CHINESE TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME - IT'S NOT THE COUGHIN' THAT CARRIES YOU OFF. IT'S THE COFFIN THEY CARRY YOU OFF IN

Photo: Bad Air Day - Fuzhou City, Fujian Province

Sorry I've not been putting much on this blog recently, but for the past three weeks I've been rather ill with what I am calling Chinese Toxic Shock Syndrome. In fact I've been feeling so bad that I had to cancel a trip to Hokkaido where I was scheduled to do speak, which is something I've never had to do before. Over the next few paragraphs I'll explain why I am calling this illness Chinese Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Photo: Dead Pigs Fill A Waste And Blood Filled Mountain Stream - Fujian Province

From the moment I entered mainland China last year, at the Shenzhen border post with Hong Kong I began coughing - the last time I coughed like this was two years earlier... which was the last time we were in China! Anyway, over the next eleven months we walked from Shenzhen to Tianjin spreading the environmental message while often commenting to ourselves 'We must be crazy doing this. We've got to be damaging our health'.

Photo: Waterway In Yellow River Farming Village - Shandong Province

Almost daily we were blasted by pesticides, toxics from factories, toxics from burning plastic bags, and poisonous odours rising from waterways serving as open sewers/chemical dumps/garbage bins. The only place we experienced clean air and water was in the mountains of Eastern Jiangxi which for a brief while refreshed our minds and spirits, but this all too soon faded away with the approach of the heavily industrialised north and the extreme pollution of the provinces of Shandong and Hebei.

The air was fresh and much clearer the moment we left China for South Korea, yet even as we moved further down the Korean peninsula toward the city of Busan, and further away from China, the memory of the odours persisted, especially the one of human waste. This this was the odour we most experienced on our journey, not a day went by without it fouling our reality. I remember not the fragrance of a Chinese Spring or the fragrance of a Chinese flower, just the fragrance of s...

Gradually the cleanliness of Korea eased my Chinese cough away and I could inhale fully again.

Then all of a sudden, six weeks out of China, China came rushing back.

We were in Busan, Korea's second largest city. Our friend Mr. Ha took us to the city centre where we drove down a small tunnel, at the bottom an elevator would take his car to be parked. The tunnel was choked with cars, every one with engine running. We had to leave the car while waiting for the elevator and were led to row of seats. After just a few moments I noticed how bad the air was. Mr. Ha and the other city folks didn't seem to notice this pollution, but Konomi and I did. I felt choked and finally I told Mr. Ha, 'I've got to get out of here' and left him unceremoniously in the tunnel.

From that day on the coughing began, and grew steadily worse as we made our way through Japan to the islands of Okinawa where we presently stay. Okinawa is truly beautiful, all fun in the sun, white beaches, blue skies and coral seas, but I've not been able to enjoy it in a way that I should. The coughing got so bad that I remembered my father's favourite saying, 'It's not the coughin' that carries you off. It's the coffin they carry you off in.' I even began to wonder if this was a prelude to falling off the perch.

The only time I have been this ill was when I was knocking on deaths door with Malaria. For the past three weeks I've had virtually no sleep, awoken whenever I dozed off by violent coughs that convulsed my entire body. I loaded up with vitamins, protein enriched drinks, friends performed all manner of holistic cures, but still I coughed. I drank some of the best water in the world, from Mount Fuji with minerals and other such goodies far in excess of those found at Lourdes. I was given herb ball treatment and listened to the Okinawan masseuse utter in amazement to Konomi when the toxic contents were revealed 'Look how black the herb balls are Konomi. I've never seen anything like it'.
So many toxics oozed from my chest that when Konomi massaged me she could see yellow stuff coming from my pores. In short I was in a right toxic mess.

I collected this overdose of toxics walking through China. Previous to China I was never racked by coughs and never experienced such toxicity. By the time I left China I must have been up to my neck in toxics. The bad air of the Busan car park must have pushed the toxics beyond my capacity to deal with them and triggered an internal environmental collapse.

Hence I come up with the term Chinese Toxic Shock Syndrome. In the not to distant future we will be hearing more about this syndrome as the massive cost to the quality of life in China becomes apparent.

As for me, thanks to the healing work and magic of natural remedies I have suddenly made a turn around. Helpful to me especially have been the daily massages given to me by Konomi who opened up my chest so that I could better breath and the treatments of our Okinawan friends; Junko who gave the herb ball massage and Tabaan, a Reiki teacher who used his talents to enable me to build up energy and visualise internally a cure.

I hope China wakes up to the results of such massive pollution. The people deserve better. The Earth deserves better.

Excerpt from 'Chinese Toxic Shock Syndrome' © Paul Coleman 2008
A work in progress, to be published 2009. All rights reserved.

This blog falls under my Earthday Everyday category: POSITIVE THING TO DO # 21: STATE THE TRUTH NO MATTER WHAT