'Air quality in Shanghai not good for 8 days'

That Shanghai Daily headline wouldn't surprise most of us. But what comes next in the three-paragraph blurb might. According to the Shanghai Environmental Monitoring Center, eight days is the longest stretch of time that the city's air quality has been "not good" in four years.

Not to fear however, because "greenery now covers 350,000 square meters of Shanghai rooftops and 120,000 square meters alongside elevated roads," according to the Xinmin Evening News. Shanghai plans to accelerate the greening of its rooftops, but it has a long way to go -- the city's roofs cover 200 million square meters.