Beijing 451

Over the past two weeks I have been fighting a cough and, possibly, a cold. Mainly I've been fighting a nagging cough. On Thursday and Friday I was stuck indoors for two main reasons. The first was that I wanted to give my body time to recover. The second was that I was actually fearful of going outside. Yes, fearful.

A nice thick blanket of atmospheric haze covered Beijing on those days as well as the days prior. The haze reminded me of the thick blankets of fog that would cover one of my old hometowns of Fowler, California or to use a bigger more well known city, San Francisco, California. Unfortunately this haze wasn't fog it was a thickly polluted nasty mix of smog/coal dust/diesel fumes. The effects of burning coal, too many cars, too many factories in the city, and simple inefficient energy methods that are high polluters.

Simply put I was scared of going outside in fear that the air would make my condition worse. Of course all of that was speculation until this morning when Diana found a few other people blogging about it. This is what they said.

How bad was the air the last two days? If it was a person it would have been a seedy, broad-shouldered thug, dressed in filthy leathers and reeking of grain alcohol, last-night's whorehouse and cheap cigarettes, that hauled you into an alley by your collar and beat you senseless with a lead pipe wrapped in duct tape, emptied your wallet, found your grandmother's address inside, went to her house and beat her senseless with the same pipe, cleared out her jewelry box and sodomized her golden-retriever on the way out the door before setting fire to her cottage, coming back to the alley and kicking you in the ribs one more time for good measure.

Then she found the SEPA index. 400! 4 F*in hundred. Shanghai 50ish, Hong Kong 20ish. My guess is that most U.S. cities (L.A aside) are at like 10 or 15. 4 F*in hundred. Are we serious?!?
(update: actual index 451)

Fortunately for me the winds picked up on Friday night and were howling through Beijing all day Saturday. The winds were fierce and strong enough to carry the polluted air out of Beijing. Unfortunately for everyone else in the world that air, the same air that exacerbated my health problems is now coming towards you. Diluted yes, non-existent no.

Beijing has a long way to go before its the World Class city like they think they are.

P.S. I'm still not moving at least not yet. There are many, many other items in the city that counter the negatives.