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Shanghai's Blue Skies Are But a Smoggy Memory...
November 1st, 2010: The view from
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After living in an industrial region of China in the 90s, my lungs knew what to expect when I returned this past July. But they were wrong. Instead of slowly turning black again, they retained their healthy, pink color, and were able to take full breaths without coughing and expelling pieces of themselves on the sidewalk. My eyes were surprised, too. They could see beyond a couple of football field's distance, and Voila! Look at that blue sky! It was hard to believe I was in China. "Better City, Better Life," indeed (Shanghai's slogan for the 2010 World's Fair). But in the course of a single day this past autumn, my internal organs were proved wrong.
It was November 1st, the day after the closing ceremonies of the Shanghai World's Fair. I woke up, opened the drapes, and noticed I--and my new home--were engulfed in a cloud of toxic brown smog. I couldn't see past the building across the street. The majestic spire of the JW Marriott Hotel tower I admired from my office window was suddenly a hazy, dark silhouette. I imagined factory managers throughout the city using the ubiquitous countdown clocks formerly used for events like the Expo and the Olympics to count the seconds down to midnight on November 1st when they could fire up those burners once again, relieved that Shanghai was letting them get back to work while turning the city back into an environmental hell.
Here's what it used to look like. |
Of course, they weren't the only ones rejoicing. November 1st was also when Shanghai allowed construction crews to recommence work after six months of rest. It all came together that day, and the city hasn't looked back since.
According to the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau, residents enjoyed a record 92 percent of days last year when the air quality was excellent or good, the top two levels of a five-tiered scale. But more than 60 percent of polluted days fell in November and December. In fact, the number of polluted days for both these months added up to the worst in five years. The Shanghai Daily, the local state-owned paper, chose to blame sandstorms. "Sandstorms polluted 13 days last year, much more serious than previous years," the paper reported the environmental bureau's Wu Qizhou as saying.
Before: The view from my home during the
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That may be true, but all the construction crews now working round-the-clock with pent-up energy from their half-year hiatus can't be helping, either. Still, things could be worse. I could live in Beijing. There, according to The New Yorker's Evan Osnos, the US embassy has an air monitor which sends out its results over Twitter. The score ranges from 1, representing the cleanest air, to 500, the dirtiest. Most US cities score below 100. The score in Beijing consistently exceeds 500.
...And after. |
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Rob, I am United States citizen staying in Beijing for a month. I have not witnessed smog you expressed in your article and I hope I don't. At first I didn't notice the smog until it was pointed out to me that I couldn't see the mountains in the distance. I will have to pay more attention and see if I notice it more. The statistic at the end of your article was shocking, consistently over 500 is terrible. Some actions should be taken to reduce the smog if it's possible for the city to still run efficiently. I've only been here a few days, but I am hoping in my stay my body won't be effected by the smog.
This was very attention grabbing. I had a similar experience, expect in Beijing. I traveled to Beijing in November of 2006, and couldn't see more than 50 yards in either direction, because the smog was so dense. I was there for about a week and the cloud was constant, which made it hard to breathe and blowing dirt out of my nose was something I never wanted to experience again. But lo and behold, I'm back and never would have thought that I'm in the same city. Blue skies and not a cloud in sight, and I can even see the mountains in the distance. Although the current conditions here in Beijing now are phenomenal, I know they won't last long. I hope that the measures implemented to reduce emissions during the Beijing olympics are still in effect and can help to reduce Beijing's rating to under 500.
I found this blog post really interesting because I was under the impression, before I came to China, that the air would be greatly polluted therefore hard to breathe in because of extreme pollution. When I stepped outside of the airport I grasped the air in my lungs and realized that the air seemed no different than the air back home. I was surprised to breathe so easily in the air here.
It makes sense to me that they would decrease the amount of factory production and construction before the World's Fair to make it seem that the air was better and China was a "Better City" which meant living a "Better Life". After the fair was over all of the construction and production that had been haulted for 6 months was quickly started again so it makes sense that the smog would come back.
It is unfortunate that China didn't have the goals to increase the demolishment of pollution for the health of the country, for good.
It seemed to me though that the pollution has been averaged out because, from my personal experience, it was not that bad.
After staying in Beijing just a few short days, I have already experienced the problem with smog that this city has. Buildings in the near distance can sometimes not be seen and my eyes become irritated after walking in the city for too long. I think environmental issues are a sensitivie issue in developing countries such as China, which needs all the cheap energy it can get because of how fast it is growing. Developed nations in North America and Europe try to push them towards "going green," conveniently sidestepping the fact that they enjoyed the luxury of using polluting energy sources when they were developing by pointing out that they didn't know the environmental costs. As much as I would love to see China take a greener approach, I understand that it is not particularly convenient or fair for them. China will have to deal with this issue soon because the smog has negative health effects on the Chinese population and is no longer sustainable. I get the feeling that for now, China is more concerned about catching up to the 1st world and modernizing than it is about creating more environmentally sound policies.
