The past days in Beijing have seen horrendous air quality. The Beijing dinosaurs don’t comment on it, in other civilized cities schools would be closed plus other measures. Here, all continues. I saw people jogging in that toxic smog but as they were Chinese it does not matter, according to local doctors only foreigners with their fragile lungs are being impacted. Chinese spit it all out on the spot with a big roar. No problems for them they say.
Authorities are “not able to explain”. You don’t need too, it’s simple – no wind, traffic jams caused by millions of uncivilized morons who all think they own the road and the winter heating being switched on. And no acid rain to clear it up.

With all our misery BeijingAir posted Crazy Bad, Beyond Index, Hazardous as the variations. At least they made me laugh and I quickly switched on my air purifier.

The Air Pollution Index in Hong Kong “reached very high levels”. That means for them, above 100. Lucky people. Here in Beijing the Environmental Protection Bureau shows their distorted figures of under 100 for the API – Twitter shows AQI of far above 100 with peaks of over 200. As for today (6 November), it’s worse – levels of over 200 and getting close to 300. Pollution in Beijing has been this year pretty bad. I started again to cough and I hear everywhere people coughing. I have not been able yet to restart serious running (in the gym, of course). The air irritates my lungs. My cough is always dry and very irritating. Whatever cough medicine I take does not seem to help much (I have chronic bronchitis thanks to the local air pollution and running marathons).
Beijing continues to hide the truth about its horrible air. Some foreigners also wonder why people like me make a fuss. Just wait till you get older and then you’ll know (too late). Ignorance is nice till…
Some days ago I gave a presentation about the Beijing air, refuting the lies from the authorities.
Some weeks ago my daughter in the USA was alarmed the AQI was locally at 80. I sign a contract at once to have that quality every day.

Friday is never a good day, certainly not when it rains. But the whole Friday ended up being a traffic chaos day. When I tried to take a taxi in Gongti Xi Lu in the afternoon to go to my Chinese class (lesson 182!), a cab showed the sign “pause”, but he hesitantly stopped. I told him my destination and he agreed to take me. Turns out the poor guy was totally frustrated as it took him 2 hours to take guests from the airport to Gongti Xi Lu, so he needed a break. We chatted on the way and he said traffic was becoming a nightmare with over 2000 new cars per day.
Coming back in the evening, as usual no taxis in CBD, even the tricycles were busy. So I walked home. Arriving near Gongti Nan Lu (Instituto Cervantes) I stopped to watch a bunch of people fighting in the middle of the street, their cars in all kind of weird positions blocking each other. They finally stopped the fist fight and slowly untangled their mess. Not that they got far. The whole Gongti area was becoming a parking lot. In front of Instituto Cervantes as well as on the intersection with Gongti Xi Lu, the Chinese drivers had perfectly succeeded to block each other by overtaking in the opposite lane and blocking the incoming traffic. In the pictures, no car is actually moving.

It turned out that it was one of the biggest ever traffic jams in Beijing – officially 140 roads were totally jammed, according to the police who stayed glued to their screens watching the chaos. Obviously no traffic police around to do anything. In a picture there is a police car, stuck too. None came out. Not their job I guess, and well, it rained a bit you know.
As long as Chinese drivers continue to drive like cave people, ignoring all the rules and just selfishly doing whatever they like, traffic and pollution will never improve. Police doesn’t enforce any rules. Biking is becoming very dangerous, if your bike is not stolen – due to the general lack of bike parking.
I talked about that – to the Mayor, to the newspapers. See some articles attached.
Don’t expect anything great to happen – authorities lack the courage to tackle the issues.
My report to the Mayor was published by the Waiban in English & Chinese. Feel free to request a copy.

Our friends of the U.S, Embassy have now started to include ozone figures in their AQI measurements.
Looks not too bad as for now. In the past days air quality was reasonable, with several good days and only a few bad days.
The Beijing officials have lots to learn from BeijingAir, or maybe not. They just want to continue with their fake figures to make us feel happy. I even don’t bother anymore to download their daily tables.
Sad that as a general rule, you can’t trust any figures (or news) from the government here. As the Chinese say “you can’t even trust the weather report”.
Of course we all know the Internet is free, the Constitution guarantees free speech, the authorities control the melamine in the milk, no government hacking, etc. etc. etc. Ad nauseum.
So, feel free to go check BeijingAir on Twitter. Good luck!