Mangrove Mud Bath

Many people would rather not know where their hamburger meat comes from, much less their running shoes. On southern China’s Pearl River Delta, however, the ugly effects of supplying the world’s sweatshirts and cell-phones were everywhere I looked. My daily smog inhalation drove me to try to make amends with an environment for which I, as an iPod user, felt responsible. This is what led me to visit the Qi’ao Island Mangrove Preserve.

Saturday morning, we de-bussed into the dripping heat of early fall, processing down a walkway over mud smooth as buttercream. Mangroves lay low to either side, crabs with bright blue-pinchers scurrying at their bases.

I pulled on a pair of rubber boots and descended from the wooden planks. A friend and I planted saplings down the bank until each hole we dug began to fill with salt-water. As I turned around, high on environmental virtue, I noticed with horror that one boot had not come with me.

A crowd gathered. A volunteer with a yellow shirt stretched over his pot-belly waded out to me, grabbed the sides of my boot and yanked. It slurped free only to sink again with my next step. The crowd gasped like I’d taken an uppercut to the chin. Since seeing The Princess Bride as a child, sinking in quicksand has been one of my greatest fears. Sinking while surrounded by ogling strangers was something that not even my nightmares had prepared me for.

My friend set a shovel in front of me, and—hallelujah!---the handle didn’t whack me in the forehead when I stepped on it. The pot-bellied man, grunting with exertion, gave my buried boot a final yank as I pulled myself free of the merciless mud. “Dui bu qi,” I apologized to my rescuer as he panted and lit a cigarette. The crowd snapped photos of me as I covered my flushed face with my hat-brim.

As I trudged back up the walk in search of a hose, I rationalized that while I hadn’t healed the Chinese wetlands, at least I may have entertained people who would.