Airpocalypse Now

Interesting headline. Let me come back to that one later. First a little about our first winter in China. Well, we returned from Christmas and New Year in Scandinavia with big and full bellies and lots of good memories from the two weeks in our motherlands. Christmas at our parents place, meeting up in Copenhagen/Jutland/Stockholm with friends and New Year in Gothenburg with the Swedish gang – it does not get much better than that. Thanks to everyone for the good company.

Being back in China we decided to try something that we never thought we would do – skiing in China. However, one Friday afternoon, we packed our long underwear and headed north in our car. Only 5 hours drive from Tianjin is a decent ski area where we spent 2 days on the slopes among Chinese skiers and boarders. I will not comment on the general skill level of skiing in China, but let us just say that I for the first time felt like a star on the slopes. Ok, jokes and self-esteem aside, it was actually a very positive experience as the area was quite good and it turns out that they most likely will have the Olympic winter games there in 2022.

Winter time in Tianjin is quite different from the summer, but we still enjoy it and suck in all the experience the life in China brings us. In the winter time it never rains. Since October, we have not had any precipitation at all, which means that everything becomes very, very dry. Another major change has been the increase in days with very high air pollution level and that brings me back to the headline.

So – is the pollution as bad as the western newspapers write?

It is a tough question to answer. Can we live in Chine with the pollution? Yes! Is it annoying and decreases our joy of living in China? Yes, to some extent. There is no doubt that China has a huge problem with the air pollution. Especially the Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin provinces are impacted and unfortunately this is where we live. During this winter, I believe that we on average have had 2-3 days per week an AQI index of over 250, which by international standards are categorized as “Hazardous”. This of course limits our ability to have an active outdoor life and confines us to our apartment with the air purifier turned on. When we do go out, we wear sophisticated masks that remove most of the particles (fortunately you look cool with a mask, right?). So we do what we can in order to minimize our health exposure.

Here is a couple of FAQs based on our experience and not scientifically documented in any way:

• Is it really that bad?
  Yes, when it is one of the bad days it is really serious and kind of scary. Fortunately, during most of the year we seldom have these really bad days
• Where does it come from?
  The official statistics say that app. 60% comes from heavy industry and heating/power plants, 20% from construction sites and 20% from Car and transport emissions. Unfortunately, Tianjin and Beijing is located close to the area in China with a lot of heavy industries such as steel and glass.
• How does it go away again?
  Rain or wind – it is as simple as that. Coming from Denmark, I never thought that I would wish for a rainy and/or windy day.
• So why is it mostly in wintertime?
  Heating by coal power is my theory and maybe a different wind pattern. In China the heating season starts in October and ends in March. It is only during that period you can get heating and it is either on or off, which means that it is often very very hot inside. A lot of buildings have open windows or turned on air condition during winter because it is too hot inside. Brilliant, huh?
• Are they doing anything about it?
  Yes. At least on the surface it seems like the government is doing something and the individual Chinese citizen is also becoming very much aware of the problem. The government has made ambitious targets for reduction in emissions over the next couple of years. Let us hope they can do that, so China again can have blue skies throughout the year. It will be hard but is not emission impossible!

Anyway, enough about pollution. If you want to know more there is plenty of stuff on-line or you can give us a Skype call to hear of our experiences.

Next week we are taking a break from the Chinese winter (and smog) and are going on spring festival vacation for three weeks in the Philippines. So stay tunes for an update from the beach.

Chunjie kuaile!