Beijing: First Impressions

Our flight attendant on the trip from San Fransisco to Beijing told us she didn't like to come to Beijing very often. "It's not healthy," she said. "You'll see."

Since our trip to Shanghai and Taiwan in August, I imagined using a bicycle to learn my way around. The roads are well designed for bicycles and foot traffic, despite near universal disregard for traffic laws by motorists, pedestrians and cyclists, there are wide bike lanes along all the major roads, separated from the car lanes by a low metal fence. Cross-walks are well marked and wide intersections have reliable lighted indicators to tell you it’s safe (as safe as it can be) to cross. My guide book says, if you get nervous, just get off and walk your bike across; plenty of locals do. (This is true.) So I was feeling pretty confident that this would be a good way to see and learn the city.

It turns out the impediment to cycling is not the dare-devil antics of the drivers, or the careless attitude of the pedestrians – it’s the air quality.

I found it difficult to take a deep breath coming out of the airport. This morning, walking around looking for a Starbucks (there are about 60 in the city), breathing was ok, but our eyes were burning by the time we got back to the hotel.

There is construction in every part of the city. Not a block goes by that doesn't have some new building going up. The clatter and movement is unceasing; crews work 24 hours a day, on three shifts. The first night we were here, wide awake at 2 am (it's 3:30 am as I write this), we looked down into the construction site next door to the hotel to see the blue flickering lights and orange sparks of a welding crew. Building crews live on site, either in pre-fab two- or three-storey trailer barracks, or, in the case of municipal projects like roads, in tents.

And the city is literally under construction: the city is enveloped in a perma-haze of smog; buildings less than a mile away are invisible in the haze. (Our guide told us that last year there were about 120 days of sunshine; this year, so far less than 20. "Who knows why," he said. "Maybe the construction?" he added, as if reluctant to speak negatively about his city.) Everything - the trees, the plants, the sidewalks, the people - are covered in a film of yellow dust, which mutes color and stunts growth. The sidewalks are kept well-swept of debris and trash, but the old whisk brooms (which look like props from the Wizard of Oz) are no match for the dust - the concrete looks more like swept earth.

It is impossible to picture athletes competing here, impossible to imagine runners taking deep lung-fuls of this acrid air. We're told that six months before the Olympics, all construction will cease and clean-up will begin. Though perhaps most of the venues are indoors. It happens that summer is also the rainy season.