Purple Haze

"The height of cleverness is being able to conceal it."
--François de La Rochefoucauld, French writer

I was going to call today's shot "Purple Rain" and quote from Prince's single, but the rain never materialized, so I'm going with a more "hazy" theme this evening! China is hot this month, so my ventures to the pool and deck are mostly confined to the evening hours when I can watch the sun sinking safely behind the horizon and catch whatever breeze is likely to come in across the water. You know it's hot in China when even the locals are complaining about the heat; they're far more likely to complain about the cold during the wet winter months, so this week I know the heat is extreme!

There's a strange irony that occurs in Mainland China during the hottest months (which doesn't seem to effect Hong Kong, perhaps because of the pervasive Western influence here.) In China, there's a law that says workers are not permitted to work out of doors if the temperature exceeds 38C (about 100F); this law was clearly implemented to protect farm and agricultural workers who spend the hottest hours of the day tending crops on the Mainland, a law that can now be equally applied to the tens of thousands of construction workers toiling in the heat throughout the country. However, the law has not resulted in less labor being conducted in extreme heat; instead what has occurred is that the temperature is simply no longer reported accurately!

When we realized what was happening, I was at first shocked by this blatant tactic to get around a law that was clearly implemented to protect the workers. How could the country enact a law that appeared to be in the best interest of its agriculturally-based workforce on the one hand, only to undermine it with equally effective tactics on the other? What we soon came to realize is that because summer temperatures in China often soar well above 40-42C (104-108F), this law would leave thousands of workers without wages for most of the summer months, employers without a workforce during the most important period of production, and the overall economy suffering as a result.

Therefore, both workers and employers together benefit from the inaccuracy of local weather reporting. Workers can continue to make their daily wages and feed their families, employers never lose a day of productivity due to the heat, and from the government's standpoint, the economy continues to churn along twelve months a year. It's a strange hypocrisy that seems to work for all involved, except when Chris and I find ourselves sweltering in 104-110F degree heat while being told by friends and family back home that the reported temperatures are sitting at a balmy 85-90F!

The urban landscape of Hong Kong is very different than the fields and terraces of rural China, but the sun is equally relentless to both. Tonight the heat is still in the air, but the temperature is slowly dropping and people are emerging from their homes and workplaces to enjoy whatever coolness the end of the day will offer. The sky over the harbor tonight is beautiful, and my mind wanders to those workers out in the heat of today who must be happy for the coolness of evening, grateful for a full day's work, looking up into the night skies wherever they are, and finding their own purple haze.