The photograph above of the Great Wall was taken today, January 1, 2008.
It shows a chunk of the Wall in Hebei; just over the Wall is Beijing.
The sky is very blue.
Today’s air pollution index or API for Beijing is 32, according to the State Environmental Protection Agency. The API number of 32 qualifies the air quality as “good” according to this U.S. government agency. And apparently, blues skies on December 31, 2007 meant that Beijing met its “blue sky days” target for 2007. Whoopee.
So everything is looking rosy for this year, 2008, year of the Olympic Games, Year of the Rat.
But lest the blues skies as photographed above fill you with too much optimism, let’s take a look at this neon slogan displayed above Beijing’s famous and infamous Silk Street market, purveyors of real and fake dodgy clothing and handbags etc.and for decades.
The photo, snapped a few days ago, shows a Silk Market neon slogan that is a borderline intellectual property infringement of the 2008 Olympic Games slogan, and also a rather sad illustration of one of the only truly universal values of our globalized world:
