Beijing by day

life - In Beijing: stay indoors

Residents in China's capital Beijing got the advice to stay indoors:

Beijing residents have warned to stay indoors due to high pollution levels, as a blanket of heavy smog cross northern China caused traffic chaos and delayed lights throughout the region.

We do not have a very bright day here in Shanghai today, but this sounds pretty serious, since this is the official media telling us this message. Compared to Shanghai Beijing sounds pretty backward, despite the Olympics coming up in 2008:

Besides the regular car pollution, the bad air quality was also due to the city's 6,000 coal-fire heating furnaces and up to two million home coal burners that went into operation this month to provide the capital with heat, it said.

Shanghai has rigorously phased out the usage of coal for heating and replaced it by gas. Much of the official car fleet, including taxis and busses have been put on lpg - although it is not always used. Those things do make a difference.