Residents of China's capital getting out of town to escape smog

[man on the moonshine]

Source: Reuters

Wed Dec 21, 2016 | 6:44am EST

By Jake Spring | BEIJING







Residents of China's capital were wearing face masks and using air purifiers to try to avoid heavy pollution blanketing the city for a fifth day on Wednesday, but others were giving up the fight and joining a rush of "smog avoidance" travel.

Beijing led the country for searches on the travel website Qunar.com for "avoid smog", "wash your lungs" and other terms related to traveling to escape pollution, said Michelle Qi, a spokeswoman for the site's parent company, Ctrip.com.

Northern China has been shrouded in almost record pollution all week, disrupting flights, traffic and shipping, and closing factories and schools.

Searches for plane tickets from Beijing to southern China, including coastal locations like Hainan province, quadrupled this week, Qi said. Popular foreign destinations include Thailand and Japan, she said

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-travel-idUSKBN14A15H?il=0

---

Just imagine, America: a couple years of Trump and this could all be ours!

[DetlefK]

1. Did you know that out of the Top10 smartphone-apps in China, 4 are for photoshopping a blue sky?

[zippythepinhead]

2. Trump will make america pollute again

by gutting the EPA.

[Feeling the Bern]

3. According to my wife's smartphone, which is in Chinese because we live in China

the top ten are:

1: WeChat
2: QQ
3: Tencent Video
4: Youku Video
5: Iqiy Video
6: UC (Chrome clone)
7: Alipay
8: Sogou (mandarin input)
9: Didi (Chinese Uber)
10: Tencent News

Sorry, wrong on all accounts.

[DetlefK]

4. In my defense, I read that in an article a few years ago.

So, my claim is not very "recent". Sorry for the confusion.

[Feeling the Bern]

5. No worries. Please understand I love when people who don't live here try to educate about life

here.

I have been told "living there doesn't make you an expert."

It wasn't an attack, just a clarification of information giving.

[pangaia]

12. My ex- is Chinese.. from Qingdao, although now living in the US.

I've been all over China, but not in the last few years.
And just loved it....

May I ask where you live?

[Feeling the Bern]

14. Bounce between Tianjin for work and Wuxi for home.

[pangaia]

17. Never been to either, guess the closest is Shanghai and Hangzhou and Qingdao.

never even been to Beijing, other than the old airport...

That's quite a commute.

[Liberal_in_LA]

18. Wow.

[Wabbajack_]

6. :(

How could the world let the environment get so bad?

[janx]

15. Overpopulation, for one thing.

Beijing has more than 11 million people.

Shanghai has more then 14 million. I was there last summer, and the smog was pretty bad.

[PearliePoo2]

7. This poisonous shit finds its way here in detectable levels to the tops of Cascade Mountain peaks.

As in many of their exports...toxic, deadly filth.

[brush]

8. That's what no air quality regulation gets you. Burning coal . . .

is said to contribute to nearly half the air pollutants Beijing experiences.

We certainly don't want that here. Coal mining states have to gear up to re-train their miners, something that Clinton advocated.

Do I even have to mention who carried those states in the election?

[NewJeffCT]

9. They have regulations

it's just that nobody follows the regulations and they're not enforced unless you piss off the wrong people in positions of power.

[brush]

10. My point is that coal usage for energy is declining and not coming back . . .

one big reason being it's negative environmental impact.

[catsudon]

11. psi

and in taiwan, Pollutant Standards Index is cited daily in weather report, another reason to dislike the chinese government.

[dreamland]

13. It won't be long when that happens here

Once T-furor gets rid of the EPA.
Quite unfortunately, it's the big cities that will be affected the most by carbon emissions, case in point -LA.
http://fortune.com/2016/11/07/india-china-pollution-bottled-air/
Maybe there's a silver lining here, forget about jobs in coal, it's going to be bottling air instead.

[heaven05]

16. god bless capitalism

nixon, kissinger, and all the CEO's and their corporations making billions of the misery of the 'little people'. Yep, coming to ameriKKKa soon. Since the "swamp" is being populated with more money grubbing capitalists chomping at the bit.

[moondust]

19. Help Wanted

Small army of cardiothoracic surgeons to deal with the almost certain epidemic of lung cancer and other pulmonary diseases to come.