Studying abroad in China has led to a few different shocks. I was not so surprised to hear that Beijing is a very polluted city when I was still in the U.S. I figured that, with so many people, it would be a very dirty city. I had not considered the air problem. Now that I am in Beijing, I get to see first hand that the pollution is quite bad. I can barely see the mountains outside of my dorm room at Tsinghua University, and, when I can make them out, it is hardly with any detail. Nothing in our pre-class meetings or required course reading could have prepared me for how bad things can get here. It is not just the horrible air quality, it is littering as well. It seems I can barely leave my dorm room without seeing trash. When we climbed the great wall, corners of it were dedicated to trash. Quite shocking for something that is such a large part of history.
I do hope that things will improve. I recently heard about the banning of plastic bags. It sounds like it is not going so well in the countryside, but that the government will soon be cracking down on use of them. Hopefully that will go some way towards helping to clean up the city.
The shutdown of factories and construction projects in Shanghai in 2010 was great for the health of citizens and visitors, but I wonder how the economy faired over the same period of time? There’s no doubt in my mind that the increase in visitors during the World Fair helped to prop up the economy, but once they left I doubt the economy could continue its rise without the obnoxious smog coming from the factories.
I noticed while walking the streets of Beijing over the last week that I am prone to side aches after I walk for several blocks. This is particularly concerning because I am young and I good health and back in Minneapolis I can run around the city for a few miles without the pinch in my lungs. The pollution that hangs in the air clouds the view of the city and the lungs of everyone who lives here. Unfortunately, until the cost of clean energy can replace that of coal I would guess that China will continue to pump out air and other pollution, the whole time the developed nations reap the short term benefits because it’s not in our backyard.
After living here in Beijing since May 19th I am not surprised that this city has air quality above 500. Since May 19th I did not see blue sky and clouds until two days ago. I was really surprised at how sunny it can get but you still cannot see blue sky and that is a sad thing. Being the world’s manufacturer has its consequences. Telling manufacturers, construction crew, and car drivers to stop what they are doing for six months so that the air quality can improve sounds like a gimmick. I don’t understand why China cares about cleaning its environment only for the Olympics and Shanghai World’s Fair. These are temporary solutions for a serious long term problem. I hope that China is looking into cleaning up its environment through green technology within the near future.
It is quite amazing how bad the air quality in China is. I have been studying abroad in Beijing for over a week now and the amount of smog is still hard to grasp. We have some mountains in the distance and I have only been able to see them for a couple days of my trip. The city is very clean from the olympics and the infrastructure is quite amazing, but the air quality is still very poor. This definitely raises the question as to whether developed countries have the right to place pollution standards on China? When America and other developed nation went through their industrial transitions, their pollution levels were much worse then what China is currently putting out. This makes the developed countries look hypocritical. China has it's own incentives to clean up its air quality and as China continues to grow and move towards more high tech jobs, their air quality will vastly improve.
In The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, he quotes technology and socioeconomic development expert Carlota Perez in saying “the more China, India, and other developing or ex-Socialist countries industrialize, the bigger the environmental problems and the larger the market to prevent, moderate, or overcome them will be.†(page 293) Having been in Beijing just a few short days, I have already reflected on my own living styles at home and how it contrasts with life here. In the U.S., I like to eat organic as much as possible, use my own shopping bags and I am proud to live in the most bicycle friendly city in the U.S. (Minneapolis). Well, Beijing has the bicycle thing down quite well, but I don't think the locals going into their local corner store think much on where their plastic bag is going to end up based on how "going green" is or is not marketed here. Friedman spends a lot of time discussing the green revolution that is catching on like wildfire in our part of the world and has reached a fad-like status in some respects has not caught on here in China. For a country that will spread the knock-off of a new idea or product in a blink of an eye, it will be interesting to watch if the population will embrace the idea of “going green†quickly or if the population of 1.34 billion people will just laugh at more developed society's attempts to interject green living into their world that already needs so many resources just to keep it running relatively smoothly.
China should be putting forth a much more intensive effort in reducing the pollution they are allowing into the environment. In my eyes the temporary shutting down of factories, and other processes that produce this high amount of pollution that is causing the smog as nothing more than a publicity stunt. This is a real problem that is not only damaging the environment it can cause physical harm to humans. When an issue such as this can cause so many negative effects on many different areas of interest something needs to be done, and done quick. As an emerging world power it is China’s responsibility to set a positive example to the rest of the world. Being such a large player in producing goods in the world does pose many issues in and of itself, however the initiative needs to be greater. China is a beautiful place, but it is literally being masked by one of its greatest faults.
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