I took this picture last Friday afternoon while riding to Wu Dao Kou area in BJ to give you an idea of what the air looks like now in Beijing, with 11 days to go till the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Although traffic restrictions have been in place since last Sunday you can see that it is still considerable during rush hour. [The restrictions consist of only allowing cars with licence plates ending with an even/odd number on even/odd days of the month.] This and the other predominantly local measures - such as closing construction sites and closing/moving factories, apart from impressive city-greening efforts - don't seem to be enough.
In my perception, since around last Thursday the air is getting more and more asphyxiating. The high humidity of it increases the feeling. It is simply uncomfortable to take a deep breath outside these days.
This perception is confirmed by the statistics: the daily updated Air Pollution Index (API) on the Ministry of Environmental Protection's (MEP)
website shot up in the last week from mid 80's (Level II) to 113 (Level III1) today. For some reason the API on the MEP's English language version
website is still stuck on the July 23, when it was at 89 (Level II).
And all this when the air pollution prospects were looking promising. Probably most of the days in the roughly three weeks I spent here so far were sunny with a few clouds, if any at all (see the amazing combo-picture with its description below). Of course PM10 and ozone levels can still be high with a blue sky but at least the smog and humidity weren't there.
Arguably the authorities did close to their best to reduce local sources of pollution. Now it's only a matter of luck from where the winds blow in on Beijing; from the cleaner northern deserts or the industrial areas in the south. As
one expert puts it: "My advice to them at this point is to keep up the good work and then pray to the Mongolian Weather Gods to send cold fronts. That's their best hope for clean air." Let's hope they listen!
