Millions of Beijing residents woke up yesterday to find their city covered in a thin layer of sand -- another reminder that the desert is moving closer to the Chinese capital.
People drove to work in cars colored yellow and brown by the dust that had blown in overnight, while pedestrians donned face masks and shopkeepers cleared the sidewalks with brooms.
"I got out of bed to see my Mercedes entirely covered in dust," said a driver, who gave his surname as Yang. "There was just no way I could handle it myself, and I had to take it to a car wash."
PHOTO: AFP
The sandstorm engulfed Beijing despite intensive efforts to clean the air and prepare for the 2008 Olympics by planting broad belts of trees around the city.
The Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau warned the sandstorm, the worst to hit so far this year, could be harmful.
"Sandstorms can affect the human body, especially the respiratory system," said an official with the bureau, who declined to give her name. "We tell people who have problems breathing, especially the old, to stay at home."
Xie Jun, the owner of a car wash in the Chaoyang district, was one of the few Beijing residents who welcomed the sand.
"Normally I only get to wash a few dozen cars every day," he said. "So far this morning, I've washed 100."
The sandstorm originated on the border of China and Mongolia and started affecting Beijing on Sunday night, the environmental bureau said on its Web site.
The municipal government has launched a pollution control scheme, dispatching sprinklers and ordering construction companies to halt earthworks.
It was the eighth sandstorm to sweep across Beijing since the New Year, compared with a historical average of just six per year, according to state radio.
It conforms with other data suggesting that the air quality is getting worse in Beijing.
So far this year, the city has reported 56 "blue sky days," defined as days with excellent or fairly good air quality, 16 days fewer than the same period last year.
Northern China experiences sandstorms almost every spring but this year the situation has worsened because of high temperatures and a prolonged drought, according to Qiao Lin, an expert at the China Meteorological Administration.
China has 2.6 million square kilometers of desert, an area nearly 2.5 times the country's total farmland, according to government statistics.
More than a quarter of China's total area has been classified as desert, and its degradation is adversely affecting the lives of more than 400 million people, or 30 percent of its population, according to the statistics.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS