Portmanteau

Can we clear the air? No, seriously, can we clear the fucking air?

Shanghai is on the sea.  (The city’s name literally means “Upon-the-Sea.”)  Just like Los Angeles.  In many ways, the smog reminds me of growing up in L.A. in the 1970s.  Brown air.  Lungs hurting when you run on the playground.

People often forget that the word “smog” is a portmanteau of “smoke” and “fog”.  (The proper linguistic term is “blend” but portmanteau — from the French, meaning “carry” and “coat” for luggage with two compartments, was coined by Lewis Carroll for his neologisms in the poem “Jabberwocky” in Alice Through the Looking Glass.  Anyone who knows me from back in elementary school — I’m looking at you, Eric Pokorny! — knows my affection for that poem.)

All that aside, the air quality index in Shanghai (in winter, at least, when the poor burn coal for heat) is horrendous.  Depending on the wind, it can be even worse than the notoriously bad air quality in Beijing.

But let’s be fair.  China is going through its Industrial Revolution, much as Victorian England did.  But that doesn’t mean that often times — wearing my London Fog overcoat in the “London fog pea soup” — I don’t, from time to time, find myself navigating prostitutes like Jack the Ripper did.