This video making the rounds on the inter-webs shows what happens when the wind shifts and starts coming in from the south and east in Beijing: And when the wind shifts back to the north and west, it will roll on out. This is still the main thing I DON’T miss about living in Beijing. Related […]
Mom! I Swallowed a Brick!
Over the weekend all of northern China was once again shrouded in eye-burning, lung-suffocating, soul-crushing smog. “Air-pocolypse,” they call it. As I scrolled through my various news and social media feeds, it was pretty much the only story that people were talking about. If I hadn’t experienced such smog during my time living there (and on my visit […]
Now You See It; Now You Don’t
A week and a half ago as a dress and a couple of llamas were melting the Internet in the US, Chinese netizens were gripped by an online documentary. The film, titled Under the Dome, is a hard-hitting look at the effects of pollution in China. It was posted on February 28, and within 48 hours had […]
Smoking in the Park
I recently stumbled across this short video of things you see people doing in a park in Beijing. Parks in Beijing (and any other cities in China) are where retirees go to hang out. They sing, dance, play cards, and, apparently smoke. A lot! Seeing all the smoking brought to mind a conversation I had with a tour bus […]
Friday Photo: Fireworks and Pollution
Wednesday was the eve of the Chinese New Year, the night that ushers in 15 straight days of shooting off fireworks. In the run-up to the holiday this year, I spotted a poster in a Beijing neighborhood reminding people that fireworks are a source of pollution. It says (roughly) “How much healthy air is taken away […]
Taking in the Mountain Air
This is definitely my favorite story out of China this week — residents of Zhengzhou (my original China ‘home town’) lined up to take shots of O2 from bags filled with mountain air (from the Wall Street Journal): “Proving that China’s fight against pollution has moved decisively into the realm of parody, bags containing mountain […]
