SMOG

I sit across from my friend’s date, yet it is not his date, it is an exploration. I cannot speak because they are flirting in Chinese and it is only with great effort that I can even follow. I also cannot speak because I’ve lost my voice.

I’m not sure what was the cause of the voice loss and although it sounds like I swallowed a possessed frog, I’m pretty sure that I didn’t actually swallow a possessed frog. It is not clear that my voice loss is noticed because I don’t really speak all that much anyway and when I do people can barely hear me.

Most likely the cause was the famous Beijing smog which helped to bring on some kind of congestion. The smog reading a week ago Saturday was 758. To put this in perspective, the scale on goes to 500. At 300 the scale reaches it’s highest danger level of “Hazardous”.

Living in Beijing you get used to bad smog days but this was the worst anyone could remember. When I went for a walk I wore a mask. I was not alone. Mask sales are booming.  I didn’t feel any adverse effects beyond a shallow cough. A few days later when I woke up for my 5am workout I felt a bit of a headache and lethargic. Well, it was 5am I thought. But I didn’t have the energy to get through the workout and made it through the rest of the work week feeling not so great.

Then Saturday came and the smog level raised back up to 558. Anything beyond 500 is known as “crazy bad” since the programmer at the US Embassy which produces the readings never thought a reading higher than 500 would be reached.

The good news is it snowed Sunday. Some kind of toxic paint your car kind of snow. The snow the kids went out and played in. The smog level dropped to not healthy levels exactly, but better than the evacuation levels of the prior week. As I type this the smog level has climbed up to 200 which is just unhealthy. Kids would be locked indoors at 200 in the US, here its taken with a deep breath.