Environment

Beijing often gets this misty sort of weather which I'm sure I've mentioned before. It doesn't look like standard smog, and it probably isn't I guess, more of a mix of smog, actual mist, cloud cover, moisture and whatever else. So when you (or I in this case :) go out, it just looks sort of... misty.

So I forget that is is actually really polluted until I go to clean up. We've pretty much left our windows open since we arrived (a mix of it being so nice outside, racking up a huge electricity bill on the A/C the week we arrived and just general niceness) and when I clean up the kitchen after a day or so, you can see the black dust on everything.

We also get a cleaner as part of our "house package" thing, and she's just one of the girls from Jane's office who does cleaning there the other days of the week, then on Fridays she comes to MOMA and cleans all the apartments. The problem is she doesn't like cleaning (and who does really) and so she does a terrible job. All she does for us (because our washing up is always done) is wipe the kitchen and then mop the floors with the largest amount of water you've ever seen (glad they're not my wooden floorboards).

Anyway, I was out when she came on Friday so I figured I should probably do some housework. I swept up the other day, no big deal. Then this evening I mopped in the proper way, using the squeegie thing that the mop comes with. So either she's doing a terrible job or there's an awful lot more dust/grime/crap getting in than I thought because the water was actually black when I poured it out. If you think it sounds disgusting then you're right.

So we shall see when we return whether it's actually just her not knowing how to wash a floor (which I'm hoping) or whether we actually are absorbing so much factory/car output.

Not a pleasant thought really.