All this shows determination among organizers to keep their word, but the gray mist stubbornly remains. So now it has become a battle over how to define it. Natural fog? Or unnatural smog?
The meteorological administration is citing the number of blue-sky days that it tallied last year, up from 100 in 1998 to 246 last year, as evidence for an improvement in air quality. They were hoping for 258 blue-sky days this year.
But these figures have been challenged. The BBC has been doing its own monitoring for the past few weeks and suggests that Beijing is turning gray into blue. The evidence of my own eyes over the past year tends to support this theory.
A lot of effort is being invested into shifting the pollution, but it seems now that a miracle — like cloud-seeding — is needed to radically improve the situation. The organizers must be praying for fair winds.
“John Hancock” is the Taipei Times’ correspondent for the Beijing Olympics.
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