Watch the Smog Rise Over There

Last night, I was studying at a cafe (yes, you heard me, a cafe, where they sell coffee, and paninis, and salads) with some other IUP students. It was Sunday night, and everybody, far from being rested after a relaxing weekend, was beat from 2 days of partying. People started going home early.

At 9:30, I left to go home to bed. At 12:30, I was still not asleep. At 1:30, I think I finally stopped watching the clock.

Monday at lunch, my friend Alex said, "God, last night, I just tossed and turned for 4 hours. I couldn't fall asleep for the life of me."

Another friend agreed, "Yeah, I was exhausted but slept so restlessly. I went to bed at 9 and hardly slept."

I said: "Me too! There must have been something in the air! I lay awake for 3 or 4 hours before I finally fell asleep."

Eunjee called me half an hour later. She said I woke her when I left in the morning at 7, but it was ok since she had been sleeping poorly anyway. She said, "I lay awake forever and then when I finally fell asleep I kept waking up! And, then today, in class, all of my classmates kept falling asleep at their desks! Everybody said they hadn't slept much. I swear, there's something in the air!"

Everybody was using the same words to describe this odd phenomenon. The only conclusion we came to was that there really IS something in the air. Something like, oh, I don't know, massive quantities of industrial exhaust and car fumes. We've had two days of (relatively) beautiful weather, and then last night nobody slept, and then today the air was so thick and hazy it looked like you could cut it with a knife. A friend tried to convince me it was "fog" but I'm not buying it. I've seen plenty of fog, and this shit is not the same. It is nasty and makes you want to choke.

Air pollution is normally measured in micrograms/m3. In New York City, the average level is around 10 micrograms/m3 on any given day. In Beijing, 200 micrograms/m3 is standard, and many days it is much worse. I've heard that living here is about as equivalently bad for your health as smoking 5-7 cigarettes a day.

Apparently not sleeping is the least of my problems.