China is a beautiful country, it is full of amazing mountains, huge rivers, dessert, beaches, jungle and everything in between. Kyle and I have a deep affection for this country and its people and we hope to see a lot more of China over the next several months. We both hope to have a lifetime relationship with this country and the friends we have made here. That being said there have been several recent articles about the air quality in China and how bad it is. Last fall when we arrived there were definitely days that the air was worse than others and of course when we went to Beijing there was a lot of smog. But the last three weeks the quality of our air has been terrible. We are now at the point that we are used to going to bed smelling like we have just spent 2 hours at a campfire, our clothes and bedding that have to dry outside stink real bad. It is weird going to bed and your sheets smell like they have been in some sort of industrial fire. On Friday hundreds of flights where cancelled in Shanghai because the air was so bad. The level of PM2.5 particulate matter reached 603 on Friday, levels above 300 are considered hazardous and the World Health Organization recommends a daily level of no more than 20. It is real bad. I had to stop walking the girls in the mornings because I was getting such bad headaches and Madi keeps complaining that her eyes hurt. Kyle and I have been feeling sick for weeks now. The air is effecting the quality of people's lives and the quality of people's health. China is beautiful but it's beauty is cloaked in a layer of thick smog. Every time we go see a new part of China I try to imagine what it would look like on a clear day.
Here are two articles that have been in the news recently:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/06/us-china-pollution-idUSBRE9B508X20131206
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_SHANGHAI_POLLUTION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-12-06-06-55-20
This is the view from our window on a relatively clear day.
This is what it looks like right now, on a nice sunny day. When you look straight up you can see blue sky. It is just nasty and super weird.
The sun looks so weird on these days... I know this looks like fog but it definitely not. It is more like you are in the midst of a forest fire without the fire. They do burn all the fields in the fall so that is not helping the issues, but this is so much worse than just burning some fields.
The locals are wearing masks and walking with their hands over their mouths. I'm not sure that using your hand is much of a filter but when you are out in this stuff you feel a little desperate. The girls all have runny noses with black snot. It is lovely. We all are looking forward to a little clean air over Christmas.
The girls have been watching Mulan and now think that they are samurai warriors. They use bamboo 'swords' which are pretty sweet because it is almost impossible to break them.
They found an enemy
This basically did not end well, as you can imagine :)
This is our child who has to beautify everything.
This child is our fighter
This is our child who has won the hearts of all the people she meets here. They just absolutely love her. They want to hold her. They want to give her anything her tiny little mind decides that it wants. They have created a monster. But she is a total cheese and she is always willing to put on a show which makes everyone laugh :)
This is my handsome husband 'working' at his plant, he claims that the ropes needed to be stretched :)
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