Six days of blue and counting

Beijing is notorious for its hazy skies. For the 2008 Olympic Games, I remember hearing how they'd temporarily closed factories and limited automobile traffic in an effort to improve athlete performance and public perception with cleared skies.

Unfortunately, however, the skies have returned to their hazy status. I know you're thinking, "But you're from Oregon! Shouldn't you be used to gray skies?" Well, there's a difference between cloudy skies and "mashed potato" skies:

"Mashed potato sky", livefrombeijing.com

I don't think that factory pollution has everything to do with the low visibility. Much of it is due (I think) to the sand and dust from nearby deserts (though we could get on the subject of desertification, I'll abstain) coupled with vast city construction (over 50% of construction sites don't meet environmentally friendly standards). Plus, Beijing has a fantastic public transit system with  subway trains packed much of the day and roads lined with bicycles and filled buses, so at least they're trying to reduce pollution output (though 1000 cars are added daily to Beijing streets). But Beijing (and China in general) is growing and needs to fuel that growth, so it's hard to demand that they cease production. And I hear that they're setting new environmental standards, though--like everywhere--setting standards is not the same as implementing them.

Back to the skies. In the last decade there have been only four 30-day stretches of clear skies. I'm not sure what is qualified as "clear" or what other metrics are used, but given my short time here, I can verify that the skies are usually mashed potato-y. The benefit to this consistently murky extreme is that when we do swing to the other extreme of sapphire skies, we enjoy it even more (you can tell, as I've mentioned that in here and have a photographical comparison here).

Which brings me to this week. We're on day six of our shocking streak of blue skies! It's wonderful! And we have had weather in the mid- to high-70s! To enjoy this special treat, Tanu and I visited a park on campus during lunch and shared the gorgeous weather with other celebrants. Here are some photos for your viewing pleasure:

Bluuuuuuuue.

Now scroll back up to the photo of the hazy sky for comparison. It's jolting.

Also, I found what could be a fair blog about Beijing/China's environment at http://www.livefrombeijing.com/. It's written by an American environmental engineer in China.