ensues: how many current occupants of the 2nd floor can be housed tolerably on the 3rd floor? how many would tolerate relocation (90 minutes out of town)?

My plan B is blank except for the first item (syllable?): given a choice, I select retirement over relocation. The only relocation I could accept is to be in that number, assumably, who are selected to be moved upstairs. Last Friday, I slimmed down my personal effects in my space to appear more mobile. I shredded or packed away all family and boat pictures & mementos and similarly cleansed my hard-drive.

Like the peasant, Father Yu, I currently do my daily work as before. But now I am perfectly ready to instantly respond when and if the rising water reaches the bottom of my swivel chair.

If the news I am waiting for is that I am not promoted to the 3rd floor, the consequences will both be immense and unforeseeable. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have less cash and more time on my hands. That's my definition of free fall.

Shout out a danger. Shout out a warning.