There is really little new that can be said about Beijing's air pollution, so I am generally reluctant to write about it. Nevertheless, I feel the last couple of days merit special notice. It has been bad. It has been bad in a way that the word "bad" just doesn't capture. The simple phrase "bad air", despite its elegance, leaves far too much open to interpretation. This is not unusual. Regular readers may recall that last June I had to invent the word "nastulous" [nast-yuh-luhs] to describe a particularly grim stretch of atmosphere because no existing vocabulary seemed to do it justice.

Again, however, I find that reality has outstripped even my dictionary-shattering lexicon, so I am forced to resort to metaphor.

How bad was the air the last two days? If it was a person it would have been a seedy, broad-shouldered thug, dressed in filthy leathers and reeking of grain alcohol, last-night's whorehouse and cheap cigarettes, that hauled you into an alley by your collar and beat you senseless with a lead pipe wrapped in duct tape, emptied your wallet, found your grandmother's address inside, went to her house and beat her senseless with the same pipe, cleared out her jewelry box and sodomized her golden-retriever on the way out the door before setting fire to her cottage, coming back to the alley and kicking you in the ribs one more time for good measure.

It was that bad. And even that may not quite capture the sheer evil of it.

The night before last I went to the gym to run on the treadmill but I could see the grunge in the air inside the gym swirling in cones under the spotlights. The idea of pulling any more of it through my lungs than absolutely necessary was appalling. I could achieve the same results by cutting my lungs out of my chest, rubbing them up and down on the street until they picked up a good coating of diesel soot, coal ash and cigarette butts, and then sewing them back in. So I gave up on the idea and went home to watch television instead, confident that it represented a net health gain.

The air is marginally better today [or not -- see below] in that I can see the huge (but vacant) Glory China Center at the intersection of Dongdan and East Chang'an Ave from my office, two hundred meters up the road. But it's a ways short of blue. Hopefully the wind will keep up.

See also:

TBJBlog, via Danwei: Holey smoke, Beijing! 

Beijing Air Blog 

Update:

Actually worse today, apparently. Swell. It was looking deceptively better, what with a little breeze and all. But apparently that was an illusion. The last five days were utterly windless. What with the hills, the inversion layer clamps down on Beijing with all the airtight integrity of a submarine hatch. Perhaps SEPA's numbers have a 24 hour lag...

Update 2:

Jim Yardley of the New York Times writes a long article about Beijing's air pollution woes as part of the Times' "Choking on Growth" China environment series. It doesn't have much information that Imagethief readers won't have seen before, but it does have this wonderful description of the conflict between Beijing's environmental efforts and development:

Beijing is like an athlete trying to get into shape by walking on a treadmill yet eating double cheeseburgers at the same time.

Also, don't miss the related seventh installment in the series, on the problems with diesel trucks, the eight, on how China has absorbed many of the West's polluting industries (and in some cases, the actual equipment), or the ninth, Dave Barboza's great fish-farming story, which is not air-pollution related but is interesting.