Month: October 2014

Beijing is a big city

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I flew to Beijing today to attend a conference at the Embassy (boy, are my arms tired!). The flight took about 90 minutes. After I arrived in Beijing, it took me about 70 minutes to get from the airport to my hotel. Traffic was terrible.

This is the view from my hotel window. Note the long line of cars along the road. Traffic is moving, but it’s moving very slowly.

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This evening, I had a tutorial session with my Chinese teacher, who is in Washington DC. It seems that Skype is blocked in China, and the VPN doesn’t work very well in my hotel. We managed to connect and have our session, but it was a little painful. My teacher is really good; she gives me constructive feedback on my writing, which is what I really need. I’m benefiting a lot from this class.

I’m also really looking forward to the conference tomorrow. People from all of the five consulates in China, as well as from the embassy, will meet to discuss some visa issues that we all face. It will be good to build some consensus among consulates, as well as get some direction from some more experienced officers.

Have I mentioned lately how much I like my job? I really do. Although I am temporarily separated from my family, which isn’t fun, this job is interesting, stimulating, and rewarding.

Life is good.

Unpredictable air pollution

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You just never know what the air pollution will do here. It’s less predictable than the weather. That’s ironic, because unlike the weather, the air pollution is manmade, and therefore controllable. Still, we can never predict what the air quality index (AQI) will be like from day to day, even from hour to hour.

As an example, late last week we had a spout of high-pollution index days. A coworker was planning to take her family to Beijing for the long weekend, and was considering canceling her plans because the air looked so bad. In the end, she decided to go anyway. With winter coming, she figured that if she didn’t go now, they might have to wait until next spring before the weather was good enough to go again. And it’s a good thing that she went, because the air quality in Beijing over the weekend was terrific. Even as I write this on Monday morning, the AQI in Shenyang is 122 (“unhealthy for sensitive groups”), but in Beijing, it’s 29 (“excellent”). Usually Beijing her terrible pollution, but right now, it’s no more polluted than any US city.

I’ve heard from other people that the city-wide heating systems are turned on starting on November 1. Since heat is generated by burning dirty coal, the AQI starts getting dangerous at that time. If that’s true, then we had better take advantage of good air while we can, before we’re confined to the indoors for the winter.