This is everyone's favourite chapter heading in Mao's little red book, so we felt we had to use it, despite not quite finding a subject to go with it. What we'll write about though is smog, or how we held our breath for two weeks.
We knew that China would be smoggy, but were incredibly shocked at how bad it really was. Our throats felt constricted almost as soon as we arrived in Beijing and simply got worse as time went on. Nick succumbed first and became quite unwell, and when we got to Xuzhou it was my turn. Sick with a sore throat and mentally unable to face the smog outside.
Visibility was so poor we could barely see across the street. It seems that farmers were adding to the problem by burning off the stubble in their fields. Locals however, were quite oblivious to the problem and were simply carrying on as normal, while we foreigners could think of nothing else! We soon stopped mentioning the smog, as to the locals it was simply a bit of mist and nothing to get too excited about.
We do marvel at how sturdy and tough the local people are.
F
