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Beijingkids has been an essential family resource for Beijing
international families since 2006. And just as kids grow up in the blink
of an eye, Beijing has grown and changed almost beyond recognition in
that time. In Throwback Thursday we jump in the time machine, traveling
through our 14 year-strong blog archives to dig out the most
entertaining, fascinating, and thought-provoking stories for your
reading pleasure. Ready? Let’s go…
This week, we travel back in time to January 2013
when Beijing reportedly finally decided to ‘do something about the
smog’. While smog in the capital was by no means a new phenomenon (there
is evidence that Beijing’s air has been atrocious since as early as the Yuan Dynasty),
the term ‘airpocalypse’ first came into common usage in 2013 when
measurement technology and a growing awareness of the negative health
impacts of air pollution reached critical mass in the West and resulted
in an explosion of interest in the topic. On Jan 12 of that year, AQI
readings reportedly jumped as high as 993 in certain neighborhoods.
At the time, the New York Times, reported that
“Beijing’s government implemented emergency pollution measures … in
order to wage battle against the stubborn smog.” The plan included a
temporary shutdown of over 100 factories and one-third of all government
vehicles being taken off the streets. Yet even this was all only likely
to add up to a 2 percent reduction in air pollutant density.advertisement
These days, Beijing is enjoying its cleanest air ever, and is now not even among the world’s top 200 most populated cities. According to Yann Boquillod, CEO of AirVisual, a company that monitors Beijing air quality there
are even more interesting data to come, as the COVID-19 pandemic
continues to unfold around the world. “We analyzed several cities in the
world to understand their level of pollution during the lockdowns, and
most cities showed that the reduced human activities resulted in
significantly reduced air pollution”. According to their report,
Wuhan experienced a 44% decrease in PM2.5 microparticles in
January and February of this year, which were their cleanest months on
record.
While air pollution discussions usually focus on the emissions produced in factories and by vehicles, the 2013 beijingkids
article also touched on another very topical debate: whether fireworks
should be banned during Chinese New Year, “as they emit toxic elements
like aluminum, copper compounds, mercury, lead dioxide, and more.”
Fast-forward to 2020 and it’s nigh impossible to even purchase fireworks within the 5th ring road,
let alone set them off, and for many Beijingers who moved here in
recent years, the idea of dodging street firecracker parties and
breathing thick clouds of the acrid smoke while walking between hutong
bars seems the stuff of legend. How quickly things change.
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Images: Geografiavisual, Hayden Opie via Flickr, the Beijinger