Many of you may have noted the recent announcement that Beijing had declared a red alert for air pollution, and had cancelled school for reasons due to declining air quality. Or you may have read that living in China is like having a two pack a day smoking habit. Or perhaps you've even heard me personally state that China's air quality is kind of like "The Fog That Turns People Inside Out" from the Halloween episode of Season 5 (I think) of "The Simpsons".
Regardless, it's a real issue that people are talking about in their daily lives. When I interview people in Jinan, air quality is one of the things that they constantly reference when talking about how the city has changed in recent years. The seemingly constant haze over the city can be attributed to lots of things: increased traffic, increased industrial production, increased large-scale construction, and even (as one repsondent reminded me recently) the fact that Jinan's being surrounded by mountains in all directions makes it effectively a bowl in which smog gets trapped. In many instances, however, the link is clear: development and air quality are linked in the eyes of residents. And when these residents imagine a future Jinan, they imagine one with bluer skiers, and cleaner air.
So what does it look like when air quality spikes in the wrong direction? Today was a perfect example of a bay air day. Air Quality Index rates breathability of the air on a scale from 0 (totally clean) to 500 (hazardously polluted). Today, Jinan hit a peak of 460, and averaged something near 370. It wasn't a good day to be outside for long. But what does this actually look like. A little something like this:
For the sake of comparison, what does this area look like on a not so smoggy day? Like this:
The difference is perhaps even more dramatic at night. This is what Jinan looks like on a 350+ AQI evening:
And when the air is a little clearer:
Notice something? It's a bit disconcerting to think that an enormous building that lights up in rainbow colors can simply vanish. And yet.
Here's a little bit more of Jinan today:
How do you cope with this? Well for starters, if you have to go outside, this is the way you ought to do it:
But mostly, days like today meaning a lot of hanging around in places with filtered air. For me, it meant spending a lot of time working from a coffeeshop in one of the palatial shopping malls, where I could breathe free.
So what's the upshot here? Why mention this? I'm not much for adding to the needlessly loud chorus of detractors about China's air quality. The fact that pollution gets intense here, especially during winter, is something that everyone understands and learns to cope with. The reason I mention this today, is that it's clear that air quality is seen by foreigners and locals alike as a tradeoff that comes hand in hand with urban development. Whether or not the product is worth the price remains to be seen, but it's clear that when discussing the effects of ubranizing cities like Jinan, air quality stands as a top tier concern in the minds of many.