Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter

Author:Adam Minter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Homer Lai grew up in a small farming village, but today he lives near the top of a luxury high-rise overlooking the Bei River in Qingyuan. It’s a big place—four bedrooms—but the decor is functional and understated. The walls are mostly bare; the furniture is big, comfortable, but by no means expensive. The most prominent feature might be the large flat-screen television. After that, what I really notice about the place is the family: Homer’s elderly but utterly vital mother has her own room; his son, Wing, and his pregnant wife occupy a room at the opposite end of the apartment; Homer’s strongly built wife wanders out of yet another room. Downstairs, in another unit, is his sister. She comes in and out of Homer’s unit as if it’s hers. As Johnson told me, Homer likes to keep his family close.

Then there are the windows.

The view from the front of the apartment reveals the river, riverbank high-rises, and a growing city that extends out into the villages and towns where scrap is processed into copper. But it’s the view from the back of the apartment that surprises me. A city that sprawls like Los Angeles extends out to the distant mountains, where even now businesses recycle the worst of what they import in hollows out of sight and mind of regulators—and their city neighbors. Much of that burning is devoted to high-tech scrap, such as silver-coated wire, a key component of many high-tech devices. Years ago the United States had refineries that could separate the copper from the silver, but environmental problems shut them down. Now the silver-coated wire ends up in the hills, where it’s processed using acids away from the eyes of regulators. By day, the silver and the copper comes down from the mountains, to be incorporated into new products shipped all over the world.

But none of that’s obvious from Homer’s balcony. Spread out before me, most of Qingyuan’s buildings are no more than ten stories high, and they roll out along boulevards that intersect at clusters of thirty-story high-rises. I’d always thought of Qingyuan as a small town, verging on a city; what I see is a metropolis. Who knew? As I gape, Homer reminds me that most of these buildings were wired with metal imported as scrap, and processed locally.

Thank you, America, I think.

I’m offered a seat in one of two large leather chairs at opposite ends of a marble coffee table. Homer sits on the brown leather love seat next to me and sets out several small cups for tea that he boils in front of us. Wing joins in the chair opposite of mine, and his pretty, very pregnant wife takes a seat on the arm. Homer picks up a remote control and starts a DVD. “My son’s wedding,” he says. The first sets of images show a caravan of thirty-five cars that carry Wing to pick up his bride. They stop, and dozens of people emerge, including—I see right away—Johnson.

I ask Homer if he had thirty-five cars in his wedding.

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