You may remember from one of my earlier posts where I said the air quality in Beijing was much better than I anticipated and that whatever they did to clean up the air worked...
Well, turns out I spoke too soon! Apparently that day was just after 2 straight days of rain, which settles the dust and cleans up the air. Once the city is dry again, the dust and all the other pollutants slowly rises up again. The day I went to the Pearl market, it was starting to get worse, but I thought it was tolerable. The day after, it all nose dived. I got up quite early to go to breakfast, and it was not too hot at that time of the day, but the air was literally greyish. I could see pollutants and dust floating and flying in the air and it hurt me to breath that air : (
I was already coughing, imagine the damage this smog was doing! I ended up coughing more frequently and more violently, despite the fact that I was already gettting better after drinking the Chinese medicine.
With air like this, the atheletes will need to get here sooner than their original plan, and try to adjust to this air, to this climate if they would like to perform during the games. In short, I take back my initial assessment of air quality here; I am considering buying disposable masks to wear on the streets to at least filter out all the construction dust -- if only I know where to find that! ;)
After 3 days of heavy smog, (getting worse by the day) all I pray for now is a nice long rain to clean the air up....
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