{"id":3354,"date":"2007-08-08T17:03:10","date_gmt":"2007-08-08T09:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danwei.webfactional.com\/?p=3354"},"modified":"2007-08-08T17:03:10","modified_gmt":"2007-08-08T09:03:10","slug":"blue_skies_in_beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/beijing\/blue_skies_in_beijing.php","title":{"rendered":"Blue skies in Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"jiawai_blue_sky.JPG\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The sky above Jianguomenwai in Beijing – light blue with a hint of haze<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Olympic Games will start in exactly one year’s time, on the 8th of August, 2008.<\/p>\n

This being China where eights are lucky and help you get rich, there are special ceremonies in the capital tonight at 8:08 pm. State and privately-owned media are full of Olympic-related content and there are special activities in Beijing all week.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/i> has published an article by By Mei Fong, Geoffrey A. Fowler and Shai Oster titled A Year Out, Beijing Games Test China’s Rising Power<\/a>. The piece lists all the potential problems Beijing may face during the Olympics, ranging from pollution to media freedom issues.<\/p>\n

For most of today, your correspondent has seen blue sky outside my office window, after a week in which the weather manipulation department was working overtime. Rain has fallen every day for the last week; there were even reports of snow<\/a> on the East Third Ring Road last week.<\/p>\n

I also remember how the traffic jams disappeared and the smog faded \u2014 revealing blue skies \u2014 during the African Summit in Beijing in November last year.<\/p>\n

Come 2008, if the Chinese government has to install 90-meter-tall fans on the mountains around Beijing to blow away the pollution, they will.<\/p>\n

I am confident that the air quality will be better than it was in the Athens games in 2004.<\/p>\n

Of course, all of us who live in Beijing may expire of silver iodide poisoning or some such before the games start, but at least the visitors will have a good time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the Chinese government has to install 90 meter tall fans on the mountains around Beijing to blow away the pollution, they will.<\/p>\n

Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[178,1092],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beijing","category-olympic-diary--beijing-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laodanwei.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}