Since moving to Beijing I have reclaimed my former Taipei status as an oxymetazoline junkie – each day my sanity ever more reliant on the sweet congestive release proffered by this bitter nasal spray. I’m not a physician (or a psychologist), but I’m recognizing a pattern of congestion and dependency related to my residencies in polluted Asian capitals; capitals which render me vulnerable through their overpopulation of inhalable particles.
With oxymetazoline as my savior, I have not been forced to don a space-age air mask; nor join the China Smokers Collective, which in its grassroot efforts to avoid breathing in air pollutants consumes 3 million ciggies a minute. It is my firm belief that many Chinese have come to realize the best way to avoid being one of the 400,000 destined to die a premature death from air pollution each year, is to take fate into their own hands, and become one of the million who die from smoking.
In this era of pre-Olympic transformative development madness, the Chinese government has never been under more pressure to hide both their air pollutants and smokers – at least in the Jing. At first glance it seems impossible, and more than a small conundrum to find a place to put sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities, and a third of the world’s smokers, unaccustomed to regulation. But, luckily for China and the Olympics, the Chinese Government has never been one to shy away from mass-scale implementations, and the looming threat that a crime as small as handbag theft could lead to execution, works wonders in keeping people on the right side of the law.
One relatively successful government policy has been to shut-down (or relocate) a number of central city factories, in an “if you can’t see the air pollution it doesn’t exist” style ploy. It has now been a year since the largest offender, responsible for half of the Jing’s air pollution, disappeared off the skyline, rendering the vision of clear-ish skies. Admittedly the rays are sometimes a muddy-blue or hazy-jaffa, but opposed to popular international opinion, sunlight is a more regular feature than smog on the Jing’s weather chart.
Unfortunately for the government and their regulation enforcement limitations, the wind roams freely; so whilst one day might be relatively clear, with a pollution rating of 50 (25 is safe), a day later, with a change in wind direction, the pollution rating can skyrocket to 500. On these doomsdays, with a sky radiating a dark orangey-grey, the government tends to issue warnings that the children and elderly stay indoors. Incidentally, a number of “warning-rating days” in Beijing coincided with my re-found dependency on oxymetazoline, which depending on how you want to look at it, may be either a physical or psychological reaction to air pollution.
Luckily, we have recently been granted a new outdoor safe zone, as all the Jing’s taxis have been converted into no-smoking areas – one of China’s pre-Olympic “Civilize China Campaigns.” Before this momentous occasion, leaving your apartment was a choice of traversing smog-filled streets with dangerous inhalable particles, or travelling in a confined space full of cigarette fumes. More unfortunate news is at bay for China’s smokers however, as a double government whammy will outlaw hocking up the pollutants and spitting them onto the sidewalk, in a new incentive to hide the air pollution. From now until the Olympics every Chinese citizen will be required to permanently ingest their fair share of inhalable particles!
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With oxymetazoline as my savior, I have not been forced to don a space-age air mask; nor join the China Smokers Collective, which in its grassroot efforts to avoid breathing in air pollutants consumes 3 million ciggies a minute. It is my firm belief that many Chinese have come to realize the best way to avoid being one of the 400,000 destined to die a premature death from air pollution each year, is to take fate into their own hands, and become one of the million who die from smoking.
In this era of pre-Olympic transformative development madness, the Chinese government has never been under more pressure to hide both their air pollutants and smokers – at least in the Jing. At first glance it seems impossible, and more than a small conundrum to find a place to put sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities, and a third of the world’s smokers, unaccustomed to regulation. But, luckily for China and the Olympics, the Chinese Government has never been one to shy away from mass-scale implementations, and the looming threat that a crime as small as handbag theft could lead to execution, works wonders in keeping people on the right side of the law.
One relatively successful government policy has been to shut-down (or relocate) a number of central city factories, in an “if you can’t see the air pollution it doesn’t exist” style ploy. It has now been a year since the largest offender, responsible for half of the Jing’s air pollution, disappeared off the skyline, rendering the vision of clear-ish skies. Admittedly the rays are sometimes a muddy-blue or hazy-jaffa, but opposed to popular international opinion, sunlight is a more regular feature than smog on the Jing’s weather chart.
Unfortunately for the government and their regulation enforcement limitations, the wind roams freely; so whilst one day might be relatively clear, with a pollution rating of 50 (25 is safe), a day later, with a change in wind direction, the pollution rating can skyrocket to 500. On these doomsdays, with a sky radiating a dark orangey-grey, the government tends to issue warnings that the children and elderly stay indoors. Incidentally, a number of “warning-rating days” in Beijing coincided with my re-found dependency on oxymetazoline, which depending on how you want to look at it, may be either a physical or psychological reaction to air pollution.
Luckily, we have recently been granted a new outdoor safe zone, as all the Jing’s taxis have been converted into no-smoking areas – one of China’s pre-Olympic “Civilize China Campaigns.” Before this momentous occasion, leaving your apartment was a choice of traversing smog-filled streets with dangerous inhalable particles, or travelling in a confined space full of cigarette fumes. More unfortunate news is at bay for China’s smokers however, as a double government whammy will outlaw hocking up the pollutants and spitting them onto the sidewalk, in a new incentive to hide the air pollution. From now until the Olympics every Chinese citizen will be required to permanently ingest their fair share of inhalable particles!
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