Now You See Me, Now You Don't

This is the lovely view I have from my classroom on the 4^th floor; Not bad right? The big tower in the not so far distance is the CRTV tower.  The Chinese government doesn’t let me see this website without a VPN, but you’ll be able to.  If I think it’s the picture I’m thinking of, it shows a two-week record of the air quality here in Beijing.  The people who published it took the same picture of the front of the Forbidden City for two weeks and then used one part of every picture to reconstruct it.  The effect is quite powerful, and it’s a bit embarrassing for China; so it’s understandable why it’s blocked here.  Before coming to Beijing, I knew that the pollution was bad.  My mom saw an article in the Seattle Times about the air quality in Beijing and commented that it would “be really unfortunate if [I] came back with lung cancer,” …yeah, that’d be unfortunate, but I’m not to worried. Anyway, I do admit that it’s a little sad when you look out the window and can barely see the CRTV tower 781 feet high and only a mere two miles away… Hate it when that happens.

Well the people who come back from China in fact do not usually get lung cancer; the major disease I’ve heard people come back with is Tuberculosis.  I think I’ll take the lesser of two evils if I have to choose.  The air quality in Beijing more frequently hazardous than not, and it’s really a shame because the city has the potential to become a cultural hub. There’s so much history and so many things to learn about, classroom studies aside.
No questions asked, the best days are when it’s really windy, which basically translates into, “We have clean air!” The pollution is blown out of the city when it’s windy.  It’s really quite nice actually. It’s these days when I think pollution is not so bad; but then the next week, or even the next day I look up at the sky and think, “Oh look, there’s the sun… I can see its outline without squinting…” I have really enjoyed my time here in Beijing.  But (family aside) I miss the States; the comfort, and convenient living it brings, and yes, most of all the air quality.