Here Comes the Sun

Two days ago I saw something I hadn't seen in a while... blue sky. Its absence hasn't yet bothered me as much I as I thought it would, although maybe it will get to me. I think I've been okay with it because there is almost always good daylight, except that the view to the horizon is almost always white. There must be some ratio of fog to smog, but it seems to be mostly the former. Suzhou has not seemed especially polluted, compared to other Chinese cities. I can't say that by personal experience, as I haven't been to other Chinese cities yet. Beijing, of course, is said to be terribly polluted, as was much publicized during the run up to the Olympics (side note: I doubt that people outside of China have any idea what a big deal these Games were to the Chinese. Even now, nearly three weeks after they ended, Olympic imagery still dominates television and print advertising, and retrospectives on the events are still a regular feature on television. The national obsession has clearly not yet run its course).

Back to the pollution issue. So far it doesn't seem so bad here, and I'm going with mostly fog as an explanation for our white skies. To draw on Lee's experience, the pollution in Beijing was only moderate on the two days she was there two years ago. Based on friends' experiences with terrible Beijing pollution, she figures it must have just been a fluke. For her, it didn't even approach the benchmark set by her visit to Budapest in the 1980s; she says she can still remember the taste in her mouth.

We are discussing going to Beijing during our week break in October. Then we can all see for ourselves. Until then, it was ever so briefly Blue Skies over Suzhou.