Back to the Smog

Trip Start Jun 03, 2006
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Friday, February 9, 2007

Shenzhen, or at least the parts I inhabit, is generally pretty clean.  Of course, traffic jams of lead fuelled cars, buses and lorries are not exactly an environmentally friendly utopia, but day to day, I can see blue skies, feel a fresh breeze and I'm rarely aware of the sun being blotted out or the strange stench I came to recognise as being part of life in further north up the Pearl River.
 
Today, I was leaving Shenzhen to visit Dongguan and leaving they city on an early morning bus there was a brilliant blue sky above.  The weather has been bright and fresh for a few days and the city outside gleams.  It is only the dimming of the morning light and the fact that only the tops of the hills outside the city are visible that remind me we're still living in 300 feet of muck.
 
Heading up the expressway to Dongguan the weather gets worse. The light is a flat, dank grey and the smell of factory polluted air is there when I get of the bus.  The omnipresent grey, yellow sky is above and the following morning from a friend's 19th floor apartment I can see little more than 500 metres.
 
Pollution is a fact of life here, even more so than in many other parts of the world. We live with it, and rarely complain.  The smog is relative, but when it's bad, it's horrible.
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