MCLC: Poem in praise of smog

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MCLC LIST
Poem in praise of smog
Source: Sinosphere, NYT (1/6/17)
A Poem Praises Smog, and Why Not? It’s From Cancer’s Perspective
By KAROLINE KAN
BEIJING — For millions of Chinese, the new year opened under an oppressive shroud of smog that has closed highways, delayed or canceled hundreds of flights and shut down schools, forcing some students to follow their lessons from home through online streaming.
The toxic air has also drawn attention to a poem written by a Chinese surgeon from the viewpoint of an ambitious lung cancer that revels in the “delicious mist and haze.” The poem was first published in English in the October issue of Chest, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, under the title “I Long to Be King.” Excerpts from the poem were posted in Chinese this week in The Paper, a news website, and widely reported on by other Chinese media.
The author, Dr. Zhao Xiaogang, 40, who is deputy chief of thoracic surgery at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital of Tongji University, opens with a “ground-glass opacity,” an image of a CT scan of fluid in the lungs that can indicate a range of disorders, but in this case is the first indication of what will develop into a triumphantly lethal cancer. It is abetted by its host’s unhealthy habits, but also the host’s smoggy environment:
I long to be king,
With my fellows swimming in every vessel.
My people crawl in your organs and body,
Holding the rights for life or death, I tremble with excitement.
It continues:
None cared when I was young,
But all fear me when full grown.
I’ve been nourished on the delicious mist and haze,
That sweetly warmed my heart
The Chinese version of the poem has attracted hundreds of comments on Weibo.
One Weibo user sarcastically wrote, “The government should be proud. We have information about China’s air pollution published in the U.S.! More literary works should be shared in international publications!”
Another said of Dr. Zhao’s poem, “When China has a surge in cancer in a few years, we’ll appreciate how right the author was.”
A Weibo commenter wrote, “I wonder why the smog keeps getting worse if the government is working on solutions.”
And there was a hint of caution in another user’s post: “Doctor, I think you’re going to be invited by the authorities soon to have a chat.”
Lung cancer is the leading form of cancer in China, and while smoking, especially among men, is a prime culprit, Dr. Zhao stressed in the Paper article the contribution of PM2.5, the dangerous fine particles suspended in smog.
“PM2.5 was declared a carcinogen by the World Health Organization as early as 2013,” he said. “No matter how developed the medical technology is, if people are exposed to smog, especially severe smog, they are at risk.”
Global Times quoted him as making a direct link. “The intense rise in lung cancer,” he said, “is intimately related to smog.”
Dr. Zhao has long written poetry as a pastime. But in 2015, while a visiting scholar at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and at Washington University in St. Louis, he heard that some academic journals published poetry. Last year, he submitted his poem to Chest, which ran it in its October issue.
“As a thoracic surgeon, I have diagnosed many patients with ground-glass opacity adenocarcinoma in my regular clinical practice,” he said in an telephone interview, referring to tumors. “I hope this poem will help more people understand it and take it seriously.”
As for why the poem was told from a cancer’s perspective, Dr. Zhao said he was inspired by reading science fiction.
“I think everything in this world has consciousness and determination,” he said.
“Sometimes when I look at the scan images and see the shadows of G.G.O., I can feel it growing stronger with a will and a tribe of its own,” he added, referring to ground-glass opacity. “So I thought, why not write down what the G.G.O. and cancer would be thinking?”
Dr. Zhao said that in his surgical practice he has noticed more and more nonsmokers who have developed lung cancer.
“Most of the female lung cancer patients are nonsmokers,” he said. “Some are little girls. I even had a 9-year-old patient, a little girl, and we had to cut out part of her lung. I’ll never forget her.”
“But I am confident about the government’s determination” to tackle air pollution, he added.
In its 13th Five-Year Plan, announced last year, the Chinese government’s goal for 2020 is for the air in all major cities to meet “good” or “excellent” standards — meaning air quality index readings of less than 100 — 80 percent of the time. The Beijing municipal government has pledged to reduce PM2.5 concentrations in the city’s air 25 percent this year compared with levels for 2012.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on January 7, 2017
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