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(Memoirs continued from page 3)
know what happened to the creek as it neared the river because we never explored it that far down or even wondered about it. There must have been widespread flooding in an established floodplain.
Now, you are going to think I am again digressing, but there is a point with the following story. In 1979 I traveled to China with a group of women who were involved with urban planning. We were hosted by the All-China Women's Federation and had the opportunity to visit Shanghai, Nanjing, X'ian and Beijing. Our guide was a Chinese language professor at the University of California in Davis and it was an amazing trip. Many of the Chinese had never met an American before and crowds gathered around to watch us change the film in our cameras. The government was beginning to encourage tourism and we stayed in a couple of brand new or still-under-construction hotels. Teng Hsiao-ping had just become Premier and we had to practice saying his name correctly (Dong Shiao Ping). Mao's Gang of Four had been arrested the year before and were being held and tried in Beijing, so the judge in our group was extremely interested in the legal proceeding, but the Chinese guides politely avoided the subject. In Nanjing we et with the city's public works director and asked him questions through an interpreter about the infrastructure for a city of 2.4 million. We wondered about the sewer treatment plants. "Oh, the sewer," he said. "You probably noticed the open ditches in the streets." In the interests of international relations we squelched our astonishment, but, after the meeting, we found ourselves intensely curious about the water quality of the huge Yangtze River. We decided we had to go out on the river and see for ourselves what happened at the end of those ditches. We asked our guides if they could arrange this. They were appalled at even the mention of such a non-itinerary activity. They turned us down flat. We then suggested taking them out of the equation. What if we just took a taxi to the river on our own and found someone with a boat who was willing to take us out. (This would have been difficult since none of spoke Chinese). The guides assured us t! hat if we did that, we would be arrested, the boat person would be arrested, they would be arrested, and our group might never leave China. We decided to "visualize" the sewer outfall in Nanking and refrain from swimming. I bring this up because, although comparing the 3,400 mile long Yangtze to the San Diego River is the same as comparing Nanking, a huge, densely populated urban city to tiny Lakeside -- the message is similar. In the old days, and not that long ago, with privies, septic tanks and no official garbage disposal system, it stands to reason that the water table and, therefore, the river, must have been seriously polluted -- at least by today's standards. Of course, there weren't as many people then, but there were many more animals.
Now, bear with me while I make a final analogy. After our arrival in Beijing, we took an early morning bus to see the famous Great Wall. The weather in late November was biting cold and the narrow winding route was en
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