China is Choking Me
There was a lot of hype about Beijing’s smog in the run up to the Olympics. If there’s anything about the smog during the Olympics, we’re oblivious to it because all we get is the extremely biased CCTV coverage and the equally biased China Daily newspaper coverage.
Since getting into Beijing, we’ve seen some haze but have been pleasantly unaffected by the air quality… until yesterday. Yesterday we spent the entire day outside. We started with a morning softball game (go USA) in some pretty stagnant air and extreme heat. We then hiked around the giant Summer Palace (or Palase as Eddie’s souvenir tshirt says).
Next we headed to the Bird’s Nest for the evening’s Athletics events. By the time we hit the security gate, Elbert noted that it was difficult to take a full breath. From there it just got worse. The dissapointing interior of the Bird’s Nest (more on that later) included a climb up stairs with limited lung capacity. By the time we reached our nosebleed seats, my chest felt like there was a weight on it.
Sitting in our seats, we could see the light hitting the haze throughout the stadium. The roof of the stadium seems to just trap all the heat and bad air right on top where we sat with no ventilation system. Melissa literally could not stand the heat and left about halfway through the meet while the rest of us toughed it out.
Today I’m full of phlegm, but hey, at least it’s raining.