Have we day when the afternoon and consequently do not fly.

In recent news...
-Happy normal new year! So for this nothing really happens in china, people just go to sleep at normal time and then maybe have a lie in the next day, unless you are an expat, in which case you join with the other expats and celebrate together in a bubble of western culture.
-I finally finished my first semester at Beida on Wednesday, so it went from September 3rd to January 9th, a sickeningly long period of time. But now it is over and I'm free till its almost march! So I can no longer complain. :)
-Puffer jackets are everywhere, genuinely everywhere. I saw a dog wearing a puffer jacket last week. In most Beijing situations I say that puffer jackets are justifiable but in this instance I draw a line.
-The lake at Beida freezing is one of the few perks of having such cold weather, and ice skating on it for fifty pence per hour is awesome! If skating wasn't enough entertainment in itself, you can also watch the Chinese people on what can be roughly translated as 'Ice chairs' which are very basic sledges with fold out chairs put on top. The Chinese people are given some sticks and they try to slide along the ice in an extremely comical manner.
-I went to another Chinese child's birthday party at a karaoke bar yesterday, clearly it is the done thing. Watching small Chinese girls doing the gangnam style dance across the room was somewhat disturbing, but not as disturbing as them shouting along saying 'hey sexy lady' and having no idea what it means.


There were lots of other things I thought I'd begin this blog entry with, but then Beijing turned into a post apocalypse dystopia style environment, and I think that will have to take priority. The pollution has reached a new record high and even made the bbc news front page yesterday, which is saying something because pollution in Beijing isn't really news, it's usually just an accepted fact of life here. Every morning I don't really check whether its raining or anything like that, instead I look at the temperature, what the temperature actually feels like, and the pollution count. For those who don't live in a place where breathing is the same as chain smoking and generally accept that air is fresh, the pollution count should be around 25 if its a normal place. In Beijing it is reasonable to start complaining when it reaches about two hundred, by around three hundred fifty it reaches the level of normal conversation starter, and over four hundred is when you start trying to figure out ways of getting around being outside in any form.
It has been over five hundred for the past week and the past few days has fluctuated between seven and eight hundred.
On my helpful pollution reader, instead of labelling it as 'hazardous' or 'severe' it now just says 'beyond index'...
At night it looks like someone has decided to Instagram Beijing and make everything look the texture of an old cowboy film, you can only see about a building away because of the haze that fills every crevice, and it's even seeping indoors, in the underground the carriage is foggy. If you walk outside for any length of time your mouth is left with the taste of coal, and you end up exhausted.
Reasons for this: it's hard to tell what is truth and what is just the expat rumour mill but two justifications that seem fairly credible are that it is leading up to Chinese New Year where the whole country stops working so all the factories have doubled production intensity. This makes a lot of sense, China doesn't really seem to understand the concept of holidays being where people get to have a break. For normal new year my friends that are teachers did get New Year's Day off, but then normal school was put in on Saturday and Sunday for everyone to make up the lost days, so they just had eight day weeks after a day off in the wrong time instead of actually getting time off.
Another explanation for the unusual nature of the 2013 pre new year pollution is that we haven't had any wind or rain to move the pollution away, so it's just festering over me now. For some reason the Chinese government isn't being kind and making the weather change like it sometimes does. So this is one of the things I won't miss while I am travelling next month.

Which brings me nicely onto Spring Festival. Over the next few weeks everyone in China (the largest migration of people in the world) starts heading back to their hometowns for Chinese New Year, almost without exception. Beijing completely empties, and everyone flocks to the trains planes and buses to get back to their families. For many, this is the only time they actually go home per year, and they travel horrendous journeys to get there. Worse than long distance flights, I know Chinese people who will be taking thirty hour train rides each way to get home, and some will have standing tickets.
I won't be able to directly describe Chinese New Year in Beijing because I am also joining the mass exodus, but according to friends who have remained in town during previous New Years, Beijing takes on an empty war zone type feel. This is because those who remain celebrate new year by launching fireworks anywhere and everywhere without heeding any basic safety guidelines, as there are no basic safety guidelines. You can apparently see the clouds of smoke and flashes from the fireworks for the whole Chinese New Year week from the plane, and the death toll rockets during this period from firework related causes. Part of me is very sad to be missing this, but a bigger part of me thinks that being in Vietnam is actually a much better alternative.
At the moment I am preparing to leave the country and go travelling from the south of china to Hanoi by train, then down to Ho Chi Minh city and on to Malaysia to visit my flatmate Anna for the next month. The prospect of warm weather and fresh air is almost too beautiful to contemplate and I really can't wait!