Sometimes the smog in Shenzhen is awful. I haven’t actually seen the factories yet, perhaps next week, but I’ve certainly seen the effects. Today was one of the worst days that I’ve seen; I couldn’t even see the mountain in the distance that’s not that far away. I read the newspaper in English though and there certainly seems to be a lot of talk about cleaning up the environment, setting new standards and goals, etc. The smog is ephemeral though and tends to vanish on the weekends, when the factories are closed.

The smog is smothering us today!:

I’ve been told to be cautious of exercising when the smog is bad and it turned out that my colleague, Michael, and I went looking for restaurants other than the expensive ones in my immediate area. We ended up walking quite far checking various places out. I remember looking across the street and seeing the illuminated haze around the streetlights and wondering how bad it was to be breathing this stuff during a brisk walk. It may have been psychosomatic but I started to feel a little weird in the lungs. Anyway, we ironically settled on a Chinese restuarant near where I lived that happened to be very tasty and quite cheap, at least from my point of view.