water epiphany

My students' lesson was about trash.  Their homework had been to write down all the trash they made over the 3 days before class.  What surprised me was that some of them included what water they wasted!  When calculating the weight of their trash, obviously, their trash's weight was much higher, like between 12 and 50 kilograms over the past 3 days, vs. 0.3 - 3 kilograms for the other students.

Near the end of class, I went there and asked about my embarrassed students how exactly the system is set up for students to wash themselves.  They don't have showers in their dorms at all, that much I knew from last year.  The students explained that they haul their big hot water thermoses (see Dave’s picture on our blog of them) to a building next to their dorms where they must pay for the hot water.  I’ve seen these buildings.  There is a long row of spigots and students’ tank up there, schlepping hot, heavy water back up to their dorm rooms.  They really do know exactly how much water they use, down to the last dime (ok, the Chinese ren min bi) and probably down to the last kilogram, too.  But their ingenuity at saving water doesn’t stop there:  My one student explained that she soaks a washcloth in the hot water and uses that to get herself wet.  That uses even less water than pouring it over yourself!  So much I didn’t know.

What my students didn't know is that I had just that day, for the first time ever in my adult life, washed myself in the same way they do.  Our hot water heater unit had been slowly dying over the last year and finally broke for good 1 week prior.  I washed my hair once with cold water, but it's too cold now to do that.  And my hair really needed to be washed.  So I heated up water on the stove, dumped it in a bucket, walked it to the shower, mixed it with cold water, dunked my head in it (to save even more water, how cool, right?), and proceeded to be able to clean my whole self – on just one half-filled bucket of water!  And you know what?  That fresh-clean shower feeling lasted with me longer, I swear, than a regular old shower I am used to taking.

I woke up the next morning still thinking about my wonderfully conscientious students, how they calculated their waste water along with their other pieces of trash. 

How my viewpoint has changed since last year!  Last year, I turned up my nose at this university for “depriving” its students of such basic amenities.  I felt that American students might reconsider spending a semester here if they were housed in the same types of dorms as all the other students here.

This semester I have been telling my students that “To be clear, Americans are the problem.  Our levels of consumption, our use of the world’s resources, are way beyond the global average.  Yet we’re exporting our ideas and lifestyle all over the world.”  But now I have feel my message on a whole new level.  Why do we Americans (I speak for my country) feel the need for showers?  We love the instant gratification, we are used to it, it takes less time, we feel we can do more things, we can be happier?  All because of “convenience”?

The Story of Stuff video, which I’ve also shown my students last year and this, talks about how  studies have shown that rates of happiness do, indeed, rise when people are lifted from acute poverty and have enough food to eat and decent shelter.  But then happiness actually decreases, even as the level of income continues to rise.  The level of happiness people feel plateaus.  No increasing amount of money or convenience, after a certain level, can commensurately increase happiness. 

Hm, maybe it all starts with a shower.  I have heard Americans compare their water usage between taking a shower and taking a bath, in which case taking a shower uses less water.  Even better, some people throw away their “old” showerhead (thereby creating more trash) to replace it with a “water-saver” showerhead.  Then they pat themselves on the back.  Well, I bet that taking a shower with a water-saver showerhead still uses more water than my half-bucket of water.  And it still creates the need for a polluting factory out there that creates these showerheads.  And the need for transporting them, and takes time and money for people to shop for them.

When I took a shower, I felt really good about it.  In its simplicity, in its relative rarity, I didn’t take it for granted.  I really understood the meaning of “simple pleasures.”  All just about a shower!  Imagine that multiplied by the various other “conveniences” of “modern” life.  I look forward to learning from just as much as I’m teaching to my Chinese students.