• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 466 0

mines in China—the large, state-run mines, which have suffocating bureaucracies and often don’t pay their workers, and the smaller, private ones, which put profit before safety and also often don’t pay their workers. Neither is good, especially since mining in China often requires working for up to seven days a week in sweltering tunnels that are constantly at risk of explosions, floods, or collapses. Unsurprisingly, accidents happen: according to the Washington Post, Chinese coal miners die at the rate of approximately one per hour, with more than seventeen miners killed for every million tons of coal produced—considerably higher than the American average of .05.

As an example of how bad things can get, consider the No. 5 Coal Mine in Gangzi. On July 22, 2001, during the tenth hour of their shift, ninety-two miners died when gases ignited in a poorly ventilated shaft. Why was it poorly ventilated? Because it didn’t have a ventilation system. Or, for that matter, a way to filter the coal dust from the air. It also had only one entrance, and its managers didn’t routinely check for dangerous gases (mines in the United States do so every twenty minutes).

A banner outside of the No. 5 Coal Mine proclaimed that SAFETY IS HEAVEN—but it’s unclear whether they meant that figuratively or literally. In either case, if you visit it or any of China’s other mines, be sure to pack a canary.

Chapter 76

The Seattle Gum Wall

Upon finishing a piece of chewing gum, the polite thing to do is to throw it out; not toss it on the ground or stick it on the bottom of a chair, but find a garbage can. In extreme situations, it is acceptable to swallow. But under no circumstances should you be allowed to take the moist, warm wad out of your mouth, stick it on a public wall, and call it art.

Think I’m being too strict? Check out Seattle’s gum wall. Tucked into an alley next to the Market Theater in Pike’s Place, it’s a brick wall covered with thousands upon thousands of wads of gum left there by people waiting in line. When the first masticated pieces arrived in the mid-1990s, the theater twice tried to remove them. But it was no use—the custom, as it were, stuck. The theater stopped fighting, and today, there are those who consider the wall an object of beauty.

I consider it disgusting. Some of the gum was originally used to affix coins to the wall—sort of a bastardized version of a wishing well—but this being Seattle, the money didn’t last long. Now there’s just gum, pounds of it, coating the wall in a layer so thick that in some places, you can no longer see any brick. There are sculptures of faces and dogs, initials surrounded by hearts, peace signs, and a multicolored American flag. One window drips with “gumsicles”; nearby, in a self-referential gesture, carefully shaped pieces of Wrigley’s spell out GUM.

The wall’s colorful, textured surface has made it popular with photographers. But even if you can’t see it, the wall is hard to miss—covered in more than a decade’s worth of Juicy Fruit, you can smell it from several feet away.

Kathleen Mikulis

Chapter 77

Varrigan City*

It can be fun to escape real-world stress by jumping into a video game, but if you’re going to do so literally, make sure it’s not MadWorld, the ultraviolent adventure from Sega.

The game takes place in Varrigan City, a stylized, gritty dystopia where anyone you meet on the street is guaranteed to try to kill you. That’s because three days before the game begins, Varrigan City was targeted by a terrorist group called the Organizers, who cut off the city’s transportation and communication lines and unleashed a deadly virus that knocks out its victims in less than twenty-four hours after they catch it. The only way to survive is to kill another person—the Organizers promise a vaccine to anyone who commits murder.

In the true American spirit, the city’s reaction to the outbreak is not to notify the CDC, but instead to transform Varrigan City into the set for a recurring game show called Death Watch, in which characters fight for the ultimate prize—their