Today we say goodbye to the host city of the 2008 Olympics and the centre of the entire Chinese universe, Beijing. Whilst we have enjoyed some parts of it, the pollution in this city is enough to make someone want to stop breathing, or at least write a few ranting postcards (sorry HB).
We have had a great time trying out the local delicacy of Beijing Duck (Peking Duck as we know it), shopping for iPods and cool looking jackets at the fake markets, climbing the great wall and meeting up with mates to watch the footy, but everything we have done has been shrouded in an ever present cloak of pollution - a think hazy smog that reduces visibility to about 500 metres on a good day and about 100 metres most days we've been here. Ask any local about it and "Oh that's not pollution, it's just the weather here" or "it's a haze due to the heat and some cloud" or some other line of rubbish they are fed by the local media or party official.
In fact it is largely man made emissions made up of vehicle exhaust (mostly nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide), volatile organic compounds (aldehydes, benzine, hydrocarbons produced by things like building materials, paints and smoke) and direct sunlight that reacts with the other 2 emissions in a complex ballet of chemistry that someone other than I can probably explain, to produce ozone. The ozone merrily hangs around in the air and staunchly refuses to dissipate until something like rain or wind turns up to clear the air. Beijing is at a natural disadvantage when it comes to airborne smog as it is partly encircled by mountains that are effective at keeping the wind away in summer. Basically until it gets windy or starts to rain the smog will sit around over the city slowly but surely killing it's inhabitants and friendly tourists, like Michelle and I.
And this is the impasse I have arrived at in Beijing. It is a huge city, literally falling over itself with magnificent, ancient cultural relics, steeped in history and should be on the verge of becoming one of the great cities of the world. But it is completely miserable because you can hardly see your hand in front of your face at noon. Anyone who has been in Melbourne when there is a really big bushfire going around Victoria will know the feeling of looking up at the sun and seeing its pale gold outline through the smoke. Beijing has been like this for the last 5 days and will remain so until it rains. Perhaps I'm being harsh, judging the city on a such a brief stay but I am here with their Olympics pollution controls in full effect and I can't wait to leave. The rest of the world will no doubt judge Beijing on the 2 weeks of the games and if it doesn't rain and get windy soon all anyone like me will talk about is the fact that you could hardly see any of the events for the pollution. Frankly I think they are on a hiding to nothing - I mean there's a freaking coal power plant the size of Yallourn B and Loy Yang put together 10 or 15 km's from the centre of the city so they could probably take every car off the road and ban people from burning anything (they use coal for cooking!) and the smog would still come...
As you can probably tell this place is getting me down, but things are looking up. We have officially started the 3rd phase of our trip with the joining of the tour along the silk road. From Beijing to Tashkent in Uzbekistan we will travel about 50,000km's by train heading west into Central Asia.
Tonight we board a 12 hour train trip to Xi'an, which is the home of the terracotta warriors and the ancient capital of many of the Chinese Dynasties up until the 14th Century. Apparently the cloud of death extends down there as well, but it's meant to be a super place so I'm looking forward to the change. And from there, we strike west again on a 36 hour train trip to the Gobi Desert and Turpan and Kashgar. Apart from actually being in China these places have almost nothing in common with the China we have seen so far which is extremely exciting!
We have heaps more unreal adventures to blog about so stay tuned for some more stories about our excellent adventures!
Beijing Pollution Links and reading for those interested
Pollution China
Age story about Chinese Pollution
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