Scenes from our neighborhood on the Tsinghua campus

The roses are his obsession.

This guy lives around the corner from our apartment building in a village that is gradually being devoured by the university. I have seen him just like this several times, contemplating his roses.

They cling to a narrow strip of dirt next to the concrete pathway. Sometimes I see him watering them. If I could speak Chinese, I would ask him how long he has lived in the village. I would ask him why he chose roses for his little strip of garden. I would ask him what he thinks about while he squats there, smoking a cigarette.

Walk through "intelligence valley"

Fruit and nut trees were in bloom in the valley

Cindy and I have been back in Beijing for just over a week but decided it was time to get out of the city.

A group called Beijing Hikers organizes trips every week. We picked one that advertised relatively flat terrain and lovely hike through a rocky area called "Intelligence Valley." The towns in the area have odd names as well. One is called Lucky.

In Beijing, the air is chewable

Wearing my 3-M special mask at the Bridge Cafe in northwest Beijing

For the first year and a half we have been here in Beijing, Cindy has monitored the air quality daily. It was nearly always up over 100 micrograms of small particulates (2.5 microns) per cubic meter, which is considered unhealthy. Often it is like today, over 200. And last week it was up over 300, 400, 500...up to 700. You could practically chew it.

By comparison, on Saturday in New York City, the same measure was 19,  Edward Wong reported in the New York Times.

These small particulates are the most dangerous because your lungs can't filter them out. They accumulate. 

Today's reading, Jan. 21. You can see
the current level by clicking here.  

I never paid any attention to it. Sure, lots of days it was depressing to see a thick haze everywhere. Sometimes you could taste the air. You could smell the coal and sulfur. But it didn't really affect my ability to swim or run or do my job. 

Wearing normal surgical masks does nothing to stop these particulates. You have to wear a mask designed especially to block them. Cindy bought a box of 20, at $3 apiece, and we never wore them. 

Until last week.

I've been fighting a chest cold. First off, until I came to Beijing, I hadn't had a chest cold in 30 years, since I quit smoking. 

Last week I started wearing a mask outdoors. That made a big difference. According to the experts, if you stay indoors you can escape most of the pollution. Well, they're wrong.

Last night I started coughing a lot. I put on the mask, the cough disappeared. Totally. That validates the notion that the 2.5 micron stuff can affect you badly on a daily basis. Not to speak of the long-term effects. 

I can remember a similar smell of coal and sulfur from the steel plants in the Flats many mornings when I would arrive for classes at St. Ignatius on W. 30th St. in Cleveland. Today, of course, the steel plants are closed. Pittsburgh had similar pollution in its heyday. The thick London fog described so vividly in Dickens's Christmas Carol is the same stuff. 

The column on the right has the main break points for air quality. This Beijing air quality index monitor, located at the U.S. embassy, has been a huge diplomatic issue. The Chinese government has denied the reliability of the readings and has pressured the U.S. to stop publishing the information. 

Various  countries monitor air pollution different ways, some combining a number of different factors to come up with a score. 

What I have been unable to find is something that would compare, say, Mexico City, which is notorious for its air pollution, to Beijing using this 2.5-micron index. 

It's because the measurements are complex and defy a simple explanation. I want a simple score comparing cities, but the American Lung Association explanation can't give me that.  

So I'm a Masked Man now. I'm thinking of getting an eye patch. Arrrrrrrrrrr!!!

Related: 

Guangxi: Terraced rice paddies, sugarloaf mountains
Three days on the Yangtze River
Video: Chinese calligraphy in Xi'an
The madding crowd in the Forbidden City
Why the Chinese will never drop their written language
Impressions of China
A little tour of Tsinghua University campus
Deciphering China, ideograms to menus

Hike in hills has auspicious beginning
Impressions of China
Beijing revisited, 23 years later
From the Economist: Daily chart: Choked

China is opening up, slowly, by fits and starts

Some of you may have followed the news about protests against censorship at Southern Weekend, one of the more independent-minded Chinese publications. A New Year's Day editorial that called for political reform was rewritten to praise the current system.

