Blue sky!

This afternoon Kristin arrived and Kai and I took her to dinner on campus. As we were walking, I looked up at the yellowish glow through the clouds/smog and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a gradient from gray to grayish blue to--shockingly--BLUE! That’s right, I saw blue sky for the first time! Now in Beijing’s defense, I think the clouds are due only in part to the pollution. I think much of it is owed to the high humidity and sand/dust. But it was exciting to see a bit of blue after days of haze.

Then in the evening, Kristin and I walked on Chengfu road to find Golden Phoenix bakery where we could buy bread for the Oregon jam I’d brought. Instead of walking back to Zhongyuancun road, we walked through a block and found a really cute little square, two sides of which had little stands selling veggies, small groceries, etc. As we walked through, some older women assembled in the middle and started counting out steps. We didn’t stay for long, but it looked like it might’ve been the beginnings of a Tai Chi lesson. Children and old men looked on from a bench/table on another side of the square. It was a little chunk of real Beijing that would be fun to visit again.