Life under smog: Blue skies are back in Beijing, but for how long? - small air purifier

Residents have been forced to live in dangerous smog for several days.
In January 1, pollution rose to 24 times the level suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO).
I woke up on Sunday and reluctantly picked up my phone to check out my air quality app.
I am looking forward to more bad news and ready to lie in bed.
Local magazines have just reported on recent memories, and many locals are not healthy or angry about it.
But not yesterday.
App read smoke-Free blue sky.
The cloud has actually been separated. Alleluia!
I jumped up from the bed and pulled the curtains open, and in the feeling of the first time forever, I turned off my spinning air purifier and opened the window.
I'm right outside the mask.
Less, enjoy the wind on my bare face.
It is hard to describe for Australians living under Beijing's smog.
When the audience came home to watch the gray
Most of my friends and I here are complaining, putting on masks and preparing for a night --
Netflix and door-to-door delivery.
I am used to treating it as a very bad weather and investing in family shelters.
It's worth it to be a fanatic fan of the Danish concept ", and today my regular apartment competes with any of Ikea's catalogues in terms of comfort.
Everyone here has their own way of dealing with smog.
Humor is a common respite.
People create a variety of problems on Chinese social media, calling the smog of the day "the thickness of tiramisu", or boasting about the dystopian movie "Blade Warrior" in Beijing
The bar offers air happy hour with two peoplefor-
A pint of wine tried to pull dormant citizens out of the house during Friday night's smog.
"I like your mask, where does it come from" has become a trendto ice breaker.
But it's too easy for me.
I'm a minority of the third.
Can afford the first world country
Convenient world.
Chinese entrepreneurs have been busy developing technologies and services to meet the needs of a privileged few.
It's one thing to have an air purifier and a monitor, but money can buy other benefits.
A lot of-your-
Door service minimizes the reason for leaving the airPurify the space.
Someone will come to you to save you from the smog.
From experience, the possibility of this service person wearing protective masks on their own is very low.
This is a big problem.
Everyone knows that smog makes us feel bad, smells bad, and sometimes even tastes bad.
But this is far from the worst.
The smoke contains tiny particles of air.
Including lung cancer, asthma and heart disease.
According to UNICEF, children are most vulnerable;
They absorb more air than weight, and the immune system is not developed.
The final data showed that 0. 45 billion children in East Asia (mainly China) were victims of toxic air.
Thankfully, awareness is improving.
In the past week, I 've seen more people wearing masks than when I was three. and-a-
Stayed here for half a year.
When I arrived here in early 2013, a photographer who worked with me told me, "it's you foreigners who are picky about the air.
We are locals, we just had a nice day ".
Due to media reports and the government's color alert system (red = BAD)
This is no longer the mentality of most people.
More and more Chinese people realize how harmful air pollution is to them and their families.
In a show last week, parents unanimously asked the Beijing government to install air filtration systems in schools.
Classes are canceled every time a serious haze affects the education of their children, and the time is not long
The solution, they said.
The Chinese government rarely listens to collective anger, but in this case they give in.
This is a step forward.
But that doesn't mean there's no work to do.
Last month, a school principal was hit by a fire forcing students to take an outdoor test in terrible smog as the school was forced to close by a red alert.
Progress has been made throughout the country.
Last week, China's energy agency announced it would spend nearly $500 billion by 2020 to free China from coal pollution.
Main causes of air pollution)
Clean energy like solar and wind.
Described the world-
The leading level of investment in renewable energy "has put the country" on the path of a steady energy transition ".
But coal can't go anywhere. “World-
In this period, renewable energy still accounts for only 15 of the total energy consumption, and more than half of China's installed capacity will be driven by coal.
So while Beijing residents are sticking to the exciting news from the official media that 2016 of people have been hit compared to 2015, no one has burned their masks yet.
Especially in winter, Chinese cities will continue to be surrounded by smog.
As for the Australian expat who choose to live in China like me, we just hold on to it until it passes.
We compete for the "most frustrating smog trip" and are moping together in the group, envious of Facebook posts from friends at the beach or at the barbecue, asking ourselves, what are we thinking when we get up and leave.
But if we do not, we will not experience living in a country in such a dramatic transformation, nor will we learn to appreciate something as simple as a clear blue sky.
Ar blue sky. And did I mention that "Blade Runner" doesn't have any information about the US on Twitter