In the past week I have spent thousands of yuan on rent, furniture, and appliances with my great new roommate and fellow Fulbrighter, Julia. This includes haggling over the prices of plates and bowls, spending about 6 hours at Ikea, and begging the owner to buy me a desk that isn’t 24 inches wide (think about it, that’s tiny). It’s been tiring physically, mentally, and financially, but things should improve rapidly. I also look forward to using our full-size built-in oven that is so coveted in China/Asia. 

To say the least, I am in love with my new Beijing life (except the air quality part), and hope these next ten months are fulfilling.

The UN Environment Program released a report last Thursday (side note: good typography, color choices, UN!) about the thick clouds of smog and soot over Asia and the likely effects it has on health, food security, and environmental changes. Due to the unprecedented nature of these noxious brown clouds, the exact consequences of their presence is not confirmed. Regardless of the consequences, it seems like countries are dilly-dallying around until the human/environmental toll is too hard to ignore, which may be years away. By then it will be too late. The world needs to get on this shit, pronto. And seriously this time.

On a related note, though I may not be dying, I am still suffering. Now that I have finished consuming about 200 pills in the past two weeks, I don’t feel much better. I don’t really want to continue taking these pills. For one, I can’t bring myself to trust Western medicine produced in China. Second, I don’t like eating too many antibiotics over a long period of time. I mean, what if I created a mutant bacteria and created the next Avian Flu? Anyways, every time I work out or climb a shit ton of stairs, my throat constricts and I can’t breathe. I still have phelgm that impedes my breathing, but it’s so deep that I can’t cough it up. I wonder how I will survive in Beijing.

So while the world is working on fixing itself, and while I’m still living in China, I think it’s time for me to invest in a gas mask. I wonder if they have them in neon pink, yellow, and blue (Chinese hipsters?).

Things got worse, and persisted through the summer, long after hayfever season. After finally visiting an allergist this summer, I found out that I had developed an allergy to dust. I took antibiotics that cleared up my nose, but I still had a phlegm issue that often left me short of breath.

It was hard to figure out what was going on, primarily because I was moving around so much. By the time I went to the doctor at Brown, I had a few months left before going to New York for the summer, then home for two weeks, and then off to China.

I went to the hospital at Harbin Institute of Technology, and getting any help from the doctors was impossible. The doctor asked what was wrong, I started to explain, but before I got into my medical history she was pretty much done listening. Instead of asking questions about my condition, she asked if I was Korean. Then before I knew it, a crowd of people were standing 6 inches behind me, waiting for me to finish so they can be seen next. The doctor gave me a prescription for some useless pills and shoo’ed me away.

I often have these “I’m going to die from a collapsed lung or phlegm-filled lung” moments. So yesterday I went to Harbin’s “best” hospital and this is what I left the hospital with:

It was assuring to have an x-ray taken and have the doctor say that nothing was wrong with my lungs. And now, if anything pops up again, I have something tangible to show the next doctor I see. And it’s also awesome when I get to keep x-rays of myself. You can’t see it too well the above photo, but I didn’t take my necklace off and you can see a little silver airplane.

Here’s hoping the mountain of pills I was prescribed work!

The red line is Harbin.

For those of you who can’t read it, it says that Harbin’s AQI is: TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-THREE. 2-7-3.

Here are the Air Quality Index (AQI) ratings:

• 0-50 Good is usually green
• 51-100 Moderate is usually yellow
• 101-150 Unhealthy for sensitive groups is usually orange
• 151-200 Unhealthy is usually red
• 201-300 Very unhealthy is usually purple

I think they chose the color purple because that’s what color you turn into after breathing dirty air for a long time. I still wonder what caused such heavy pollution in Harbin that day, though I would guess it could be the coal plants firing up to start government regulated heating.

All the stores had big sales, people were all over the streets, and red flags were everywhere. I am not suprirsed that commercialization of holidays has reached developing countries such as China. I know that in the States, stores like Macy’s always broadcast their Memorial Day or 4th of July sales, but as to whether there a culture of commericalization in China has existed for a while, I have no researched answer. I have the notion that it began (and has since then snowballed) as China developed rapidly over the last twenty years or so.

But in all seriousness, a lot of people use this break to go home and visit family (and, while at home, sit around and study or play video games all day–sad). According to Wikipedia, every five years, the National Day celebration is out of control. Can’t wait to experience that next year.