Chinese Confession - A Storm Called Wipha

One of the hopes that I expressed before I came to China was to be able to see a typhoon while I am here. Well, this morning I woke up to the thoroughly exciting news that my hope is going to be a reality. Let me introduce you to Wipha.

She packs quite a punch as she creeps along at an eerily slow pace. She has been battering Taiwan to our South for a couple of days already. Her screaming winds are in excess of 150mph, qualifying her as a category 4 typhoon (the Pacific equivalent to a hurricane). She has an eye for just one place: Shanghai. Literally, the eye is expected to make landfall right here in this very city, which, naturally, has all of Shanghai on maximum alert. She could be the most powerful and destructive storm to hit the city in the past 10 years. She is saving up all of her force and energy, becoming even more powerful, and will then unleash it in gales of wind and torrential downpours when she makes landfall near southern Shanghai sometime in the next day or so. You have to admit, when Mother Nature speaks, she commands respect.

All morning the rain has been off-and-on, and the storm is still hundreds of miles away. Right now as I type this, rain is falling like endless ropes from the sky. Traffic on the elevated highway outside our campus is at a standstill, visibility is a half-mile at best. Someone wearing a bright blue raincoat is riding a rusty bike across campus, while another person is scurrying across the central garden and plaza under the limited shelter of a flimsy umbrella.

The storm isn’t exactly coming at the most convenient of times. The Women’s World Cup is going on right now in Shanghai, and the US is scheduled to play against Nigeria tonight at 8:00pm. Almost all of us have been planning on getting painted up and going to show our unabashed support for our team. There has been a lot of excitement in the air for us as the anticipation builds, but most of us did not even hear of the typhoon until today. I haven’t even purchased my ticket yet, but given the weather, I don’t think it will be difficult to secure one or even to find an unoccupied seat with the rest of us Americans.

I wasn’t able to attend the match between Japan and the UK last week, much to my dismay, but I heard it was spectacular. Actually, I heard those from our group that went were spectacular. Literally. They were shown on TV because of their lively cheering. Actually, it’s not very difficult to draw much attention while cheering. Apparently the Chinese are relatively quite and orderly spectators. This contrasts sharply with Americans who are used to jumping, yelling, screaming, singing, and making the most of virtually every favorable (or particularly unfavorable) play or call. If you want in illustration, just think of baseball. The game can bore you to tears. The fun of it is being there with people and cheering to your heart’s content.

We don’t know if the football (US Soccer) game will be cancelled, postponed, or if it will go on as planned. None of us have heard of a match being cancelled because of rain, but then again, none of us have been planning on attending one just before a typhoon hits.

Brief weather update: the traffic is still at a standstill on the highway, and visibility has dropped even more as the rain pounds down even more fiercely than before. And this is just the beginning. Rest assured – I am loving this. I do need to trek out to the store, however, and get some clean drinking water and a few munchies. I am down to the last bottle-full of my water after brushing my teeth following lunch.

So far 200,000 people have been evacuated from coastal and low-lying areas. The central commercial district is also being evacuated as people prepare for the incoming storm, but people are still much calmer here than they would be in the US. In the past I had heard that people considered typhoons to be lucky. Maybe that was India. Maybe I am just making this up. I don’t know. But one thing I can tell you, they do appreciate them for one thing: they clean the city. A big storm making landfall is like the entire city taking a huge, long shower. It cleans out the air and makes things fresh again, if only for a short while.

I honestly don’t anticipate that things will be all that bad. Shanghai gets hit by typhoons often enough, so the city should be well prepared. I just hope the power and phone lines (thus internet) don’t go out. At least the Chinese are smart enough to not build a city below sea level, so this is hardly likely to look anything like Katrina.