Angry netizens took to the Chinese Twitter, called Weibo, to support the protest and express their displeasure with the censorship.

The New Yorker's Evan Osnos noted that among them was the actress Yao Chen, who has 31 million followers on Weibo. She included this quote: “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

Osnos said, "When a Chinese ingénue, beloved for her comedy, doe-eyed looks, and middle-class charm, is tweeting her fans the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, we may be seeing a new relationship between technology, politics, and Chinese prosperity."

Chinese adults stay limber with hacky sack

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http://youtu.be/d5ckSU7X7wg

The adults in this video are pretty limber.

Cindy and I went to Ritan Park on Saturday in Beijing. It's right in the heart of the city, and you see all kinds of activities -- people playing badminton without a net, table tennis on public tables, dance classes, lots of kids running around and adults playing hacky sack.

Hike in hills has auspicious beginning

Cindy and farmer near Auspicious Village

On Sunday we joined about 20 other folks on a hiking trip to villages about 90 minutes north of Beijing. A company called Beijing Hikers arranges tours every weekend.

This hike, which lasted a bit more than three hours, took us through several farming villages, walnut groves, orchards and up over some steep, rocky paths. The trip started near Jisicun (pronounced jee-see-tsoon), which we were told means "auspicious village."

Three-wheeled motorcycles haul everything.

Morning glories were all along the route. 

We finished the hike at Huanghuacheng, where the Great Wall rides the mountain ridge like a dragon's back down to a reservoir

On our tour we we had people from Sardinia, Slovenia, Pakistan, Malaysia, France and some others who were speaking languages we couldn't place.

This section of the Great Wall doesn't get many tourists.
Our two dozen folks were about the only folks up there
on a beautiful day. 

Related:

Impressions of China
China's grandparents
A little tour of Tsinghua University campus
Chinese adults stay limber with hacky sack


Guangxi: Terraced rice paddies, sugarloaf mountains
Three days on the Yangtze River
Video: Chinese calligraphy in Xi'an
The madding crowd in the Forbidden City
Why the Chinese will never drop their written language
A little tour of Tsinghua University campus
Deciphering China, ideograms to menus
Beijing revisited, 23 years later
From the Economist: Daily chart: Choked

What a $6 haircut looks like

 The barbershops on the Tsinghua University campus offer haircuts for 10 yuan, about $1.75.

Last year I had a couple of bad experiences at $1.75 each and decided to splurge by going off campus to one of the fancy hair-styling salons.

For 55 yuan, about $9, a young woman did an excellent job of giving a light trim that made the bushy mess neat and manageable.

So I decided to go back. When I arrived, the 20 or so workers were doing calisthenics led by an energetic supervisor. She called and they responded, apparently with inspiring slogans. "Treat customers well," I suppose they were saying. Or maybe, "Work fast."

Never read emails during haircut

Ever impulsive and impatient, I went to the place next door, whose hair cutters evidently had finished their daily exercise and group cheers.

They showed me a price list I didn't understand, except that the cheapest option was 38 yuan, about $6. I chose that one. I showed the young man I wanted about half an inch off all the way around. He held thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart to show he understood.

So I began reading emails on my iPhone, and when I looked up, the hair on the top was gone. Then he went after the sides and skinned me. He gave me the haircut that all his friends have.

What we had here was a failure to communicate. At the outset I had told him, wo bu shuo zhongwen. I don't speak Chinese. And he said, bu shuo yingyu. I don't speak English. So we were even.

My Dad used to say that the only difference between a good haircut and a bad one is a couple of days. In this case, it could be a couple of weeks before it grows back. My hair hasn't been this short since I was 17.

Hair stylists do group exercises, with call and response, led by the supervisor, center.

Some services and products are very cheap here. After I was done getting clipped, I found that my bicycle had a flat tire. I took it to our favorite bike guy near the south gate of the campus. The tire was cracked, the tube had a hole in it. In the 10 minutes while I waited he replaced both as well as the basket on the front, which had developed two big holes.

Total price, 55 yuan, about $9. Pretty good deal.