This is possibly the most polluted city I’ve ever been in. Most it seems to be dust, not ozone or carbon monoxide. After Beth commented on what a foggy day this was, one of our hosts corrected here and insisted that this was a sunny day. Nonetheless, you can look directly at the sun at midday and it’s a sort of dull orange.
The whole city seems to be under construction in preparation for the Olympics. Some very impressive buildings are going up. However Beijing doesn’t put up fences around construction sites, and if you’re not careful you’ll walk right through them. (Many people do.)
Construction workers wear hard hats but not boots. I’m not sure what to call the shoes they do wear, but they’re closer to sneakers than the steel-toed boots I’d want on the job site.
Construction techniques seem to make much heavier use of manual labor than we use in North America and Europe. Anxiangli Road is being dug up by hand. About a dozen workers are just digging it up with shovels. Later I saw them dragging a large piece of pipe by wrapping ropes around it and pulling. I assume this is just cheaper than renting modern construction equipment.
Most of the area I’m in seems to be comprised of large, institutional apartment buildings. Think Elechester in Queens or Coop City, though probably a tad inferior to that. However there are also people living in shanties if you look in the allieys in-between and alongside.
Bicycles are everywhere. People lock them but not to anything, so crime isn’t that bad or the bikes just aren’t worth stealing. Beth did notice one apartment complex had glass shards embedded along its walls to prevent people from jumping over so there must be some worries about crime.
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