Photo by Drew Fralick using Microsoft Paint filler function

Scooter traffic in Shanghai was hectic. More than a few times I was almost run over by the busy folks driving their scooters on the roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks of the city. As a pedestrian, they would honk at you to get out of the way immediately. Right of way? Never heard of it.

They would not stop at stop signs or red lights. These were mere suggestions to be ignored. The mandarin verb for running a red light – chuang (闯) – is symbolized as a horse inside a city gate. The word was originally used when armies would crash the gates of a city and annihilate every inside. In the same way, so help you God, if you stepped out in front of one of these scooters or bikes while they were chuang-ing a red light you would be vaporized as well. They may well leave you for dead, halfway down the block before even noticing that that speed bump was actually the body of a recently created corpse.

I never understood the mentality of these drivers. Couldn’t fathom where they were in such a hurry to get to. In late April of 2012 I was more than a little bit judgmental of these low class, rule breaking people on their bikes. I didn’t do stuff like that. I was conscientious.

I also had loads of expendable income in a city where the cost of living hadn’t yet exploded. It was convenient and cheap to take taxis wherever I needed to go. Mostly spots downtown where my buddies and I would meet up for drinks and pontificate on how to make the world a better place. Society was in crisis, the environment was nearing collapse, and drastic times call for men of action. Though the situation was bleak, maybe just maybe, the world could be saved by the courageous efforts of us lager guzzling men in our late twenties, sitting on a patio at four o clock in the afternoon.

***

It was from one of these beer summits that we emerged with the idea to conduct an experiment. If the environment truly was on the brink of collapse, it needed rescuing. An obvious source of global warming came from power plants, which produce electricity. Therefore, in the spirit of self-sacrifice we vowed to not use electricity for a month. Maybe, just maybe, our chivalrous act would set off a chain reaction of inspiration among all people, who would act to turn back the clock on our impending doomsday.

We left the bar satisfied at the ambitiousness of our project. The month without electricity or “Blackout May” as were calling it would begin on May 1st and would go for the entirety of the month. The rules of the month were fairly simple: no use of any electricity that we had the ability to not use. For instance, we would use a computer when we went to work, we could even have the lights on at work. But if one of our coworkers turned the lights off when they left the room, we had to keep working in the dark.

This included no phones (other than during work hours and only for work related activities), no email, no use of public transportation such as buses, taxis, or the subway, which were our main methods of getting around. While off work, we allowed ourselves absolutely zero use of electricity – we cooked over a flame, lit candles to see at home after sunset, and sent messages to each other by leaving a note at the door and hoping they’d return the “text message” by putting another note on our door.

But by the time May 1st rolled around, pretty much everyone else had gone cold on the idea of actually doing this challenge. Only my wife and I remained to carry out this dumb idea.

***

We did end up completing the challenge though. All 31 days of May 2012 we lived out electricity free. Our days followed a schedule that cherished the sunlight. When you have no electricity, the sun is your only source of clarity. We would wake up around five, at sunrise, and get our day started. Breakfast was bread or a piece of fruit. No milk and cereal as the refrigerator was off limits.

Our social life collapsed almost immediately. It’s difficult to plan a night out when you can’t text or call. We were off social media and the news. We felt cut off from the world, like social outcasts. Rather than searching online to interact with people who were interesting to us, we had to make do with the people who were in our immediate vicinity. We had to talk to them, ask them questions, make them interesting.

Our nights generally consisted of eating dinner (boiled rice with something cooked over a flame), playing cards by candlelight, or conversation. That month we made a lot of love – the oldest form of entertainment. We went to bed with the sun, light was a precious commodity.

We took cold showers, washed our clothes in a bucket, and boiled water over a flame for rice or coffee. Though we’d given up our privileged electrical existence, we still had water, gas, and a roof over our heads. You could make do off these three things.

Part of the idea behind Blackout May was we were preparing for the apocalypse. The environmental crisis made us believe that the collapse of “civilization” (our definition) was near and we wanted to have a taste of what it would be like when that all went down. Instead, we ended up realizing that lots of people already live like this and seem to find a way to make it work. The impending collapse of civilization was actually the collapse of our convenience – the ability to do whatever we want all the time without having to consider its impact on others.

The most difficult part of the month was going places. I had just taken a job in the southern suburbs of Shanghai, which was about an hour away by bus. The commute was already difficult, but now I was riding my bike back and forth every day. Each workday I would be on the bike for 4 to 5 hours, leaving home shortly after 6am and arriving back at 7pm or even 8pm some nights. I was exhausted, dirty and constantly hungry for the whole month.

***

The desire to meet up for a few drinks with the gang faded away. When you’ve already been on the bike all day, who really wants to tack on a few more minutes? Plus, we needed our rest, so we could wake up the next day and do it all over again. Our ongoing experiment in how the other half lives.

Because come 6am I’d be back on the bike, pedaling towards work. And if you stepped out in front of my bike while I was running a red light, so help you God, I’d be halfway down the block before noticing that speed bump I just went over was actually the body of a recently created corpse.