Posted on 01/13/2017 7:05:02 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
As Smog Hits China, Chinese Tourists Seek Fresh Air On Pollution Free Holidays
Wolfgang Georg Arlt
Jan 5, 2017
The year 2017 started for China with the first ever nationwide red level fog alarm. On January 4th, the country disappeared under a thick blanket of fog with visibility reduced to below 50 meters (164 feet), grounding air transport and rendering travel by car almost impossible. Red and orange smog alarms were raised in cities from Harbin to Guangzhou and from Chengdu to Hangzhou, halting half of all private transport and forcing many polluting factories and construction sites to shut down in an attempt to reduce levels of air pollution many times above the maximum permitted by the World Health Organization. This alert comes after a week of severe smog in mid-December, which triggered the first red smog alert of the winter and similarly halted operations across many cities in Northern China.
Chinese search engines have noted record numbers of related searches, such as where to go, wash the lungs and forests, with China's largest online travel site Ctrip even releasing a "haze travel list" and a haze travel report.
The report shows that haze-avoidance tourism has become a winter tourism "must" in recent years. Based on booking statistics, the company reckons that December 2016 saw more than 150,000 Chinese travel abroad specifically to escape air pollution, proving that the search for fresh air has become a major push factor in Chinas outbound tourism.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
P!
Just don’t come to Hawaii ! Please ! Far too many clueless non-tipping Chinese tourists here already.
The worst I ever saw personally was around Beijing on Christmas Eve 2008. I guess this link should work. Beijing is under the grey murk bounded by that brown mountainous ridge, on the right of the image. I've also checked recently to corroborate the reports of the last week or so.
The thing I always wonder about is the scope of the public health issue that this must surely engender. I guess they just endure it, which is their tradition in the first place, but thoroughly reinforced by their totalitarian government.
But the United States is the world’s biggest polluter! I know this because the New York Times told me so!!!/sarcasm;)
And yet Al Gore, Pope Francis, Leonardo DiCaprio, and John Kerry don’t seem to get around to mentioning that.
Only the evil Americans are a threat to the ecosystem.
I worked in China from fall ‘76 to spring ‘77. Went through Beijing, Harbin and Chengdu on the way to various job sites. There was only very mild smog in Beijing and almost perfectly clear air in Chengdu and Harbin.
They should have been smart enough to install western pollution equipment as they were growing.
I spent two weeks in China this past December. By the end of my trip, the only thing I wanted was to breathe clean air.
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