I can appreciate the value of the grass on the sport fields here at school.
Not only is it the biggest patch of grass in the whole of the inner city of Shiyan, but it’s the only one I’ve seen at a school between the 6 or so schools that I have been too. Sure, the university almost has a grass sports field, but soon even the brown shoots will have died and, like the majority of the field now, will have been replaced by dusty earth.
The other thing that is very valuable about the grass, is that it’s the only grass in Shiyan that you are allowed to interact with, ie. play on, walk on, sit on, etc. There are several small patches of grass in the People’s Square, but you’re not allow to touch or sit or walk on those. It’s the people’s square, not the people’s grass.
That is why, when our school’s management recently decided to water their precious, parched grass with several kilotons of tap water, that they felt it was justified. It hasn’t rained for about 3 weeks and it’s H-O-T.
On Friday mid-day, in the heat of the day, they first started. Initially, they used a very, very long garden hose, which was unsuccessful beyond the few square meters they could water every hour. nevertheless, they continued with this effort deep into the night, and again from early Saturday until all the way up to dinner.
It was at this point that somebody figured that using the fire hoses located in the stairwells of our dormitory would work better. I was glad to see these actually work, as I had my doubts.
At an exponentially increased rate of dispensing water, the fire hoses were used to wet the entire field again. This took the rest of Saturday night and the whole of Sunday. They wanted to let the hose run throughout the night, but after I finished with my late-night Internet session, being the last one awake, I took the liberty of turning it off. Nobody noticed.
I’m all for green grass that you can sit, walk and play on, but I was told when I got here, keep your showers short, because the water is precious and expensive, with which I agreed. Obviously the grass is more expensive and precious than the expensive and precious water.
And, after having poured millions of litres of almost-drinkable, precious, expensive water over grass that wasn’t even turning brown yet, what did it do (and still is) all day today?
It rained.