The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau has announced that this year's average air quality so far is poorer than the same period last year. Normally, the city's air quality from June to September is the best of the year thanks to the wind direction and tropical cyclones. The worst season is from November to February, the bureau said.

Photo of the Shanghai haze on a typical day from rado gado.

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Someone on vacation two days ago at Baiyangdian (two hours away from Beijing) saw this most peculiar helicopter-like road sweeper machine, which looks like something the driver invented himself. This wonderful invention sweeps everything -- pebbles, rocks, plastic bags, rubbish -- down to the side of the road. Whatever you don't see is not there, right? We think the inventor deserves top marks for innovativeness, but something tells us it is not going to get patented anytime soon.

OK, we all know about the Great Wall, the Great Firewall and the Great Green Wall. All that is old news now. Get this: China is now building a 6 million yuan, 40-kilometer (25-mile) long, 1 meter (3.3 feet) high wall around Dongting Lake in Hunan Province to guard against the 2 billion field mice that have been on the run from the flooded Yangtse River. Already, the mice have destroyed about 520,000 hectares (1.3 million acres) of crop land when rising water drove them from their burrows. And even the enterprising businessmen in Guangdong who sought to help by bringing the mice en masse to the dinner table did little to mitigate the situation.

Because of intensive farming and the use of anti-pest poisons, the populations of predators such as owls, snakes and weasels, have dwindled and China must now take time to build them. Some scientists have expressed doubt at the long-term effectiveness of the mice wall project. Said Wen Bo, director of the China program at Pacific Environment, a San Francisco-based conservation group:

Walls won't shield farmers from the next mouse plague... The wall is a symbolic gesture to quiet public concern... It's not going to work in the long run.

Yet, for farmers and villagers, some of whom have lost entire harvests of corn, peanuts and watermelon, the mice wall project seems like the best (and only) solution for now. Said one farmer, Zhang, 62:

Once they get the wall built, we'll be better off

It is highly likely that by the year 2020 (yes, that wonderful year when paradise would have come to earth), China will not only be a "harmonious society" at last but also possibly the world's most walled nation.

Related links
Shanghaiist: Not your run-of-the-mill rat race
Shanghaiist: How would ou like your rat done, sir?
Bloomberg: China Builds New Great Wall to Defend Against Mice, Not Mongols

Photo of stewed rat from Jan Chipchase.

We recently read a report on China's water/environmental problems, based on reports from Singapore's Straits Times. Despite living in China and developing some measure of immunity to dismal statistics, there was one that managed to shock us: environmental experts claim that without some drastic change, pollution might, within five years, make the Yangtze River just about inhospitable to all forms of life. The baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin, was only the latest victim: according to the first report, in the 1980s there were 126 forms of life in the river, and by 2002, that figure was already down to 52.

Just how bad is the situation? The Yangtze River goes by 186 cities on its way from Qinghai to Shanghai, and in the process picks up 40% of China's polluted waste water. According to another report, in 2006, China produced a total of 53.7 billion tons of waste water. But that's not the bad news (brace yourself now): by 2030, China might possibly use up between 89-100% of its sources of drinking water.

All of this begs a deeper question: what kind of water are they using when they pump 10 kilos of water into pigs headed for the slaughterhouse? Because if it's waste water not fit for human consumption, there's a chance that some of whatever shit is in that water was in the bacon panini you had for lunch today. And if it's potable water, well shit, that's a waste of perfectly good water.

But we digress. Another report we read, relating to Taihu algae blooming that left 3 million people in the Wuxi area without drinking water, has an interview with a guy who claims (quite believably) that Taihu's environmental woes will never end until all the factories along the lake close down. The algae bloom was so bad there that instead of fisherman fishing, as was once possible in the lake, there are tons of people whose sole job it is to scoop the algae out of the lake.

Gold, silver, bronze? Nah. According to Bloomberg.com athletes the world over have smog on their minds when it comes to the quadrennial Olympics competition next year in Beijing. Gunn-Rita Dhale, Norway’s reigning world champion for women’s mountain biking had this to say about her future host city,

It's probably the most polluted place I've ever competed. Your mouth and throat dry up because of the dust. It's not good for the system.

Clearly, Ms. Dhale has never competed in New Dehli, the city with the worst air quality in Asia, according to the United Nations Environment Program’s 2006 Year Book. Beijing proudly comes in second on that list, registering 145 micrograms of particle per cubic meter of air, almost three times the World Health Organization's recommended maximum. A seemingly never ending construction boom and a six fold jump in car sales in the past five years may have something to do with the abysmal air quality.

China is well aware of this issue and is now in the midst of a USD $13 billion spending frenzy to remedy the situation. Note to self, add "clean air" to the list of things money can buy. Beijing set a goal of 248 “clean air” days in 2008, this after 241 clean days last year and 100 in 1998. Interestingly, Beijing’s threshold for “clean air” is three times the recommended level published by the World Health Organization. In other words, in 2008, city residents and visitors can look forward to 248 days of poor air quaility, and 118 days of piss poor air quality, your trachea be damned!

Every article about the Olympics now mentions the problems with Beijing's pollution with some human rights reference always thrown in for kicks. Increasingly, the media have grown tired of the repeated tried at making Beijing's air cleaner. One of the more labored attempts is coming later this month, with the four day ban of non-essential vehicles, starting August 17. The only vehicles allowed on the roads will be cars with even or odd license plates (depending on the day), taxis, buses, and other "special vehicles".

Western nations and their athletes are understandably concerned. IOC President Jacque Rogge has even gone on the record saying certain events may have to be delayed pending air quality.

"Yes, this is an option. It would not be necessary for all sports, sports with short durations would not be a problem. But definitely the endurance sports like the cycling race where you have to compete for six hours, these are examples of competitions that might be postponed or delayed to another day."

Team Australia for the first time, will have an asthma doctor, or an otolaryngologist (for you trivia buffs) on staff. To avoid the heavy smog, team UK and US will not even base in Beijing. The Brits will station in the once Portugese colony of Macau (1,365 miles away from Beijing), while the Yanks saddling up in an entirely different country, South Korea, both parachuting their athletes to competitions wherever they are held. As Randy Wilbur, Team US’ senior physiologist put it, “(we want to) spend as little time as possible in Beijing”, much to the disappointment of the city's massage parlor operators.

As for our mountain bike champion Ms. Dhale, it seems Team Norway will actually stay in Beijing, as opposed to some far flung city, say Oslo.

``I'll minimize the amount of time spent in the city and will stay as much as possible inside the hotel,'' Dahle says. ``There would have been many far better alternatives than Beijing. It goes against all common sense when it comes to doing sports.''

Summer 2008 can't get here fast enough, the world's anticipation is palpable.

Pete Chorba contributed to this story.